Lebanon elects new president – with Saudi push

Analysis by Tamara Qiblawi, CNN

(CNN) — It was a last-minute push by Saudi Arabia that decided Lebanon’s fate on Thursday.

There were less than 24 hours before parliament was set to choose the next president. But Lebanon’s checkered political landscape was in total disarray.

The sectarian political elite seemed to be stuck at the drawing board. Presidents in Lebanon are brought to power by near political consensus, but more than six contenders were still in play. Debates were heated and army chief Joseph Aoun was dismissed by many politicians as constitutionally unqualified for the presidency because of his military post.

It looked like parliament was heading for its 13th failed attempt to elect a president in more than two years.

Then, a Saudi delegation headed by the kingdom’s envoy, Prince Yazid bin Farhan, flew into Beirut for the second time in a week. It held a blitz of meetings with various political parties. By the time they left, there was only one candidate left: the US-backed Aoun.

Ninety-nine lawmakers voted for Aoun, surpassing the requisite two-thirds of Parliament. The remaining 29 ballots were largely either blank or disqualified (one of the lawmakers cast his vote for “Bernie Sanders”).

Within minutes, Aoun arrived in parliament, having swapped his army fatigues for a suit and tie. He took an oath and gave an Earth-shattering, seemingly well-rehearsed speech, vowing to usher in Lebanon’s “new era” and monopolize weapons under the aegis of the state. In other words, Hezbollah, one of the world’s best armed militant groups for the better part of the last 40 years, was set to be disarmed.

Jubilation filled the streets. A presidential vacuum had been filled. A years-long stalemate between the confessional elite had broken – for the time-being at least.

But it was a development that raised larger questions. Why had Saudi Arabia expended so much diplomatic capital to deliver a president, ending nearly eight years of disengagement from Lebanon that it dismissed as “lost” to Iranian domination via Hezbollah?

Another factor that unlocked the Aoun presidency is also significant: Hezbollah and its allies in the Amal party voted for him.

It was a highly choreographed affair. Hezbollah and Amal, known as the Shia duo, cast blank votes in the first round of voting, which failed to produce a president. During a two-hour recess, the heads of their respective parliamentary blocs held a meeting with Aoun, the details of which are unknown. After returning to parliament, they cast their ballots for Aoun, breaking the deadlock and opening the path to the presidency.

The message was clear. Hezbollah may have been severely weakened by its war with Israel in the fall, and by the recent toppling of its key ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but it could still prolong a stalemate, or end it.

Why, however, had they voted for a president with a mandate to disarm them?

Saudi Arabia re-enters the fray

It is unclear what happened during the meetings where Saudi Arabia corralled overwhelming support for Aoun. But it was a full-throated effort that happened in tandem with Western diplomatic talks. France’s special envoy to Lebanon Jean-Yves Le Drian had also met with Hezbollah lawmakers.

France is one of the few Western countries that does not have a wholesale terror designation on Hezbollah, maintaining a diplomatic channel with the militant group’s political arm. It’s one of the only remaining links between the West and the Iran-backed group.

Earlier this week, US Special Envoy to Lebanon Amos Hochstein was also doing his part to prop up Aoun’s chances with a flurry of meetings.

None of this was lost on Lebanon’s lawmakers. “We’re not here to elect a president,” independent MP Jamil el-Sayyed told local TV station Al-Jadeed from parliament on Tuesday. “We’re here to certify the appointment of a president.”

In comments before the casting of ballots, anti-establishment lawmaker Halime El Kaakour gestured to the upper gallery where foreign dignitaries – including the American, French, Egyptian and Iranian ambassadors – sat. “No one should impose their will on us, not the tutelage of the Iranians, nor the Syrians, nor the Americans. We shouldn’t replace one (external) guardianship with another,” she said.

“No one should interfere with our internal affairs, with all my respect to the ambassadors here,” she continued. “We support international cooperation… but no one should interfere with our sovereignty.”

Aoun’s predecessor is the Hezbollah-backed former President Michel Aoun (the two are not related). His tenure, which ended more than two years ago, was widely seen as an era of Iranian domination in Lebanon, which saw an unprecedented surge in Hezbollah’s political power. That shift in external backing between the two President Aouns is a seismic change for the country.

Yet Hezbollah appears to be meeting this moment with a quiet and mysterious resignation. In his remarks to reporters after Aoun’s election, Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc leader Mohammad Raad said they voted for him to promote “national understanding.”

They withheld their vote in the first round, he added ambiguously, because they “wanted to send a message… that we are protectors of sovereignty.”

Strategic ambiguity may be the best card it holds at this pivotal moment. The militant group received a rapid succession of body blows during the two-month war with Israel in the fall, including with the killing of its long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah. The ousting of Assad, who had opened his territory to the group’s supply lines with Iran, severely limited its ability to rearm.

The group has also agreed to withdraw its fighters from southern Lebanon, its powerbase for four decades and its primary battlefield with Israel, which occupied the area from 1978 to 2000, and which continues to be considered an enemy state by Lebanon.

Yet the disarmament is far from complete. Hezbollah is still believed to possess medium- and long-range missiles, and it continues to command a broad Shia support base. This means that there’s likely to be longer negotiations over their arms, undoubtedly roping in external forces.

This will also be a test of the nearly two-year -long rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran. Domestically, Lebanon’s newly minted president must oversee this process while preventing the outbreak of civil strife, something he hinted at in his acceptance speech when he promised to stop the country’s factions from trying “to break each other’s heads.”

Meanwhile, Israeli forces still operate in some parts of south Lebanon. The government in Israel has threatened to keep the military there beyond the deadline at the end of this month as stipulated by the US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended the war in late November.

Aoun has promised to force their withdrawal, a responsibility he said would fall to the state alone.

These are uncharted waters for the tiny and troubled eastern Mediterranean country. But for many here, there’s reason for optimism.

“Lebanon finally has a president who brings to the Lebanese people and international community both humane leadership and statehood legitimacy,” said Lynn Zovighian, a columnist, philanthropist and founder at social investment platform Zovighian Partnership.

“It is time for leadership, constitutional order, a strengthened state, and humanization so that we can finally achieve socio-economic prosperity, justice, and accountability,” Zovighian told CNN.

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