Hezbollah has named its new chief less than a month after Hassan Nasrallah’s death. Here’s what we know about how the Lebanese armed group is now organised

Less than a month after Israel killed Hezbollah’s long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese armed group has named Sheikh Naim Qassem as its new chief.

The 71-year-old Shiite Muslim cleric, who has been a senior figure in the Iran-backed organisation for more than 30 years, fills what many observers have called a power vacuum.

Since June this year, Reuters and AP report Israeli air strikes in Lebanon have killed at least 10 high-ranking Hezbollah leaders, including Hashem Safieddine, who was Nasrallah’s heir apparent.

These strikes have dealt the most severe blow to Hezbollah since it was formed in the early 1980s. But although Israel’s assassination campaign has made it more difficult for Hezbollah to function, the group is far from destroyed.

Here’s a look at how Hezbollah is currently organised and which key players remain as its new leader vows to continue fighting Israel. 

How is Hezbollah organised?

Headquartered in Beirut, Hezbollah is both an armed group and a political party that has held seats in Lebanon’s parliament since 1992. 

It is organised in a hierarchical structure under a seven-member Shura Council, which is the group’s supreme decision-making body.

There are five subordinate bodies that report to the Shura Council and oversee Hezbollah’s affairs in various areas:

1. The Executive Council oversees Hezbollah’s administrative operations, including its social services, finances and media unit;
2. the Jihad Council oversees Hezbollah’s military operations, including its terrorist activities and weapons arsenal;
3. the Judicial Council is a private court system that oversees internal disputes and enforces Islamic law;
4. the Parliamentary Council oversees the group’s parliamentary performance;
5. and the Political Council oversees the group’s political strategies and alliances.

This structure allows Hezbollah to essentially run as “a state within a state” in the areas under its control, maintaining a significant presence in the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon.

Like the US and UK, Australia designates the entirety of Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation on the basis that it directly or indirectly engages in terrorist acts. 

While the European Union only deems Hezbollah’s military arm as a terrorist group, Australia does not make this distinction because “its various functional councils, including the Military [Jihad] Council, work together in a holistic manner”.

Hezbollah also operates around the world, according to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with members and financiers having been arrested or detained in almost every continent.

How many members does it have worldwide?

Estimates of Hezbollah’s membership are rough, and its actual fighting strength is difficult to assess amid the ongoing conflict with Israel.

According to the Australian National Security, the group has “tens of thousands” of members and supporters worldwide.

Its military wing, in particular, is thought to have “up to 50,000 full-time and reserve fighters”. This figure is in line with the CIA’s 2024 estimate.

In 2021, Hezbollah claimed it had upwards of 100,000 fighters, but this figure was difficult to verify because the group is largely secretive about its operations.

The Israeli military estimates it has killed about 1,500 members of Hezbollah since the start of the conflict last year. 

“There is great damage, an entire chain of command is being wiped out, Hezbollah is hiding its fatalities, it is hiding dead commanders,” Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi said on October 19.

“We estimate that we are at 1,500 Hezbollah operatives killed, and our estimates are conservative. I assume there are more we don’t know of.”

So which Hezbollah leaders were killed?

After more than a year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, at least 10 of Hezbollah’s most senior members have been killed, according to Reuters and AP.

They were either key decision-makers who sat on Hezbollah councils or military commanders who oversaw battlefield operations.  

Scroll through the timeline below to learn more about each leader assassinated by Israel’s military in recent months:

And which leaders are still alive?

Sheikh Qassem is one of the last leaders left standing, though Israel’s defence minister has warned “not for long”.

The head of the group’s Political Council, Ibrahim Amin al-Sayyed, and the head of Hezbollah’s bloc in the Lebanese parliament, Mohammad Raad, also remain at the helm.

Beirut-raised, though his family was from south Lebanon, Qassem was appointed as Hezbollah’s deputy-secretary general in 1991.

He appears to have been involved in both top political and security matters, as well as matters related to Hezbollah’s theocratic and charity initiatives in Lebanon.

He has also been one of Hezbollah’s most public-facing officials, often speaking at rallies and interviews. After Nasrallah’s assassination last month, he was the first member of Hezbollah’s top leadership to make televised remarks.

Speaking on September 30, Qassem said Hezbollah would choose a successor to its slain secretary-general “at the earliest opportunity” and would continue to fight Israel in solidarity with Palestinians.

“What we are doing is the bare minimum … We know that the battle may be long,” he said in a 19-minute speech.

But less than a week after Safieddine, the presumed successor to Nasrallah, was confirmed to have also died in an Israeli strike, Qassem now finds himself elected to the top post.

The secretary-general presides over the other members of the Shura Council, the group’s governing body.

There are normally seven members on this council, including the chief of Hezbollah and the deputy head. But it now appears Qassem is leading a dwindling cohort.

What is in Hezbollah’s weapons arsenal?

Prior to Hezbollah’s latest conflict with Israel, the CIA estimated the group had “as many as 150,000 missiles and rockets of various types and ranges”.

Since the ramping up of Israeli air strikes in late September, Israel claims to have destroyed tens of thousands of Hezbollah rockets in mostly southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Israeli officials said the fact that Hezbollah has been firing an average of up to 200 missiles and rockets each day – rather than the thousands they expected – is a show of significant weakening.

Estimates have varied about the scale of Hezbollah’s losses, with one Western diplomat saying prior to Nasrallah’s killing that up to 25 per cent of the group’s missile capacity had been lost.

Reuters has previously reported that Iran had offered to restock its Hezbollah ally but faced challenges in supply routes.

Last week, a Hezbollah field commander and another source close to the group told Reuters that Hezbollah had chosen not to use its most powerful rockets – including precision guided missiles – to keep something in reserve for a long war.

A third source familiar with Hezbollah’s operations told Reuters the group had not targeted Israel’s cities, such as Tel Aviv, with its most powerful weapons because such a move would give Israel a reason to hit Lebanon even harder.