The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah announced Tuesday that Naim Qassem, a deputy to its long-time leader, was killed Hassan Nasrallahwill lead the Iranian-backed organization. Qassem has been serving as the group’s interim leader since Nasrallah’s death.

“Hezbollah’s Shura (governing) Council agreed to elect… Sheikh Naim Qassem as Hezbollah’s secretary general,” the militant group said in a statement Tuesday.

There was initially speculation that the head of Hezbollah’s executive council, Hashem Safieddine, would succeed Nasrallah, but he was killed in another Israeli attack in the southern suburbs of Beirut in October.

Qassem, 71, was one of Hezbollah’s founding members in 1982 and has been the party’s second-in-command since the group entered the political arena in the early 1990s, according to The Counter Extremism Project, an international organization. He was born in 1953 and his family is from the town of Kfar Fila, on the border with Israel.

Nasrallah, who only gave speeches by video for fear of being assassinated, led the terrorist group for 30 years with fierce rhetoric. Qassem was the highest-ranking Hezbollah official who continued to make public appearances after Nasrallah went largely into hiding following the group’s war with Israel in 2006, and was seen as the group’s main media personality, the Counter Extremism Project said. .

Since Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on September 27, Qassem has given three televised speeches, speaking in a more formal Arabic than Nasrallah’s preferred Lebanese dialect.

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