Informed sources revealed that Lebanon’s Hezbollah is planning to blow up an attempt by its opponents to elect a senior official at the International Monetary Fund as president of Lebanon this week, in a struggle that highlights its decisive influence and dim prospects for reviving the collapsed state, according to Reuters international news agency.

The standoff exposed deep divisions in Lebanon, with the heavily armed Hizbullah deploying its political strength against Jihad Azour’s attempt to fill the vacant presidency while continuing its campaign for ally Suleiman Frangieh, AFP reported.

A New Dark Turn in Lebanon

The agency continues: The latest grim shift in parliament will be seen on Wednesday, when lawmakers for the twelfth time are trying to elect a successor to Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah-allied politician whose term ended in October. The bid by groups including Hezbollah opponents to elect Azour, the former finance minister and director of the International Monetary Fund for the Middle East, is expected to fail because Hezbollah and its allies have enough seats to deprive two-thirds of the quorum.

“We will disrupt these plans,” a senior Hezbollah politician told Reuters, adding that Lebanon would then face an “open crisis,” and Hezbollah officials say the movement and its allies are exercising their constitutional right to obstruct Azour’s election.

Financial meltdown

According to the IAEA, the conflict has highlighted few opportunities for the election of a president soon; “Lebanon has been drifting more than any steps toward addressing the devastating financial meltdown that has been left to fester since 2019, because the power vacuum – with no head of state or fully empowered government – is unprecedented even for Lebanon, a country that has known little stability since independence.”

“With the presidency reserved for a Maronite Christian, the standoff also threatens to exacerbate sectarian tensions, with Lebanon’s two largest Christian parties rallying behind Azour, while the Shia Hezbollah and its Shia ally Amal opposed, and with the country’s political divisions deepening and suffering its worst crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war, analysts say a deal may now require the kind of foreign intervention that forced a settlement on its fractious parties in the past.”

Under attack

“With an arsenal that rivals the national army, Hezbollah has long been the strongest faction in Lebanon, using its power to protect its interests and those of its allies, including by helping bury the investigation into a 2020 port bombing, but its influence in parliament – where 128 seats are evenly divided between Christian and Muslim groups – was hit last year when the group and its allies lost their majority.”

“Hezbollah described Azour as a candidate of confrontation – a reference to his role as minister in a Western and Saudi-backed government led by Fouad Siniora, which fought a political struggle with Hezbollah and its allies 15 years ago, culminating in a brief bout of civil war in 2008 and Hezbollah’s takeover of parts of Beirut.”

“The candidate of the confrontation will not reach Baabda,” Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah told supporters last week, referring to the presidential palace.