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Lebanese Shi'ite scholar Mohammad Ali Al-Husseini said in a September 21, 2024 show on Al-Arabiya Network (Saudi Arabia) that Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is arrogant, conceited, and overconfident, and that he believes he is ruling by Allah's command, but that he is in fact a media personality and spokesman for Hizbullah rather than the person who makes the decisions. Al-Husseini said that the people who make the actual decisions for Hizbullah are people like Imad Mughniyeh, Fuad Shukr, Wissam Al-Tawil, Taleb Abdallah, and other first-generation Hizbullah leaders, as well as Iranian advisors such as Qasem Soleimani and others, and he said that the fact that Israel has been targeting those individuals while allowing Nasrallah to live proves that he is not very consequential in Israel's eyes. He added that Tehran makes the decisions about Hizbullah's military moves, and not anybody in Lebanon.
Mohammad Ali Al-Husseini: "Every day, [Hizbullah] says: 'We have UAVs and precision missiles, we can bomb any area in Israel, we can change the balance of power, we have this, we have that...' This reminds me of Hitler, the USSR, and even Napoleon Bonaparte, when they were defeated and crushed. So I felt compelled to give some advice to the public.
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"This is because in 2006, after that war that brought ruin and destruction upon Lebanon, as well as human and material losses, Nasrallah said in public that had he known that it would come to all this, he would not have done it."
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Interviewer: "But can Nasrallah be characterized as arrogant, conceited, and overconfident?"
Al-Husseini: "Absolutely. I know him from up close. He used to say: 'When I am at the podium and I hear the people cheering me, I become a different person.'
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"When he appears in public, and hears the people cheering and calling his name, he feels that he is ruling by Allah's command, and can start wars, end wars, and win wars. He believes that he speaks on behalf of Allah, and that his war and his victory...
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"So yes, he suffers from this problem, from this disease, which might appear in any person who delivers speeches to the masses who chant his name and applaud him.
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"This is why I wrote [to Nasrallah]: 'Stay away from slogans and propaganda. There is a reality in the present and in the future. This is just like what happened on October 7 with Hamas. What did they do? They dragged the whole world [against them]. Gaza was destroyed, the story is over. [Hamas] destroyed the place and killed its people, by what they did. This annihilation stems from arrogance and feeling of strength. They feel that they can go to a lion and beat it. But they did not take into account the lion's reaction and what it can do.
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"Nasrallah is not the real leader of Hizbullah. He is a media personality and the official spokesman for Hizbullah."
Interviewer: "What do you mean by media personality? Like [Iraqi FM Muhammad] Sahhaf [in Gulf War]?"
Al-Husseini: "He is a popular figure, but not the person who makes the decisions. We know that the [real] leader of Hizbullah was Imad Mughniyeh. Nasrallah himself declared that the leader of 'the two victories' was Mughniyeh. He was the head of the Jihadi Council. Recently, when Fuad Shukr was targeted, he said the same thing, because Fuad Shukr belonged to Hizbullah's first generation, whereas Nasrallah belongs to the third generation.
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"How come Israel has targeted Imad Mughniyeh, Fuad Shukr, Wissam Al-Tawil, and Taleb Abdallah? Because Israel focuses on people who have real influence, who present real danger. It does not focus on people who talk. On the contrary, in many of his speeches, Nasrallah inadvertently supports [Israel]. We know that when someone screams and threatens, he encourages people who want to support Israel, and serves the interests of Israel. We know that extremism begets extremism, and violence begets violence. So as far as Israel is concerned, he is not influential.
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"The people who managed to target Imad Mughniyeh in person, and managed, with their intelligence and technological and military power, to kill Fuad Shukr, within seconds, without anybody knowing anything, can target Nasrallah in a matter of seconds, if he were a high-priority target for Israel.
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"The real say belongs to Iran's representative in Hizbullah. We know that Hizbullah is led and guided by the Iranians. If we go back to 2006, we know that Qasem Soleimani was on the ground. Along with Fuad Shukr, in his apartment, was the Iranian advisor. Iran always stands right next to the jihadi, military commanders. They are the ones who make the decisions at the appropriate time. The people who have their hands on the weapons... We see that the U.S. President carries the nuclear suitcase with him, and the same is true with Hizbullah – the Iranians decide when to launch precisions missiles or long-range UAVs. These decisions are made in Tehran, not in Lebanon. Hizbullah is merely a tool at the hand of the Iranians."
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