Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath sources confirmed on Sunday that Hezbollah’s Shura Council had chosen Hashem Safi al-Din as Secretary-General.

The Israeli army had announced the killing of more than 20 leaders in the raid that targeted Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in the strike on the party’s leadership headquarters in the southern suburb of Beirut, on Friday.

Hashem Safi al-Din was head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council and its second-in-command.

He emerged as the most prominent candidate to succeed Nasrallah, as he is his cousin and son-in-law of the former commander of the Iranian Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani. In addition, he very much resembles Nasrallah in appearance and speech.

Hashim Safi al-Din was born in 1964 in the town of Deir Qanun al-Nahr in southern Lebanon. He then received his education in Najaf and Qom, like Nasrallah, and was among the founders of Hezbollah in 1982.

In 1994, he was asked to return to Lebanon to assume the presidency of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, succeeding Nasrallah, two years after the latter was appointed Secretary-General of the party following Israel’s assassination of Abbas al-Musawi in a helicopter attack. He has been preparing to succeed Nasrallah since 1994.

For three decades, he handled “sensitive” files, leaving the strategy to Nasrallah.

The party's former military leader, Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated on February 12, 2008 by a car bomb explosion in the Kafr Sousa neighborhood in Damascus, also supervised his work.

Although Safi al-Din remained for years a “shadow man,” the security restrictions on Nasrallah pushed him to the forefront.

Safi al-Din's son married Qasem Soleimani's daughter, according to Iranian media. Zainab Mughniyeh, daughter of Imad Mughniyeh, also announced the marriage of Zainab Soleimani and Reda Safi al-Din