Has Lebanon shed Hezbollah’s influence with new leadership in place?

The election of Joseph Aoun as Lebanon’s president and his prime ministerial pick Nawaf Salam, has signalled the waning clout of Hezbollah, the Lebanse Shia group that long enjoyed an oversized influence on the country’s society and politics.

The developments in Lebanon come at a time when Hezbollah is facing an existential crisis following Israel’s assassination of its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, and the demoralising pager attack on thousands of its cadres.

Aoun’s election fills a spot vacant since 2022 due to the lack of parliamentary consensus and shows the willingness of the country’s leading political figures to bend the rules for the greater good.

While an army chief can not be the president under the Lebanese constitution, the Mediterranean state’s political establishment has not questioned Aoun's legitimacy to hold the country’s top post, according to Tuba Yildiz, an expert on Lebanese history and religious factions.

The newly-elected president, who led the country’s fractured official armed forces since 2017, has good relations with the US and France, Lebanon’s former colonial power, as well as Saudi Arabia.

Aoun is a Maronite Christian like his predecessors in the factions-based political system of Lebanon. But, says Yildiz, he has some stark differences from his predecessors.

Aoun’s distance from Hezbollah and its allies sets him apart from other presidents like Michel Aoun, who had deep ties with both the group and the regime of deposed Syrian leader Bashar al Assad.

Michel Aoun and Joseph Aoun are not related despite sharing the same surname.

Yildiz says that the toppling of the Assad regime, a staunch ally of Iran and Hezbollah, also favoured the army chief’s election to the top post.

“It is a well-known fact that most of the presidents elected in Lebanon since the civil war were elected with the approval of Syria under the Baath party,” Yildiz tells TRT World.

Suleiman Frangieh, another leading Maronite political figure backed by Hezbollah, withdrew his candidacy at the last minute and announced his support for Aoun.

This shows Hezbollah’s decreasing influence on the presidential election, she says.

While Hezbollah-backed lawmakers did not participate in the first round of the presidential election to demonstrate to Aoun that he needed the group’s support, they voted for him in the second round.

This was prompted by Hezbollah’s realisation that “efforts to prevent Joseph Aoun's election would be a futile attempt” because of the changed political realities, according to Yildiz.

Ghoncheh Tazmini, an Iranian-Canadian political analyst, also says that Aoun’s election is a sign of the Iran-led Axis of Resistance’s “waning influence”.

Hezbollah, the former Assad regime of Syria, Iraqi Shia groups, Yemen’s Houthis and Hamas are part of the resistance front.

“Dominating Lebanese politics for over two decades, the group has faced… significant losses in its 14-month conflict with Israel – the deaths of senior figures, and the weakening of its regional ally Assad, who facilitated Iranian weapons transfers,” Tazmini tells TRT World.

Sectarian politics

While Aoun has no real political experience, Yildiz feels this could be an advantage for him and the country because he has no affiliation with any factions in parliament, which has long been divided on sectarian lines between Christians, Sunni and Shia Muslims.

But she also cautions that it will be difficult for him to realise serious breakthroughs on economic and military issues, like dismantling Hezbollah’s military presence, in a political system which has been long “blocked”, a reference to the country’s “institutionalised sectarian structure”, a model of confessionalism based on religious affiliations and sectarian lines.

Lebanon, which has a little more than five million people, has large Christian, Sunni and Shia Muslim populations alongside Druze, an ethnoreligious group. The country’s political system is based on representing these religious groups, which have their own parties rather than mainstream national parties.

In Lebanon, the president has always been a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, while the speaker of parliament a Shia. The parliament is also a scene of divided sectarian forces, which have aligned with different foreign powers.

Generally speaking, Saudis and other Gulf states traditionally have much influence over Lebanon’s Sunni factions, while Iran backs the country’s Shia groups. Christian groups have longstanding ties with Western powers.

But the country’s complicated political landscape has also witnessed odd alliances. For example, former president Michel Aoun formed a working relationship with Iran, a Shia Muslim country, while the current president has good ties with the Saudis, a Sunni Muslim dynasty.

Tazmini feels that given the state of affairs Aoun has inherited, he “faces immense challenges”.

Though he is aligned with the US and Saudi regional interests, his platform is “underpinned by the daunting task of forming a new government in Lebanon's complex sectarian power-sharing system,” she says.

It will also be a difficult task to reverse “a six-year economic decline amid deep political divisions and low public trust”, she says.

Yildiz, however, warns against writing off Hezbollah completely.

It is “a political party representing the Shiite community in the country…Therefore, if the new leadership aims to pursue an inclusive policy…, they have to have good relations with Hezbollah to some extent,” she adds.

Tazmini has a similar take to Yildiz.

“Hezbollah remains deeply embedded in Lebanon’s social and political fabric, making it impossible to isolate or neutralise (it),” she says.

Popular new prime minister

Despite Lebanon’s complicated political structure, PM-designate Salam, the former chief judge of the International Court of Justice, which has drawn much attention with its recent decisions on Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza, has international and local credentials for competence and fairness.

Salam, who comes from a prominent Sunni family, was a candidate in 2022 for the prime minister’s job, but Mikati was elected due to the influence of Hezbollah at that time, says Yildiz.

His diplomatic credentials might help Lebanon, a country where foreign meddling has had much influence for many decades, overcome its political crises.

Salam has spoken about the state’s monopoly to carry arms, vowed to “extend the authority of the Lebanese state across all its territory” and “work seriously to completely implement UN Resolution 1701,” which calls for Hezbollah’s withdrawal from south Lebanon.