A Presidency Missing in Action

Lebanon’s institutions are crumbling, yet President Joseph Aoun has avoided confronting the forces accelerating their collapse. As reforms stall, the nation edges closer to irreversible decline.

Lebanon was already in the dark well before this presidency, drained by institutions that no longer function and leaders who postpone every hard choice. When Joseph Aoun was elected on January 9th, 2025, with 99 votes out of 128, the moment felt like someone had managed to switch on a single light in a building where most floors had already gone dark. It was not necessarily optimism; rather, it was relief that after months of deadlock, something had finally shifted.

A year later, that faint light has grown dimmer. The president’s inauguration speech—packed with sweeping commitments to restore state authority, reform the judiciary, secure the borders, and reclaim the state’s monopoly over arms—now feels detached from the reality around him. What Lebanon received was not direction or confrontation, but a leadership more practiced in declarations than decisions, one that addresses everything except the issues pushing the country further into decline. It is a presidency that talks often but says nothing, and all the while, the republic remains in the dark.

Lebanon’s crisis did not begin with this presidency, but the president chose to position himself within a political system deeply resistant to reform. Parliament is dominated by entrenched alliances. Cabinet ministers operate with loyalties that pull them outside the authority of the state. Hezbollah’s parallel power structure hangs over every institution. Lebanon needed a head of state who would guide, coordinate, and challenge. Instead, the presidency seems to have settled for the status quo at the expense of the Lebanese people.

The government reflects this dynamic clearly. It contains ministers capable of real reform, but also ministers aligned with Hezbollah and its political allies, brought into the cabinet through a coalition endorsed by both the president and the prime minister. With that arrangement came shared responsibility for the obstruction these actors create. But coordination never materialized. Reform files that should have been resolved months ago sat untouched. Ministries drifted in different directions, each working in isolation, each stalling for time. The presidency did not impose priorities, confront resistance, or convert words into action. Lebanon received speeches about responsibility instead of the leadership required to exercise it.

The consequences became most visible in moments that tested the state’s authority. The Raouché Rock incident stands out as the most explicit demonstration of the vacuum. After the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, supporters attempted to project his image onto the national landmark in an illegal act as an open challenge to the state. The prime minister issued a direct order to prevent the violation. Security forces ignored him. The army ignored him. The defense minister, nominated by the president himself, signaled that ignoring the prime minister’s decision was the right course of action. And the presidency stayed silent. The projection itself was not the point. It was meant to show that the state can’t or won’t wield power over the terror group that has dragged Lebanon kicking and screaming into unnecessary and bloody conflicts. The stunt put the government’s fecklessness on display.

The parliament followed the same pattern of paralysis, but not because its members were passive. It is an institution effectively taken hostage by an 87-year-old Hezbollah ally who has spent years blocking any measure that might shift the balance of political power. Lebanese expatriates overwhelmingly vote against Hezbollah’s bloc, and their participation has the potential to reshape national politics. The president signed the draft law enabling overseas voting, and it was transmitted to this same parliament, where reforms go to suffocate rather than pass. Many Lebanese already expect more delays. What remains uncertain is whether the presidency will confront this obstruction or allow another essential reform to be stalled into irrelevance. Recent history offers little encouragement.

The darker reality is that, throughout these episodes, the presidency has chosen silence on the issues that matter most. Hezbollah insists weekly that its weapons are not negotiable. Israel accuses it of rebuilding military positions. Hezbollah confirms it. And thus, Lebanon stands on the edge of a confrontation it cannot survive. Yet, the country’s political leadership offers no unified stance, no strategy, and no effort to reclaim control over the national narrative.

The Lebanese Armed Forces work quietly in the south to dismantle Hezbollah’s military positions, but these efforts will go to waste if a war erupts. In the critical areas where the presidency’s voice is needed most, it is absent.

Joseph Aoun entered office with broad Arab and Western support. In fact, he received more support than any Lebanese president has enjoyed in years. Many believed this would translate into more decisive leadership, enough to push back against the paralysis that defines the Lebanese system. But after a year, the presidency reflects the system it was expected to challenge: slow reactions, reluctance to confront, and an instinct toward avoidance rather than decision-making.

The president is not responsible for Lebanon’s collapse, but he is responsible for how he leads within it. And choosing to avoid the issues that define the state’s survival is, itself, a form of failed leadership that keeps Lebanon exactly where it is—in the darkness.

Lebanon cannot endure another year of a leadership model built on hesitation. The regional environment is dangerous, domestic institutions are weakening, and public confidence is nearly gone. The Raouché Rock incident, the overseas voting law, the stalled economic reforms, and the escalating contradictions in the south are not isolated failures. These are symptoms of a presidency that raises expectations but fails to act on them. The state does not need more speeches about responsibility. It requires responsibility to be exercised.

If the presidency does not step into its role and confront the forces eroding the republic, Lebanon risks crossing a threshold where no institution can bring it back. And at that point, the darkness will not be a metaphor. It will be the reality of a state in free fall, with no guarantee that what it loses in the process will ever be rebuilt.

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