Hassan Nasrallah, Leader Of Lebanon's Hezbollah
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is an Arab Shia leader of Hezbollah, the largest political party in modern Lebanon. Under his leadership, it won more than 3.4 lakh preferential votes, the most of any party has won since independence.
Nasrallah has been a prominent figure in Iran’s Axis of Resistance, which includes Hezbollah, Syrian President Bashar al Assad, Hamas, Houthi, and several Iraqi paramilitary groups.
Nasrallah was born in 1960 to a Shia family in Sharshabouk in Beirut’s Karantina. He was inspired by Sayyed Musa Sadr, an Iranian-born imam of Lebanese descent who launched Amal, to secure more power for Lebanon’s neglected Shia community. In 1975, Imam Sadr launched the Lebanese Resistance Brigades, Amal’s armed wing, to protect south Lebanon from Israeli incursions. Nasrallah joined Amal as the civil war broke out.
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In 1976, Nasrallah left to study at the religious seminary (hawzah) in Najaf, Iraq, and met Lebanese scholar Sayyed Abbas Mussawi. After the Iraqi Baathist crackdown on Shia forced them to come to Lebanon. Mussawi founded a religious seminary in Lebanon where Nasrallah continued studying.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, intending to drive out PLO (Palestine Liberation and install a friendly puppet government. Over 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed in the assault mainly civilians. After some internal disputes with Amal, Mussawi, and Nasrallah backed by Iran and Syria defected from Amal and established Hezbollah during the summer of 1982. It supported Khomenei’s Shia doctrine of velayat-e faqih that Iran’s supreme leader has religious and political authority over all Muslims.
In 1982, Hezbollah launched a guerrilla campaign against Israel that killed nationals from Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, America, France, and many other countries. By the summer of 1985, Israel had left much of the south Lebanon.
In 1985, Nasrallah became head of Hezbollah’s executive council and a member of the shura council. He played an instrumental role in the policies of the Axis of allies during the Syrian civil war and in uniting armed allies in Iraq. Under Nasrallah, Hezbollah grew and acquired longer-range rockets that targeted northern Israel.
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In 1992, Hezbollah won 12 seats in the parliamentary elections and today it has emerged as one of the largest political parties in Lebanon.
In 2006, again a 33-day war took place between Israel and Hezbollah that was ended on August 14 with UNSC resolution 1701. In the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, Nasrallah has packed the Palestinian cause and praised the Hamas-led attack known as the Al-Aqsa Flood.
Hezbollah is listed as a terrorist organization by the US, UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, the GCC, and countries of the Arab League and its military wing by the EU. However, China and Russia maintain a neutral position on the organization.
Reportedly, Hezbollah has over 100,000 fighters making it the most powerful non-national armed organization worldwide with a significant regional influence in the West Asian politicas. Hezbollah is the only armed force to have forced Israel to retreat from an Arab country.
