Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant spoke out after the announcement of the new leader of Hezbollah and issued a brutal threat.
Yesterday, Hezbollah announced that the Shura Council has chosen former deputy Naim Qassem as the organization’s new leader. According to information published by the media, Qassem moved to Iran after a series of assassinations of Hezbollah leaders.
“Temporary appointment. Not for long,” Gallant wrote in a reaction on Twitter.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed on September 27th in an Israeli airstrike on the Beirut neighborhood of Dahiya.
The group said in a written statement that its Shura Council had chosen Qassem, 71, in accordance with its established mechanism for selecting the secretary general, Reuters reported.
He was appointed deputy head of Hezbollah in 1991 by the then-Secretary General of the armed group, Abbas al-Musawi, who was killed in an Israeli helicopter attack the following year.
Qassem remained in his role when Nasrallah became leader, and has long been one of Hezbollah’s leading spokesmen, giving interviews to foreign media, including as cross-border hostilities with Israel raged over the past year.
