Energy and Our World

This article originally ran on Forbes.com on January 22, 2025. All rights reserved.

Daniel B. Markind is a Forbes.com energy column contributor. The views expressed in this article are not to be associated with the views of Flaster Greenberg PC.

The election of General Joseph Aoun as president of Lebanon ended a two-year stalemate in which the position was vacant, and Lebanon basically had no government at all. The cause of the stalemate was obvious. Hezbollah, the Shiite terrorist group that became a powerful political force in Lebanon, had refused to allow an election unless its preferred candidate, Suleiman Frangieh, was chosen president.

Under Lebanon's Balkanized structure of government, the president has to be a Christian. Frangieh, the head of the Maranda movement, was the scion of an old Lebanese political family (his grandfather had been president during the 1970s), a friend of Syria's Bashar Al-Assad, and was considered to be malleable by the then-powerful Hezbollah. (Source).

All that changed during two months in the fall of 2024, when Israel wiped out much of Hezbollah's leadership, invaded its military in the south, and battered its strongholds in Beirut and the Bekaa Valley. Followed closely by the fall of Assad in Syria and the losses suffered by Iran, Hezbollah found itself essentially leaderless, weakened, isolated, and without a visible means of resupply.

The other political parties took advantage of that and elected Aoun, a general and former commander of the Lebanese armed forces. Not beholden to Hezbollah, Aoun now has the difficult task of carrying out the cease fire agreement with Israel while also getting Lebanon back on its feet. While Aoun has moved cautiously in deploying the Lebanese Army, as required by UN Resolution 1701 and reaffirmed by the cease fire agreement, he has stated clearly that Lebanon is entering a new era in which the State will have a monopoly on weapons. (Source).

Despite the weakening of Hezbollah, Lebanon remains fractious, and the new president knows he faces an enormous challenge. Fortunately for Aoun and Lebanon, it maintains an enormous opportunity, that being the natural gas deposits offshore in the Mediterranean. Those deposits, which straddle the maritime frontier with Israel, could provide both an instant infusion of cash to Lebanon and also much needed reliability of power. (Source).

In 2022, after years in which Hezbollah refused to allow Lebanon to reach an agreement with Israel over those gas assets, the nations entered into a development pact in which each country was given certain rights to the disputed fields. Meanwhile Hezbollah's constant attacks against Israel following the October 7 Hamas invasion caused Israel to consider terminating the agreements, but for all practical purposes that belligerence mainly brought resource development to a standstill. (Source).

Now Hezbollah sits weakened and humiliated, with much of the country wondering why its future should be dictated not by what is best for Lebanon, but by what is best for Hezbollah.

For Aoun, any ability to move quickly here could pay enormous dividends. Just two months before the October 7 Hamas massacre, an offshore drilling rig arrived at the Qana natural gas field, the first practical result of the natural gas agreements. (Source).

Despite the economic opportunity for the entire country, by August 2024 Hezbollah's military adventurism had resulted in the complete collapse of Lebanon's power infrastructure, resulting in a nationwide power outage. (Source).

Energy security remains one of the chief reasons nations fail to develop economically. (Source). For Aoun and Lebanon, it also is a key to political and military security. Energy security requires peace and cooperation with Israel. If Aoun can produce that, he will have brought Lebanon to a position that is good for its people and the region, and good for the security of the world as a whole. Let’s all hope that he is successful.