Israeli warplanes launched a massive barrage of airstrikes around midnight Thursday/Friday in an attempt to target Hashem Safieddine, a relative (and possibly successor) to the Hezbollah leader assassinated by Israel last Friday, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, according to three Israeli officials, according to various US media outlets, including Axios and The New York Times.

The bombing was reportedly one of the most intense in the area since Israel killed Nasrallah, but it was not clear whether Safieddine, who was reportedly at a meeting of senior Hezbollah officials, was killed in the airstrikes, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. The assassination attempt is the latest move by Israel in its steadily eliminating Hezbollah’s leadership. It follows Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon earlier this week, which appears to be faltering in the face of stubborn resistance from Hezbollah fighters.

Reportedly born in the early 1960s in southern Lebanon, Sayyed Safieddine was one of Hezbollah’s oldest members. He joined the group after it was formed in the 1980s, following the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, during Lebanon’s long civil war. He quickly rose through its ranks alongside Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, playing a variety of roles and serving as its political, spiritual and cultural leader, as well as leading the group’s military activities at one point.

Like Sayyed Nasrallah, Safi al-Din usually appeared wearing a black turban, making him a respected Shiite cleric whose lineage can be traced back to the Prophet Muhammad.

Biographical information reported in various outlets across the Middle East and Turkey depicts a rapid rise through the ranks of Hezbollah. In 1995, he was promoted to Hezbollah’s highest council, the Governing Shura Council, and was soon appointed head of the group’s Jihad Council, which controls Hezbollah’s military activities. Just three years later, in 1998, Safieddine was elected to lead the party’s Executive Council, a position Mr. Nasrallah has also held twice, including before being appointed Hezbollah’s secretary-general in 1992, according to the report.

Like Nasrallah, Safi al-Din studied in Iran. He formed strong ties with Tehran while studying religious studies in the Iranian city of Qom before returning to Lebanon to work for Hezbollah.

Those relationships are also deeply personal. He was a close friend of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general who led the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force until he was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad in 2020.

Later that year, Safieddine’s son, Reza Hashem Safieddine, married the daughter of Iranian General Zeinab Soleimani in a highly publicized wedding. Some analysts and critics saw the marriage as a symbol of Iran’s entrenchment of Hezbollah. The U.S. Treasury Department described Safieddine’s brother, Abdullah Safieddine, as Hezbollah’s representative in Iran.

Mr. Safieddine was designated as a terrorist by the United States and Saudi Arabia in May 2017 for his leadership role in Hezbollah. At the time, the State Department described him as a “senior leader” on Hezbollah’s Executive Council, which oversees the group’s “political, organizational, social, and educational activities.” It said Mr. Safieddine posed a “serious risk of committing acts of terrorism that threaten the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”