Hezbollah leadership vacuum: Who was Ali Karaki? Who is Hashem Safieddine?

Hezbollah has confirmed that its senior leader Ali Karaki was killed in an Israeli strike that targeted some of the group's other senior figures including its chief Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon.

Even last week Israel claimed that they had killed Ali Karaki in a strike on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut, but Hezbollah refuted his killing and said that he was alive and moved to a safer place.

Karaki was born in 1967 in southern Lebanon's Nabatieh and reportedly joined Hezbollah in the early 1980s.

In 2008 when Azerbaijani authorities thwarted a plot to assault the Israeli embassy in Baku, Karaki was detained and given a 15-year jail term. However, just two years later, Iran worked with Azerbaijan to secure his release as part of a prisoner swap.

Karaki was one of four Hezbollah leaders targeted by US sanctions in September 2019. The US State Department identified Karaki as "a senior leader" in Hezbollah and stated that he was "responsible for military operations in southern Lebanon" in its media note.

Karaki’s role as Hezbollah’s southern front commander made him critical to the war front with Israel.

More so with the killings of some top leaders like the September 20 killing of Ibrahim Aqil, head of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force, in an Israeli strike on Dahieh, and the July 30 assassination of Fuad Shukr Fuad, the group’s most senior military commander, the most significant person at the top of Hezbollah's organisational hierarchy was Karaki.

Hashem Safieddine

As Hezbollah confirmed the assassination of its leader Hassan Nasrallah in Israeli air strikes on a Beirut suburb, speculations regarding a potential successor have intensified.

According to sources, Hashem Safieddine will most likely succeed Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for 32 years until his death on Friday.

Safieddine, a cousin of Nasrallah, serves as the head of Hezbollah's executive council and was widely regarded as his heir.

Born in 1964 in the town of Deir Qanun En Nahr, Tyre district of southern Lebanon, the cleric, who wears a black turban, has been part of Hezbollah's structure since the group's founding in 1982.

In the 1980s, Safieddine travelled to Qom, Iran, to join Nasrallah in studying religious sciences. He has been groomed to succeed Nasrallah since 1994, when he was summoned from Qom to Beirut to head the executive council, overseeing the group's political affairs.

Over three decades, he has handled many sensitive daily affairs within the group, from managing its institutions to overseeing its finances and investments both domestically and internationally.

Like Nasrallah, Safieddine is known for his public and political presence, as well as his fiery and eloquent speeches.

Safieddine has good relations with Tehran. Besides spending years studying religious sciences in Qom, he is related to the former commander of the Iranian Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani.

In 2017, the US Treasury Department added Safieddine to its counter-terrorism blacklist.

But will Hezbollah declare a leader, needs to be seen, as the group faces a vacuum in leadership and a crisis, after this month's pager blasts, Israeli strikes and killing of top leaders.