General Joseph Aoun was widely seen as the preferred candidate of the United States, which funds, trains, and arms the Lebanese military and helped broker a cease-fire between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah in November.

Lebanon’s parliament has voted to elect the country’s army commander Joseph Aoun as head of state, filling a more than two-year-long presidential vacuum. The session was the legislature’s 13th attempt to elect a successor to former president Michel Aoun — no relation to the army commander — whose term ended in October 2022.

The Lebanese parliament elected armed forces commander Joseph Aoun as the country's new president on Thursday in a second round of voting. Aoun received 99 votes in a second vote from the 128-member parliament.