Lebanon Names International Court of Justice Chief as Prime Minister

Lebanon’s newly-installed President Joseph Aoun on Monday named the sitting head of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Nawaf Salam, as prime minister on Monday.

As with Aoun, Salam will step into an office that has been vacant for two years due to Lebanon’s political gridlock.

Salam, 71, hails from a respected Sunni Muslim family in Beirut – an important detail, as Lebanon reserves the presidency for a Maronite Christian and the prime minister’s post for a Sunni Muslim. He was educated at Harvard and the Sorbonne in France, joined the ICJ in 2018, and was elected its president for three years last February. 

Salam has been living in the Netherlands, where the ICJ is headquartered, but is scheduled to return to Lebanon on Tuesday to assume his new duties as prime minister. His wife, journalist Sahar Baasiri, is Lebanon’s ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Salam won majority backing from Lebanese lawmakers on Monday to secure his nomination, which had to be approved by Aoun before he could claim the office. While Salam accepted the nod with a promise that his “hands are extended to everyone,” his appointment was universally viewed as a blow to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist gang and Lebanese political party.

Hezbollah blocked several attempts to name Salam as prime minister over the past two years, denouncing him as a U.S. puppet. Hezbollah outspokenly preferred for Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati to stay in place under Aoun’s presidency.

Salam won 84 out of 128 votes to secure his nomination on Monday, overcoming resistance from Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, another Shiite Muslim party.

The Amal Movement did not endorse any candidate, while Hezbollah’s political leader Mohammad Raad railed at his fellow parliamentarians for lining up behind Salam instead of Mikati, to no avail. Mikati ended up winning just nine votes.

“We will see their acts when it comes to forcing the occupiers to leave our country, bringing back prisoners, [and] reconstruction,” Raad grumbled after a meeting with Aoun. The Hezbollah man said he felt betrayed after extending a hand of friendship by letting Aoun take office, but “this hand was cut off” with Salam’s nomination as prime minister.

Al Jazeera News was among the observers who saw Salam’s slam-dunk victory as a sign of “the weakened position of Iran-backed Hezbollah after a devastating war with Israel and the toppling of its ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria last month.”

This weakening of Hezbollah was important for Lebanon, which desperately needed to convince foreign investors and donors that Hezbollah’s influence has indeed been diminished. The Jerusalem Post saw a tectonic shift of power in Beirut that “reflects growing domestic and international support for political reform in Lebanon” as Hezbollah’s influence wanes.