Naim Qassem, newly appointed as Hezbollah’s secretary-general, has become the centerpiece of the group’s narrative efforts. On October 15, as then-deputy secretary-general, he gave his third speech after Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s assassination, amidst rumors he had fled Lebanon to Iran.
Against a dark and nondescript backdrop—perhaps to signify Hezbollah mourning its fallen leaders, particularly Nasrallah—and flanked by a Hezbollah flag and, unusually, a Lebanese flag on his right and a picture of Nasrallah to his left, Qassem delivered his most defiant speech yet. As with Nasrallah’s speeches, the themes and tropes raised by Qassem were then echoed and amplified by the group’s officials and media apparatuses.
On October 29, Hezbollah named Qassem to succeed Nasrallah as its secretary-general. His most recent prior speech indicates the direction in which he intends to take the group.
The guiding theme: ‘Hezbollah will continue and intensify fighting’
Qassem’s speech had an overall theme: Hezbollah, predictably, intends to continue fighting Israel. “We will defeat them and uproot them from our land,” Qassem vowed, adding that Hezbollah had now transitioned from merely supporting its allies in the Gaza Strip to “confronting Israel’s war on Lebanon since September 17”—the date Israel detonated thousands of pagers held by Hezbollah members and transitioned to its more intense phase of fighting the group.
Hezbollah, Qassem said, was not backing down but matching the Israeli intensification, moving to “frontal confrontation” since October 1, and assuming “the right to target anywhere in Israel as self-defense” in response to the Israeli escalation.
This statement repeated Qassem’s position during his prior speech but with more emphasis, and it has been echoed by Hezbollah’s military statements and actions on the battlefield. It also stood in contrast to the debunked report that the group had finally agreed to decouple a Lebanon ceasefire from Gaza and accept UN Security Council Resolution 1701’s terms.
‘Fighting Israel is necessary’
Choosing to continue the war with Israel will obviously come with a price—not just for Hezbollah, but for its broader support environment and all of Lebanon. Qassem, therefore, had to justify the group’s decision to continue the war by claiming, overall, that inaction against Israel was more dangerous than the sacrifices that fighting the Jewish state would entail.
‘Israel is evil incarnate and a clear and present danger to Lebanon’
To buttress this idea, Qassem turned to reminding his audience of Israel’s nature—at least, as portrayed in Hezbollah’s worldview.
“Israel is an usurping, occupying entity that constitutes a real danger to the region and the world,” the embodiment of evil “built upon murder, displacement, massacres, and earth’s worst vices,” he said. In this view, Hezbollah was not fighting only for Lebanon’s sake but—echoing antisemitic conspiracy theories describing Israel as the Jewish headquarters for world domination—for the sake of all humanity. “Israel is an expanding occupation that will not be satisfied with Palestine, but desires the entire Arab region, the entire Islamic orbit, and even wants to control the world from this position in the region,” Qassem said.
“Lebanon is therefore part of Israel’s expansionist project,” Qassem claimed, elsewhere asking rhetorically, “Why did [Israel] continue occupying Lebanon?” from 1985 to 2000. He answered that Israel did so and established the South Lebanon Army as preparatory steps to building settlements throughout Lebanon. “They failed, but tried to penetrate south Lebanon again in 2006 to occupy it—but they also failed then,” he said, to stress that Israel posed an active and perpetual danger to Lebanon, its territorial integrity, and the lives of its citizens. Qassem insisted Hezbollah’s supporters shouldn’t be fooled by Israel’s ostensibly limited public war goals into assuming the Israelis have abandoned their expansionism. “If [Israel] isn’t expanding during a specific period, it is because of its inability. But [Israel] will expand whenever it senses the opportunity to do so,” he said.
Because Israel has also set its nefarious sights upon Lebanon, Qassem claimed, Hezbollah “cannot disconnect Lebanon or the region from Palestine,” recounting a list of Lebanese grievances against Israel to prove the point and claiming Israel’s objective behind all of its operations in Lebanon was conquest, not defensive. That is why, Qassem claimed, Israel left Lebanese territory “only when they were expelled by the Resistance.” Hezbollah’s year-long support for Palestinian factions, therefore, hasn’t been purely altruistic, Qassem claimed, but also served a distinctly Lebanese national interest. It was a “precautionary measure” that “stymies Israel’s options to achieve its expansionist goals,” he argued.
Qassem argued that this situation left Hezbollah with no option but confrontation. “They keep telling us to abide by international resolutions. There are no international resolutions by which Israel can abide—it does what they want,” he claimed. “Understand, if we do not confront Israel—because of international resolutions, or we have nothing to do with Palestine—Israel will achieve its goals. Israel will conduct horrifying massacres, then demand territory, and the scale of its killing will lead people to concede to its demands to avoid the same fate,” Qassem said, further claiming Hezbollah’s fight gave Lebanon a chance at survival. “But when we rise and repel [them], and endure sacrifices, and hurt them, and force them not to pursue this path, we will have protected future generations for dozens and hundreds of years.”
