ICJ president Nawaf Salam named Lebanon's new prime minister

Nawaf Salam, President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has been appointed as the new Prime Minister of Lebanon. In consultations with newly elected President Joseph Aoun, two-thirds of the 128 members of parliament nominated the 71-year-old judge for the position. Under the country’s sectarian power-sharing system, the post is reserved for a Sunni Muslim. Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati received nine votes.

The presidential palace stated that Salam will return to Lebanon on Tuesday. His appointment is another blow to Hezbollah, which had tried to reappoint Mikati but ultimately did not nominate any candidate. The Iranian-backed Shia Muslim militia and political party has been weakened by its recent war with Israel.

Senior Hezbollah MP Mohammad Raad accused his opponents of working towards division and exclusion. He complained that his organization had “extended its hand” by supporting Aoun’s election, only to find that “the hand was cut off,” and warned that “any government that contradicts coexistence has no legitimacy.” However, Hezbollah's Christian and Sunni allies supported Salam.

Gibran Bassil, leader of Lebanon’s largest Maronite Christian bloc, called him “a symbol of reform.” Sunni MP Faisal Karami said he nominated the ICJ president out of a demand for “change and renewal,” as well as a commitment to Lebanon’s international support. Salam comes from a prominent Sunni family in Beirut; his uncle, Salam, helped Lebanon gain independence from France in 1943 and served as prime minister multiple times. His cousin, Tammam, also served as prime minister from 2014 to 2016.

Salam holds a PhD in political science from the Paris Institute of Political Studies, a PhD in history from the Sorbonne, and a Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School. Prior to serving as Lebanon’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2007 to 2017, Salam worked as a lawyer and taught at several universities. He became a member of the ICJ in 2018 and was elected president last February for a three-year term. At the time of his taking office, the ICJ was hearing a case brought by South Africa accusing Israeli forces of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, an accusation Israel dismissed as baseless.

Now designated as Prime Minister by President Aoun, Salam must form a cabinet that can win a vote of confidence in Lebanon’s deeply divided parliament. Former Lebanese army commander Aoun ran for the presidency, a post reserved for a Maronite Christian, with his candidacy supported by many major parties in parliament, as well as the United States, France, and Saudi Arabia. Hezbollah and its ally Amal supported him in the second round of Thursday’s presidential election after their preferred candidate withdrew.

Following the election, Aoun declared that a “new phase in Lebanon’s history” had begun, and vowed to work to ensure the Lebanese state has “the exclusive right to bear arms”—a reference to Hezbollah, which had built a force considered stronger than the army to resist Israel before the 13-month conflict with Israel, in violation of a UN Security Council resolution. The army was not involved in the war and played a key role in the ceasefire agreement reached by the Lebanese and Israeli governments in late November. It needs to deploy soldiers in southern Lebanon as Israeli troops withdraw and ensure Hezbollah ends its armed presence there by January 26.

Aoun also pledged to help the new government push through political and economic reforms widely seen as necessary for the country, which is suffering from multiple crises. In addition to Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel, these crises include a six-year economic depression, one of the worst recorded in modern history, and the 2020 Beirut port explosion that killed more than 200 people.