Lebanon's parliament chose the head of the country's armed forces, Joseph Aoun, to be its next president, a post that's been vacant since October 2022.

Lebanese lawmakers elected army chief Joseph Aoun as president on Thursday, ending a more than two-year vacancy and marking a step towards lifting the war-battered country out of financial meltdown.Aoun,

Aoun was widely seen as the preferred candidate of the United States and Saudi Arabia, whose assistance Lebanon will need to ensure that Israel withdraws its forces from southern Lebanon as stipulated in the agreement and to fund the post-war rebuilding.