Israel’s depredations, he similarly claimed, justified the October 7 attack. “Is it not the right of these Palestinians to act to expel this occupation, shake its foundations, and prevent it from continuing?” Qassem emphasized Israel’s “75-year occupation” and the actions of the Palestinians “and all those with them.”
Qassem also sought to strengthen Hezbollah’s support base’s interest in the group’s fight and ultimate victory. Israel, whose warfighting methods ostensibly reflect its evil nature, would employ “murder to terrify” the group’s base, he claimed. In contrast to the honorable resistance, Israel’s moral “bankruptcy” led it “to killing Lebanese Army soldiers” and, he falsely claimed, “UNIFIL troops.” Qassem continued, “They [the Israelis] fight monstrously, underhandedly, targeting children, women, the elderly, hospitals, and humanitarian aid, emergency workers—all civilians” to break the spirits of Hezbollah’s supporters.
He used similar logic to redirect all blame for the war’s destructiveness from Hezbollah’s provocations and emplacement among civilians to Israel’s alleged barbarity. “Who is causing [the damage and destruction to Lebanon]?” he asked, “the one defending the land, or the one killing humans and destroying everything? Now, when we defend, we’re causing harm? Do you not see that Israel is the one killing and attacking?” Qassem also sought to emphasize that Israel would not halt its murder if these supporters abandoned Hezbollah, because its “project is eliminationist—against the resistance and the supporters of the resistance.”
‘The West, particularly the United States, is complicit’
Qassem also took the opportunity to restate and justify Hezbollah’s case for its enmity towards the West and particularly the United States. Israel’s crimes and quest for domination, he claimed, would not have been possible without “absolute US support … without America, the Great Satan.” Then Qassem tried to frame the current Israeli war with Hezbollah not as an act of self-defense, but as a continuation of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. That conflict, Qassem reminded his followers—as Hezbollah has long claimed—was not a reaction to Hezbollah’s July 12, 2006 attack on Israel, but a pre-planned campaign meant to bring the region under American and Israeli domination.
“America, the Great Satan, wants the ‘New Middle East.’ Condoleezza Rice said it in 2006 … now Netanyahu repeats the same word. This means America and Israel, by carrying out these acts of extermination and this ongoing murderousness in Palestine, Lebanon, and the region, and unfettering Israel’s hand,” through the use of all of the United States’ influence and capabilities, “are partners … and we are confronting the danger of a ‘New Middle East’ done the American-Israeli way, [fulfilled] by Israeli hands, with the Great Satan’s sponsorship.”
‘Hezbollah is winning’
Victory inevitably comes at a price, said Qassem, and Hezbollah is “grateful” for the sacrifices being made. But he also claimed they were producing their desired results of bringing the group—and Lebanon, by proxy—ever closer to victory. This, too, is another fixture of Hezbollah’s narrative: that in every clash with Israel, Hezbollah will inevitably emerge victorious. The group knows that to admit otherwise would lead the sizable portion of its support base who embrace Hezbollah out of a belief in Israeli malevolence and the capability of the group’s “resistance” to begin questioning its utility. Hezbollah, therefore, must spin every setback into a victory.
Israel, Qassem said, set three goals at the outset of its escalation against Hezbollah: 1) Destroying Hezbollah’s ability to fight, “to deny us the ability to defend ourselves or our country or confront occupation;” 2) Ending Hezbollah’s existence, and; 3) Reconstituting Lebanon to suit Israeli and American interests “to direct as they see fit.” Qassem admitted that Israel had inflicted painful blows upon Hezbollah in the pursuit of these objectives.
He then spun Hezbollah’s obvious setbacks as natural. “A resistance’s job isn’t to act as a conventional army fighting another and preventing it from advancing. No, its task is to pursue the army and execute operations against it wherever it enters. So, when Israel boasts of entering hundreds of meters into Lebanon, we respond, ‘What took you so long?’ Two weeks, and you couldn’t move in deeper. In any case, the guys are ready for direct clashes, more and more.”
The upshot, however, was that Israel “failed [even] to accomplish the first goal.” Qassem continued to claim that “Hezbollah [remains] strong” despite the strong blows, and that it had regained its footing and filled the positions of the fallen with competent replacements. That, he claimed, was being reflected on the battlefield, where he alleged that Hezbollah’s fighters were doing even better than expected in direct clashes with Israeli ground troops. To prove his point, Qassem falsely claimed that Israel had lost “25 dead and 150 wounded” soldiers in its first week of ground operations—but that Israel was only partially admitting to its losses.
