A key player in the Iran-backed organization for almost 30 years, Sheikh Naim Qassem, the deputy secretary general of Hezbollah, was elected chairman of the Lebanese armed group on Tuesday.
On October 8, Qassem, speaking in front of curtains from an undisclosed location, claimed that Hezbollah would not cry first and that the confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah was a war about who cries first. Israeli “painful blows” did not impair the group’s capabilities.
For the first time, however, he made no reference to a Gaza truce agreement as a prerequisite for stopping the organization’s assault on Israel, adding instead that the group backed the efforts of parliament speaker Nabih Berri, an ally of Hezbollah, to establish a ceasefire.
