US pushes for new president of Lebanon to weaken Hezbollah’s grip

Antony Blinken
Antony Blinken says the people of Lebanon need the country’s leaders to assert themselves and make a change - Dita Alangkara/AP

The White House is pushing to use Israel’s war on Hezbollah as an opportunity for Lebanon to pick a new president and break the group’s grip on the weak and divided state.

United States officials reportedly believe Israel’s offensive and the killing of Hezbollah’s leadership could be a chance to end a debilitating political impasse which has helped the group cement its dominance.

Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, has called the leaders of Qatar, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to ask them to support the election of a new president who could end a two-year power void in Lebanon, The Wall Street Journal reported.

At the same time, the White House is also pushing to end Israel’s widening offensive by reviving a failed 18-year-old United Nations plan to demilitarise its border with Lebanon.

The two initiatives have in recent days emerged as significant planks of Joe Biden’s attempts to halt Israel’s offensive and restore calm along the border before the Middle East slips into a wider war.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of Hezbollah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike - SHUTTERSTOCK/WAEL HAMZEH/EPA-EFE

Lebanon’s political parties, including Iran-backed Hezbollah, have been unable to choose a new president since Michel Aoun finished his term in 2022.

Members of parliament must vote for the president, and under Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system, it has always been a Christian.

However, no single political bloc currently has enough votes to guarantee their choice.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah until his assassination in an Israeli air strike last month, had  blocked efforts to elect anyone except his political ally Suleiman Frangieh.

Hezbollah and its allies narrowly lost their parliamentary majority in the 2022 elections, but still won 62 of the 128 seats.

The deadlock has left the country adrift and politically paralysed, while cementing the dominance of sectarian elites, including Hezbollah.

Mr Blinken on Friday telephoned the Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati and parliament speaker Nabih Berri, to discuss the impasse.

He told reporters: “It’s clear that the people of Lebanon have an interest — a strong interest — in the state asserting itself and taking responsibility for the country and its future.”

Michel Aoun outside the Baabda Palace in the capital, Beirut
Lebanon’s political parties have been unable to select a new leader since Michel Aoun finished his term in 2022 - Anadolu/Hussam Shbaro

Matt Miller, the state department spokesman, said earlier this week: “What we want to see come out of this situation, ultimately, is Lebanon able to break the grip that Hezbollah has had on the country – more than a grip, break the stranglehold that Hezbollah has had on the country and remove Hezbollah veto over a president.”

Yet observers warned that American attempts to meddle in Lebanese politics were full of risk and could inflame the sectarian divisions which have in the past plunged the country into civil war.

Any candidate seen to be benefiting from Israel’s offensive, or being put in place by America would also pay a heavy political price.

Joseph Bahout, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at Beirut’s American University, said the plan could potentially lead “towards interior trouble, unrest, and maybe war”.

He predicted that completely removing Hezbollah was a “fiction” because the party was so entrenched.

He said: “Even if done, that would produce new realities replacing Hezbollah, probably more frightening and radical.”

Meanwhile, America has been trying to revive a UN resolution which helped end Israel’s last war with Lebanon in 2006, even though it has widely been seen as a failure ever since.

Security Council resolution 1701 was supposed to demilitarise a buffer zone along the border and protect Israel from Hezbollah attacks.

The resolution called for “an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of” Lebanon’s government and a United Nations peacekeeping force.

“The outcome that we want to see is the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701,” Mr Miller, said last week.

However, a weak UN peacekeeping force called Unifil that was not empowered to use force failed to stop Hezbollah from building up a huge military presence on Israel’s northern border.

“They’ve never fulfilled that task,” David Mencer, an Israeli government spokesman, told the New York Times.

“Unifil has been an abject failure, as evidenced by the more than 10,000 rockets which this country has received from Hezbollah.”