Hassan Nasrallah is a Lebanese cleric and the secretary-general of Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist political party and militant group.
Born into a Shia family in the suburbs of Beirut in 1960, Nasrallah finished his education in Tyre, when he briefly joined the Amal Movement, and afterwards at a Shia seminary in Baalbek. He later studied and taught at an Amal school. Nasrallah joined Hezbollah, which was formed to fight the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. After a brief period of religious studies in Iran, Nasrallah returned to Lebanon and became Hezbollah's leader after his predecessor was assassinated by an Israeli airstrike in 1992.
Under Nasrallah's leadership, Hezbollah acquired rockets with a longer range, which allowed them to strike at northern Israel. After Israel suffered heavy casualties during its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, it withdrew its forces in 2000, which greatly increased Hezbollah's popularity in the region, and bolstered Hezbollah's position within Lebanon. However, Hezbollah's role in ambushing an Israeli border patrol unit leading up to the 2006 Lebanon War, was subject to local and regional criticism. During the Syrian civil war, Hezbollah fought on the side of the Syrian army against what Nasrallah termed "Islamist extremists".
