Nasrallah: A Self-Portrait

“I have been reading [former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon’s biography for a while now, and I am going to read the book again.”

So said Hizbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah in an autobiographical note published last week in a Tehran magazine.

In a discussion of his political objectives, he seemed to exclude the possibility of establishing an Islamic Republic in Lebanon.

“Establishing an Islamic Republic is not possible with force and resistance. It requires a national referendum. A referendum that wins 51 percent of the vote is still not the solution. What it needs is a referendum for which 90 percent of the people vote.”

But about 40% of the Lebanese population is Christian.

“Hence, with this assumption, and in view of the status quo, establishing an Islamic Republic system in Lebanon is not possible at the present time,” he said.

See “Seyyed Hasan Nasrallah’s Autobiography,” Ya Lesarat Ol-Hoseyn (Tehran), translated by the DNI Open Source Center, August 10.

In a recent U.S. Treasury Department tabulation of hundreds of terrorist and criminal organizations and individuals, Nasrallah is listed with his passport number and date of birth — August 31. But for some reason his year of birth is given variously as 1953, 1955, 1958 or 1960 (noticed by Amir Oren of Haaretz).

Most news accounts indicate that his year of birth is 1960, though some suggest, probably incorrectly, that he has already turned 46.