Do we like them?

Do we like Joseph Aoun?

Our score: 6 out of 10. A clean run on harm and conduct in what we could read, held at the middle because LGBTQ+ and women's rights barely feature in the coverage.

Aoun was born in 1964 in Sin El Fil, a Beirut suburb, to a Maronite family, and joined the army at 19 while the civil war was still raging. He worked up through the Rangers and Special Forces, trained overseas, and took over the whole army in 2017.

As army chief he is credited with keeping the force together through Lebanon's economic collapse, street protests and the 2020 Beirut port explosion. His tenure was extended in 2024, and one profile calls him “incorruptible”, though that is a description of him, not a verdict.

Parliament elected him president on 9 January 2025, on the 13th attempt, ending a vacancy that began in October 2022. Not everyone cheered: the constitution bars a serving army commander from the top job, and the ban was set aside to let him in.

On the harm check, nothing of his own turned up: no slurs, no conspiracy theories, no campaigning against any group. His fights are with armed groups. In April 2026 he said direct talks with Israel aim to end the state of war, and he accused those dragging Lebanon into war for outside interests of being the real traitors. Hezbollah's leader rejected the talks, so where you land depends on whether you read the talks as peacemaking or as a concession.

In June 2026 he told Iran it was not its job to interfere in Lebanon and accused it of using Lebanon as a bargaining chip with the United States. That is a stand for his country's sovereignty and it cost him diplomatic backlash. The gap in our file is real, though: we found nothing from him on LGBTQ+ people, women's rights or the climate, so we can't say more than that.