In an indication of Hezbollah’s declining power after a bloody conflict with Israel and the deterioration of the organization’s Iranian backer, Lebanon’s Parliament reportedly picked a general with U.S. training to fill the two-year vacancy as president.
According to a Hezbollah lawmaker, Hezbollah and its supporters voted in favor of Gen. Joseph Aoun as the nation’s future president on Thursday after blocking the election of any other candidate by skipping a dozen previous sessions and depriving Parliament of a quorum.
According to the speaker of the Parliament, Aoun received the support of 99 out of 128 members of Parliament in the second round of voting.
Hezbollah said that the fact that it did not vote for Aoun in the first round was a sign that its approval was still required.
As the nation attempts to recover from Israel’s heavy bombardment and invasion of portions of southern Lebanon in retaliation for Hezbollah’s attacks, Aoun, who has led the Lebanese military since 2017, assumes leadership.
Rivals in Lebanon reject Hezbollah’s extrajudicial use of force and charge it with sabotaging or appropriating public institutions.
Hezbollah claims that its armaments are necessary to defend Lebanon, whose national military, led by Aoun, is comparatively weak, and to fight Israel.
Lebanon’s five-year-old economic crisis, which the World Bank claims is among the worst in the last 150 years, has gotten worse due to the country’s caretaker administration and lack of a president.
Years of political impasse and corruption had already eroded government institutions.
Prior to the conflict last year, Hezbollah was stronger than the national army, which gets some assistance from the United States.
Since the last leader stepped down at the end of his term in 2022, Lebanon’s major political parties have been unable to reach a consensus on a new president.
Some Arab states dismissed the Biden administration’s proposal last year as impossible and risky, but it started to push to break the political deadlock by using Hezbollah’s weakness from Israeli attacks.
In the past, the Shiite Muslim political party and militia Hezbollah and its allies had prevented the election of any candidate they did not support.
After an Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the group was established with Iranian support and went on to become the nation’s most important military force and political force.
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