Budget manager: Hashem Safi al-Din appears to be Nasrallah’s successor

The 60-year-old Hashem Safi al-Din is Hassan Nasrallah’s cousin and is married to the daughter of Qassem Soleimani. A-Din is a routine religious figure in the landscape of Hezbollah’s leadership, who served until now as the head of the executive council. And he is also the obvious successor of the Secretary General of Hezbollah.

A-Din was born in the town of Deir Kanun in the Tsur region, and completed his religious studies in the holy Shia city in Iran, Qom, with his cousin on his father’s side, Nasrallah. According to many, his manner of speaking is reminiscent of Nasrallah’s. Evidence of the deep connection between the two was given in May, when Nasrallah’s mother, Nahdia, passed away.

The funeral was held in the south of Beirut, the center of the Shiites in general and Hezbollah in particular in the capital. However, the Secretary General of Hezbollah could not attend, due to the fear that he would be eliminated. Therefore, the one who nevertheless represented Hezbollah is Nahdia’s nephew and Nasrallah’s cousin, Safi al-Din. At the same time, in Qom, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office organized a ceremony to her memory

Safi al-Din married the daughter of Muhammad Ali al-Amin, a member of the Sharia Council of the Shia Council in Lebanon. Another attribute of his is that he was the brother-in-law of Avraham Shams ad-Din, the son of Imam Muhammad Mahdi Shams ad-Din. The relationship between the two reached a dead end, following the activities of Hezbollah. In 2005, Hezbollah members assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, with the encouragement of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. While Mas al-Din was a prominent figure in the “March 14” movement that called for the expulsion of the Syrian presence from Lebanon.

If and when Safi ad-Din’s appointment becomes official, he will arrive with extensive experience in managing areas that are very significant to Hezbollah, including the propaganda of the “Al-Manar” channel, the health and social aid organizations that take advantage of Lebanon’s collapsing systems to attract new population groups to Hezbollah, and the issue Financial and budget management.

Throughout the years of fulfilling his duties, the budgets managed by Safi ad-Din kept growing. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Hezbollah received 100-200 million dollars from Iran every year “only”. In 2018, Hezbollah already received, according to the US Treasury, 700 million dollars, which constituted 70% of the organization’s budget. Since then, the amounts have decreased due to the effects of the sanctions and the corona, but they are still high. The other 30% of Hezbollah’s budget comes from illegal activities, including drug and cigarette smuggling.

The heir-apparent’s connections with Iran do not end with the fact that his son, Reza Hashem, is married to Zeinab, Soleimani’s daughter, when the engagement between the two became known in June 2020 – less than six months after her father’s assassination. Safi al-Din’s brother, Abdullah, serves as Hezbollah’s representative in Tehran, and is responsible for mediating the continuous relationship between Hezbollah and the Ayatollah regime.

“Palestine is the motive that will make everyone join the axis of resistance”

His views on Israel can be learned from his statements over the years. In July 2018, for example, he spoke at a ceremony held by Hezbollah in Nabatieh to mark the anniversary of the Second Lebanon War. He expressed his pride in Hezbollah’s involvement in the civil war in Syria alongside Assad’s forces, and noted that the members of the Shia terrorist organization did not leave Syria in general and the border area with Israel in particular. “From Yemen to Iraq, to ​​Syria, to Lebanon, to Palestine, the victory in southern Syria strengthened the forces of the Syrian army and the axis of resistance,” he said.

In May 2021, in the shadow of Operation Guardian of the Walls, he said: “The destruction of Ben Gurion Airport is a specific goal, one of the blessings in the defense of Jerusalem, and it all happens without victims. What is happening today in Palestine is the motive that will make everyone join the axis of resistance. The Quds Force is achieving great achievements, At the vision level, apparently these are the results of Qassem Soleimani’s actions.”

The military policy is derived from the extreme religious view of Safi al-Din, which is completely similar to that of his cousin. The senior believes in the doctrine of the rule of the wise of the Halacha (“Walayat al-Faqiyya”) according to which in the absence of a Mahdi they grant religious guardianship over the people. Safi al-Din has already made it clear that for him the religious authority sits in Tehran. “The theory of Walayat al-Faqiyya is one of the most important created by Imam Khomeini,” said the Hezbollah official. “It deals with the most important problems facing the Islamic movements, the ones that led to the split.”

He was close to Mornier

A-Din is no stranger to the intelligence agencies in the West and the Middle East. Already in May 2017, the American Secretary of State and Saudi Arabia imposed sanctions on him. In the statement of reasons, the State Secretariat wrote, among other things, that the executive council headed by Safi al-Din “oversees the political, organizational, social and educational activities” of Hezbollah. The step against him was one of many carried out in Washington against Hezbollah for terrorist actions such as the attack on American forces in Beirut in 1983 and the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 two years later.

In a report published in the newspaper “A-Sharq Al-Awast” in October 2008, about six months after the death of Hizbullah Chief of Staff Imad Morniyeh in a car bombing in Damascus, it was stated that there were three figures particularly close to him: Nasrallah, who was killed last Friday; Nabil Qawak, commander of a Hizballah’s preventive security, which was eliminated on Saturday; and Safi al-Din.