<b>Live updates: Follow the latest on </b><a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/2024/05/09/live-israel-gaza-war-biden-weapons-us/"><b>Israel-Gaza</b></a> <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/2024/05/18/hezbollah-a-bigger-threat-to-israel-than-hamas-frances-un-envoy-says/" target="_blank">Hezbollah chief</a> Hassan Nasrallah said Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash in Iran on Sunday, was a "servant of his people". Iran is Hezbollah's key backer, providing it with weapons and funding. The powerful Lebanese armed group and political party has been engaged in near daily cross-border exchanges of fire with its nemesis Israel in south Lebanon since October 8. It says it is carrying out the attacks in support of its embattled Palestinian ally Hamas, which is also backed by Iran, in the Gaza Strip. The Hezbollah leader lauded the late Iranian president in a televised speech on Friday. Mr Raisi, 63, and <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/2024/05/20/iran-president-helicopter-crash-who/" target="_blank">foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian</a>, 60, died in the <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/2024/05/20/iran-president-raisi-helicopter-crash/" target="_blank">helicopter crash</a> near the border with Azerbaijan. They were the most senior Iranian officials to die since the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds chief Qassem Soleimani was assassinated in a US drone strike in January 2020. The impact on Hezbollah remains to be seen, but it is expected to be small if at all. “It marks the loss of heavyweights of the regime, the two ideological supports of the current regime, close to the Supreme Leader, aligned with the Revolutionary Guards,” said Karim el Mufti, a professor of international relations at Sciences Po Paris. Yet “they’re not irreplaceable”, he added. Mr El Mufti explained that Iran is not in a situation where the president is at odds with the Supreme Leader or the Revolutionary Guard, making the stakes of the elections less crucial. “For Hezbollah, the biggest tragedy was the assassination of Mr Soleimani. And that did not stop them.” “Against this backdrop, I don’t see how Israel could really exploit the situation in the war.” More than 300 Hezbollah fighters have died since the conflict broke out, the worst since the group fought a deadly month-long war with Israel in 2006.