A Mideast bellwether, Lebanon on Thursday defied Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic by electing president its army chief, Joseph Aoun. 

For more than two years Beirut’s deadlocked politicians had failed to pick a replacement for Michel Aoun, whose term as president ended in October 2022. Now, a favorite of America, France, and Saudi Arabia, Joseph Aoun — no family relation — is the new president. He even gets a cautious endorsement from Israel. 

Beirut’s political Gordian knot was finally cut after Hezbollah, for years the dominant power in Lebanon, was weakened by Israel. The Iranian-backed terror group had been bombarding its southern neighbor since October 8, 2023. The Islamic Republic has also been hit hard in recent months, and President Assad is no longer in power in Syria, a country that Iran had used as a bridge to rearm and finance Hezbollah.  

These are among the new Mideast realities that are raising hopes that Lebanon could finally emerge from under the yoke of Iran, which has turned it into a proxy cudgel to strike at Israel. After Israel decapitated the Hezbollah leadership and destroyed much of its arsenal, the American-trained Mr. Aoun helped push the cease-fire that was reached in November. 

The presidential election marks “a great day for Lebanon, a step toward peace, security and stability,” President Biden’s envoy to Lebanon, Amos Hochstein, told the Saudi-based Al Arabiya network on Thursday. 

“There are a lot of people in Washington who believe that this is Aoun’s moment, that this is his time and it’s the time of the Lebanese people to finally take back their country,” the vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Jonathan Schanzer, tells the Sun.

“For years, what Lebanon had was a political establishment that didn’t have a backbone, and a military that didn’t have the political backing that it needed,” Mr. Schanzer says. Despite the optimism, he adds, “it is hard to imagine this all coming together in a way that we would call kind of a happy ending.” 

In Israel, skeptics abound as well. Yet, for now at least, Jeruslaem officials prefer to accentuate the positive.   

“I congratulate Lebanon upon the election of a new President, following a lengthy political crisis,” Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, writes on X. “I hope that this choice will contribute towards stability, a better future for Lebanon and its people, and to good neighborly relations.”

Mr. Aoun’s election is “encouraging,” the founder of the Lebanon-watching Israeli think tank Alma, Sarit Zehavi, tells the Sun, adding quickly, “even though we remain skeptical.”

As the Lebanese armed forces chief, Ms. Zehavi says, General Aoun failed to prevent Hezbollah from deploying on Israel’s border in southern Lebanon, where it has been entrenched since the 2006 cease-fire agreement that authorized the LAF to disarm all of Lebanon’s militias. Yet, she notes, Hezbollah has long blocked Mr. Aoun’s nomination.  

According to the Lebanese constitution, which allots top political posts to various factions, the president must be a Maronite Christian. For months, Mr. Aoun’s top Maronite competitor was Suleiman Frangieh, who was favored by Tehran, Hezbollah, and the Shiite parliament speaker, Nabih Berri of the Amal party.

On Wednesday Mr. Frangieh withdrew his candidacy, allowing a parliamentary majority to unite behind the candidate that America and the Saudis have backed. “Today begins a new phase in Lebanon’s history,” Mr. Aoun told parliament. He promised to reassert the rule of law, a free economy, judicial independence, and to uproot the country’s deeply engrained corruption.

Mr. Aoun also vowed to “affirm the state’s right to monopolize weapons.” Beirut is hoping to lure investments in the ravaged Lebanese economy. Perhaps as a gesture toward such investors in America, France, Saudi Arabia, and others, the LAF on Thursday made a show of confiscating several of Hezbollah’s 122-millimeter rockets in southern Lebanon. 

“This is a move in the right direction, but at the same time it is not impressive enough, in comparison to the huge amounts of arms confiscated by the Israel Defense Force,” Ms. Zehavi says.  

According to the American-backed cease-fire agreement, the IDF will leave southern Lebanon by the end of January, at which time the Lebanese army will take over and disarm Hezbollah. Yet, “I just don’t see the political alignment, and I don’t see the will on the part of the LAF to challenge Hezbollah,” Mr. Schanzer says.

The IDF is considering plans to remain in key Lebanese positions near the border even after January 31, unidentified security officials tell Israeli reporters. The LAF, meanwhile, will “prevent Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory,” the newly minted president said Thursday.

Can these conflicting interests be reconciled? Despite years of mutual suspicions, the larger region’s new realities could lead to, in the least, a long period of calm.