29 years ago today, Hezbollah published its charter, launching nearly three decades of violence and organized terror across the globe. The charter firmly condemns peace negotiations with Israel, declaring that Hezbollah’s “struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated.”
Today, Hezbollah’s ideology hasn’t changed, and its terrorism has only become more dangerous. As the organization expands its weapons arsenal – including 100,000 rockets and missiles pointed at Israel – its leaders continue to defend the charter’s key tenets. We take a look at the three leaders perpetuating the hatred and violence of Hezbollah’s charter today.
Hassan Nasrallah
Position : Secretary General
Years in Position : 22
Hassan Nasrallah was born into a Shiite family of Iranian origins in the suburbs of Beirut in 1960. In 1975, at the start of the Lebanese civil war, he joined the Amal movement, an important Shiite militia during the war. He soon left Lebanon to study the teachings of Ayatollah al-Sadr (founder of the Shiite fundamentalist islamic political party Dawa) in Iraq, where he met the first leader of Hezbollah, Sayyad Abbas Musawi. In 1978, he was expelled from Iraq and returned to Lebanon to teach and study at Al Musawi’s school.
He served as a commander in the First Lebanon War in 1982. Five years later, he went on to study in Iran. In 1992, he was called by the Iranian regime to lead Hezbollah. Once Nasrallah took over, Hezbollah increased its international terror activities, carrying out two deadly bombings in Argentina that killed over 114 people and injured over 300.
Today, Nasrallah is still the head of the terrorist organization. Although his public appearances are very rare, he is involved in almost every decision related to Hezbollah’s activities. Nasrallah remains a subordinate of Iranian regime and Ayatollah Khamenei, from whom he receives his orders.
In his own words:
- “If they [Jews] would all gather in Israel, it would save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”
- “There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel.”
Naim Qassem
Position : Deputy Secretary General
Years in Position : 22
Born to a Shiite family in Southern Lebanon, Naim Qassem was a follower of the Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadl-Allāh, who was one of the major spiritual leaders of Hezbollah in its early days.
Qassem, like Nasrallah, was very involved in Islamic education and was also an early member of the Amal movement. Before becoming Deputy Secretary General in 1992, he was one of the founders of the Lebanese Muslim Student Union, and headed the Islamic Religious Education Association from 1974 to 1988.
His current responsibilities are mainly to lead the political wing of Hezbollah and to monitor the party’s parliamentary activities.
In his own words:
- “Do we really believe in a culture of death? Absolutely not. We believe in the culture of martyrdom. Martyrdom is valuable, sacred, respectable, and great, not something that can be used as an accusation. It is an honor for us to be accused of believing in the culture of martyrdom. What is martyrdom? It is death for the sake of Allah, and in defense of what is just.”
Mustafa Badr Al Din
Position : Head of International Operations Networks
Years in Position : 5
Mustafa Badr Al-Din, born in Al Ghobeiry, Beirut, first served in Fatah’s Force 17 in Beirut before joining Hezbollah in 1982, for which he worked as a bomb maker. He is now in charge of Hezbollah’s international operations branch and one of Nasrallah’s chief advisors.
Al-Din has had an important role in two major terrorist attacks:
1) In 1985, he headed a failed attempt to assassinate the emir of Kuwait. He managed to escape, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards brought him to Iran. From there, he returned to Beirut at the end of 1990.
2) The International Criminal Court suspects Al-Din of assassinating the late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005. In early May 2010, the international tribunal stated that Al-Din coordinated the assassination with Syrian support.
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