Hezbollah was even seizing the initiative in the fight, he claimed. “Over the last week, we set yet another equation, to inflict pain upon the enemy,” which resulted in expanding the range of Hezbollah’s rocket attacks, Qassem stressed, “as you saw.” “This past Sunday alone,” Qassem falsely continued, “Israel itself admitted to 100 dead and wounded—which is probably even higher.” He added that the group’s October 13 “special strike on Binyamina alone resulted in 70 dead and wounded,” without differentiating between the dead and wounded. In reality, four Israeli soldiers were killed and 58 were wounded, seven of them seriously and 14 moderately. However, Qassem’s ambiguity was not motivated by a desire for brevity but to exaggerate Hezbollah’s successes.
He also exaggerated the impact of Hezbollah’s continued missile and rocket attacks on Israel. The group has expanded the range of its attacks but caused relatively minimal damage—both because Israel’s multitiered missile-defense system has blunted most of their impact and, it would seem, recent Israeli operations may have destroyed most of Hezbollah’s arsenal.
Undeterred by these facts, Qassem still claimed success: Hezbollah, he said, had shut down all of Israel with one missile, forcing millions into shelters. He also alleged the impact of Hezbollah’s rocket attacks was being inadvertently amplified—not blunted—by Israel’s missile interceptors, which he claimed were falling on Israeli “settlements” and thus adding to the damage of Hezbollah’s attacks. Clutching at straws to prove Hezbollah still had the upper hand, he claimed that even the rocket sirens being set off throughout Israel by the group’s drones and missiles were “having an impact on Israeli society.”
‘Hezbollah’s victory will come through Lebanese unity and patience’
Qassem promised his audience that Hezbollah will inevitably emerge victorious. “The resistance will not lose,” he reasoned, “because it is the owner of the land and its fighters are martyrdom-seekers, accepting only a life of dignity.”
Hezbollah would win because it “is strong—through its mujahidin and its capabilities,” he claimed, adding that “Nasrallah built a resistance that doesn’t fear death.” But while the “resistance’s endurance” was necessary to win the war, more was required: the public had to rally around the resistance, and together they would bring about a victory that would both end “Israel’s aggression” and regain the lands Lebanon alleges Israel continues to occupy. This coalescence was already happening, demonstrated by “the solidarity between Hezbollah and the Amal Movement—and this public that is working together, in solidarity, with complete strength and vigor.” Qassem emphasized the effect of broader social solidarity manifesting in “national unity” and a “popular embrace” of Hezbollah and “a cooperative government.”
With these components in place, Qassem beseeched his audience to “be a little patient.” “We are confronting a raging beast, which cannot stand the resistance foiling its goals. But I have good news: we will be the ones to seize its reins and return it to its barn,” he promised.
Turning to the day after the war, Qassem called for Lebanese unity to “build and save this country” based on their shared national fate—and not to turn to “Israel [which] disrupts all of our lives.” This would require cross-sectarian and political unity to build Lebanon “politically together, within a vision clear to friend and foe alike. We will remain together, God willing.” To those who would not comply, to those who “bet that they can gain anything outside of this framework,” Qassem hinted at Hezbollah’s stick: “Hezbollah is going to remain, in defiance of those who won’t like that, and in any case, the battlefield will give the result.”
Qassem then purported to address the Israeli home front. “Your army is now defeated, and God willing will be defeated further,” he said. Qassem stated this for two reasons. The first was in the hopes that Israeli media would pick up his comments and threats, contributing to demoralizing the Israeli public and leading them to pressure their government to halt the war. The second reason, just as critical, was to give his audience and Hezbollah’s supporters the idea that the group remained in the position of dictating terms, not Israel.
“We are not speaking from a position of weakness,” Qassem stressed. “If the Israeli doesn’t want [a ceasefire], we’re continuing. After a ceasefire, through indirect agreement, the settlers can return to the north, and other steps can be taken. But if the war continues, the [number] of deserted settlements will increase, and hundreds of thousands—rather, two million—will be in danger at any time. Do not believe your leaders’ claims about our capabilities. Look with your own eyes to your army’s dead and wounded, with the knowledge that what they’re telling you is far less than the truth.”
Qassem ended his speech by expressing Hezbollah’s gratitude to its supporters for their “great sacrifices,” stressing that the party and its public were “in the same boat, and one family.” He then asked them for more sacrifice, saying, “We must endure, remain patient, despite today’s pains.” Qassem promised them a bright outcome if they would only stay the course: “If a people desires life, fate will inevitably grant it. Victory comes through patience.” Victory would also come with material benefits, he claimed, “promis[ing]” Hezbollah’s supporters that they “will return to [their] homes, which we will build more beautifully than they were.” This was no idle promise, he sought to stress, claiming Hezbollah has “begun preparing the funds, when we are finished and are victorious, to begin working, God-willing, with all parties.” Qassem concluded by saying, “We will not abandon you. Just as we know you will not leave us. And let the enemy see this great resistance with its great people.”