[Tee tiong huat]

Hailing from a Shia family of clerics in southern Lebanon, in his youth Safi al-Din soon came under the influence of the infamous Imad Mughniyeh, one of Hezbollah’s founding members.
Together with his cousin Nasrallah, Safi al-Din then set off for religious education in the Shia holy places, first in Najaf in Iraq and then in Iran’s holy city and religious center of Qom, providing him a first direct point of contact with the Iranian regime, Hezbollah’s patron. Two years after Nasrallah was appointed as successor of Abbas al-Musawi, who was also killed in an Israeli airstrike, he called his cousin back from Qom.