Beirut. Hezbollah announced on Tuesday that it has chosen cleric Naim Kassem to lead the Lebanese militant group after the killing of its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb in late September.

The group said in a statement that Hezbollah’s decision-making Shura Council elected Kassem, 71, as its new secretary-general and vowed to continue Nasrallah’s policies “until victory is achieved.”

Since Nasrallah's death as part of an Israeli offensive that took out many of Hezbollah's senior officials, the white-turbaned cleric with a gray beard has often been the public face of the Lebanese militant group. He is one of its founding members but is widely seen by supporters as lacking his predecessor's oratory skills.

In a televised speech earlier this month, Kassem, who carries the clerical title of sheikh, claimed Hezbollah's military capabilities were intact after Nasrallah's assassination and warned Israelis they will only suffer further as fighting continues.

Kassem has been sanctioned by the United States, which considers Hezbollah a terrorist group. His appointment came as no surprise since he had served as Nasrallah's deputy for 32 years and had also long been Hezbollah’s public face, giving interviews to local and foreign media outlets.

“This is a message to Lebanon and abroad that Hezbollah has reorganized itself,” said Qassim Qassir, a Lebanese analyst close to Hezbollah.

Kassem's appointment shows Hezbollah is running its own affairs and not -- as some have reported -- that advisers from Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard are now in charge of the group, Qassir added.

In an interview with The Associated Press in July, Kassem said he didn’t believe that Israel had the capacity -- or had yet made the decision -- to launch a full-blown war with Hezbollah. But he warned that even if Israel intended to undertake a limited operation in Lebanon that stopped short of a full-scale war, it should not expect the fighting to remain limited.

Born in 1953 in the town of Kfar Fila in southern Lebanon, Kassem studied chemistry at the Lebanese University before working for several years as a chemistry teacher. He simultaneously pursued religious studies and participated in founding the Lebanese Union for Muslim Students, an organization meant to promote religion.

In the 1970s, he joined the Movement of the Dispossessed, a political organization that pushed for greater representation for Lebanon’s historically overlooked and impoverished Shiite community.

The group morphed into the Amal movement, one of the main armed groups in Lebanon’s civil war and now a powerful political party led by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Kassem then joined the nascent Hezbollah, formed with support from Iran after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the country’s southern region.

From 1991, Kassem served as the group's deputy, initially under Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas Mousawi, who was killed by an Israeli helicopter attack in 1992.

Kassem's pick to the helm of Hezbollah came a week after it confirmed that Hashem Safieddine -- a top figure who had been widely expected to succeed Nasrallah -- was killed in an Israeli airstrike on southern Beirut earlier this month.

Safieddine was Nasrallah's cousin and had close links to Iran where he spent years of his life. Safieddine's son, Rida, is married to Zeinab Soleimani, the daughter of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, who was killed in a US airstrike in Iraq in 2020.

“We ask God to help him in the great mission in leading Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance,” Hezbollah said in its statement about Kassem.

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