Who is Sheikh Naim Kassem? All you need to know about the new Hezbollah chief

Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group on Tuesday said it has appointed Sheikh Naim Kassem as its new leader to replace slain leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah’s decision-making Shura Council elected Kassem, who had been Nasrallah’s deputy leader for over three decades, as the new secretary-general, the group said in a statement.
The militant group vowed to continue with Nasrallah’s policies “until victory is achieved”.
Kassem was serving as the Hezbollah’s acting chief since Nasrallah’s killing.
Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike in September.
Kassem was born in the town of Kfar Fila in southern Lebanon. He studied chemistry at the Lebanese University and worked for several years as a chemistry teacher.
At the same time, he pursued religious studies and participated in founding the Lebanese Union for Muslim Students, an organisation that aimed to promote religious adherence among students.
 
Like Nasrallah, the white-turbaned cleric with a gray beard is one of the founding members of the Shiite political party and armed group, but he is widely seen as lacking the former leader’s charisma and oratory skills.
Under Nasrallah, Kassem’s power within the group was limited.
He has often been the public face of the group. After Nasrallah went underground out of fear of being assassinated by Israel, appearing only in televised speeches, Kassem continued to show up at rallies and ceremonies, and he sat for interviews with foreign journalists.
On October 8, Kassem had made a defiant televised speech, claiming that the group’s military capabilities are intact and Israelis will only suffer further as fighting continues.
Kassem has been sanctioned by the United States, which considers Hezbollah a terrorist group.
 
In the 1970s, Kassem joined the Movement of the Dispossessed, a political organisation founded by Imam Moussa Sadr that pushed for greater representation of Lebanon’s historically overlooked and impoverished Shiite community.
From 1991, he served as deputy secretary-general of the group, initially under Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas Mousawi, who was killed by an Israeli helicopter attack in 1992.