Lebanese army soldiers sit on their parked tanks along a road in the southern Lebanese coastal town of Naqoura, on the border with Israel, on 7 January 2025 (AFP)
The US has told Lebanese officials that Saudi Arabia is prepared to deploy hundreds of millions of dollars to reconstruct their war-torn country if Lebanese army commander Joseph Aoun is elected president, one senior Arab official and one former senior US official told Middle East Eye.
The carrot of an influx in Saudi cash was dangled by US envoy Amos Hochstein during his trip to Lebanon on Monday, where he lobbied intensely for Aoun, including with Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri.
Aoun already has the support of Lebanon's Sunni Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
"The Americans are dead set. They do not want any other candidate but Aoun," the senior Arab official told MEE. "Hochstein has tied Aoun's election to Saudi Arabia bankrolling Lebanon's reconstruction."
The Lebanese parliament is slated to hold elections for a president on 9 January, but have been delayed in the past.
The vote comes at a critical time, with negotiations for the renewal of a 60-day ceasefire that ended brutal fighting between Hezbollah and Israel approaching in just three weeks, on 26 January.
It has long been an open secret in Beirut's political circles that the US wants Aoun to fill the presidential post that has been vacant since 2022. By tradition, the office of president is reserved for a Maronite Christian. Jihad Azour, a senior banker at the International Monetary Fund, is considered a second pro-US candidate.
The US is pushing for Aoun as president because it believes his military credentials will be important to implement the ceasefire, the current and former officials said.
With Hezbollah weakened, Lebanese and American officials believe Israel and Lebanon could officially demarcate their borders after an Israeli withdrawal, the Arab official said.
What makes the US's push for Aoun more powerful now is that the US has brought Saudi Arabia on board - in an attempt to revive the kingdom's role as the main Sunni powerbroker in the Mediterranean state.
Saudi Arabia played an outsized role in Lebanon's reconstruction after its civil war ended, with a deal brokered about three decades ago in the Saudi city of Taif.
After the 2006 Lebanon war, Saudi Arabia pledged a $500m grant to reconstruct Lebanon and wealthy Saudis scooped up luxury villas and apartments in Beirut.
But in 2008, the limits of the kingdom's influence were revealed when Hezbollah bested Sunni fighters in street clashes after the Lebanese government tried to rein in the Iran-backed group's power.
Later, in 2017, Saudi detained then-Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, partly over frustration that he had failed to check Hezbollah's rise.
Until recently, it appeared that Saudi Arabia had all but given up on Lebanon.
When Hariri exited the political arena to work for the UAE's royal family, the kingdom lost its main Sunni ally.
In recent years, Riyadh stood on the sidelines as Lebanon's economy imploded, its currency lost more than 90 percent of its value, and a huge explosion destroyed Beirut's port.
In 2021, Saudi Arabia banned all imports from Lebanon.
The fact that Saudi Arabia sees an opening to reengage underscores how the wars unleashed by Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel have upended the regional status quo, with Iran severely weakened and Israel emboldened.
On Sunday, Hochstein met Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan in Riyadh.
"The Saudis and Americans agreed Hezbollah's miscalculations have created a once in a thirty-year opportunity to restore Lebanon's sovereignty," the former US official briefed on the talks told MEE.
Hochstein travelled to Riyadh before Beirut because he wanted to ensure that Saudi Arabia was committed to providing the reconstruction funds he would pledge, the Arab official told MEE. With the bin Farhan meeting reassuring the Americans of the Saudis' seriousness, Hochstein felt confident about lobbying for Aoun in Beirut.
For Hochstein, seeing through Aoun's election as president is also personal. The US envoy mediated a 2022 maritime demarcation deal between Lebanon and Israel. He took the lead in brokering a November ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel.
The US initially tried to limit Israel's offensive on Lebanon but backed its ally's invasion after Israel launched an unprecedented attack on Hezbollah's communication network and assassinated its chief, Hassan Nasrallah, in September.
The ceasefire the US mediated reaffirmed past UN Security Council resolutions calling for Hezbollah's total withdrawal from southern Lebanon and eventual disarmament. Unlike the 2006 ceasefire, the November agreement includes a side clause that gave US backing for Israel to unilaterally enforce violations by Hezbollah.
The ceasefire also deepened the US's role in Lebanon by creating a committee composed of Israeli, Lebanese, French, and US delegates alongside a UN official to handle violations. The committee is headed by US Major General Jasper Jeffers.
Israeli soldiers are supposed to withdraw from the swath of southern Lebanon they now occupy, with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and UN peacekeepers taking their place.
On Monday, the LAF began taking up positions in the southern Lebanese border town of Naqoura, following the third Israeli withdrawal from an area since the ceasefire was agreed.
The UN and Lebanon's government have called on Israel to speed up their exit. Israel did not move into Naqoura until after the ceasefire went into effect.
"These withdrawals will continue until all Israeli forces are out of Lebanon completely and as the Lebanese army continues to deploy into the south and all the way to the Blue Line," Hochstein said on Monday.
"I have no reason not to expect that all parties - all parties - will remain committed to implementing the agreement that they agreed to," he added later.
One of the challenges to implementing the agreement is the Lebanese military's lack of funding.
The LAF's total spending last year was $241m, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. US aid accounts for roughly half of its spending. The US pledged additional funds to the LAF as part of the ceasefire, including to recruit more soldiers and buy equipment like Humvees needed to patrol Lebanon's borders.
On Monday, Reuters reported that the US notified Congress it was diverting $95m in funds for the Egyptian military to the LAF.