The head of the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc. Raad was born in Beirut in 1955, to a family from the town of Jbaa, in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Iqlim al-Tuffah. He was a teacher before joining Hezbollah, and holds a degree in philosophy from Lebanese University. He was a follower of Imam Musa al-Sadr, and then one of the founding members of Hezbollah, as well as a founding member of the “Committee to Support the Islamic Revolution in Iran.” He was Al-Ahed Newspaper’s first Editor-in-Chief, serving in that position for ten years. He helped found Hezbollah’s “Lebanese Union of Islamic Students” and was an active member until the late 1980s.

Raad remains one of the leading figures within Hezbollah and a staunch party ideologue, formerly chairing its Politburo. He was elected to parliament representing south Lebanon for Hezbollah in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2005, and 2009. In 2018 he was again reelected as the Bloc’s representative from the District of Nabatieh. Raad is considered the most likely candidate to replace Nasrallah as Hezbollah’s Secretary General as part of a party restructuring. However, the position’s current powers would be diminished according to this scheme and Nasrallah would be elevated to become the party’s “Supreme Guide,” (Murshid al-A’ala), retaining ultimate authority over party affairs.

Raad is married to Fatima al-Burghul, and is the father of five children.