Saad al-Hariri

Saad al-Hariri (born April 18, 1970, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) is a Saudi-born Lebanese businessman and prime minister of Lebanon (2009–11; 2016–20). The son of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic al-Hariri, Saad entered politics following his father’s assassination in February 2005.

Education and early career

Hariri received his elementary education at the school of Frères Maristes in Rmaïla (Al-Rumaylah; near Sidon), Lebanon, and completed his secondary education in France and Saudi Arabia. After receiving a degree in international business from Georgetown University (1992), Washington, D.C., Hariri worked at Saudi Oger, a large Saudi Arabia-based firm owned by his father, where he oversaw construction work and served as a maintenance contractor for the Saudi royal palaces. After he gained the position of general manager at age 26, Hariri also worked to extend the business into the telecommunications sector and helped to orchestrate Saudi Oger’s acquisition of Türk Telekom. (The deal, completed in 2006, was at that time the largest private business deal in Turkey’s history.)

After his father’s assassination on February 14, 2005, in a Beirut car bombing, Hariri was selected by his family to follow in his father’s political footsteps. Although initially hesitant to enter the realm of politics, Hariri soon took charge of his father’s political party, the Future Movement (Tayyār al-Mustaqbal). A powerful Sunni bloc, the Future Movement was the largest contingent within the March 14 coalition (named to commemorate the day in 2005 when massive anti-Syrian protests took place in Beirut), which opposed Syrian influence in Lebanon’s affairs. Although the coalition won a clear majority in the 2005 parliamentary elections, Hariri did not consider himself politically mature enough to serve as prime minister; instead, he supported Fouad Siniora, a former finance minister and close ally of his father, for the position.

During the next four years, Hariri worked to forge and refine his own political identity. Significant political successes included those in January 2007—when his lobbying helped secure a sizable financial aid package from the United States to aid Lebanese reconstruction—and in late May of that year, when the United Nations Security Council approved the establishment of a special court in which to try suspects linked to his father’s assassination. In May 2008—with Lebanon in the midst of a dangerous political stalemate that had followed the departure of president Émile Lahoud from office in November 2007—Hariri helped negotiate a unity government and navigate the country away from violent confrontation.

Premiership

In elections in June 2009, Hariri again led the March 14 coalition to victory. Shortly thereafter he was named prime minister and was asked by Pres. Michel Suleiman to take on the complex task of forming a new government. In September, after weeks of unsuccessful negotiations with the opposition, Hariri announced that he would abandon his attempts to form a unity government and would step down as prime minister-designate. The following week, however, President Suleiman once more designated Hariri prime minister and asked that he try again to form the government. Hariri continued his efforts, and in early November he announced that a unity government had been successfully formed.

Factional tension remained high within the unity government as members of Hariri’s March 14 coalition engaged in a power struggle with Hezbollah, a Shiʿi political party and militant group, and its allies over Lebanon’s cooperation with the international tribunal investigating the assassination of Rafic al-Hariri. In January 2011 a group of 11 ministers from Hezbollah and allied parties forced the collapse of the unity government by withdrawing from their posts. Following the collapse of his government, Hariri remained in office for several months as a caretaker prime minister while Najib Mikati, who was nominated to serve as prime minister by a majority in parliament, began forming a new cabinet. Mikati, a businessman and former prime minister, was supported by Hezbollah, and Hariri ruled out participation in Mikati’s administration, vowing not to be a part of any government dominated by Hezbollah. When Mikati’s government was announced in June 2011, more than half of the posts were filled by Hezbollah allies, and no March 14 ministers were included.

Hariri was again named prime minister in 2016, as part of a deal that ended 29 months of political stalemate. The deal included Hariri’s support for the election of Michel Aoun as president; Aoun was a member of the March 8 bloc, which consisted of Hezbollah and its allies. Hariri was named prime minister shortly after Aoun’s election.

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The deal and the political stability of Lebanon were threatened in November 2017 when Hariri unexpectedly resigned as prime minister while on a visit to Saudi Arabia. Lebanese officials found the circumstances behind the resignation to be suspicious and believed him to have resigned under duress. President Aoun refused to accept his resignation and demanded that Hariri return to Lebanon to discuss the matter. Hariri was allowed to return to Lebanon several weeks later, where he immediately suspended his resignation. He officially rescinded his resignation two weeks later but gave few details about what had happened in Saudi Arabia.

In May 2018 Lebanon held its first legislative election since 2009. Hariri’s party lost 12 seats, partly due to supporters’ disappointment in the concessions he had made in order to break the political stalemate of 2014–16, and his March 14 bloc lost its majority in parliament. The March 8 bloc received a majority of seats, and Hezbollah was in a position to shape the government and its affairs in unprecedented ways. Hariri remained at the helm as prime minister, but, after nine months of negotiations ending in January 2019, the majority of his cabinet was filled by members and allies of the March 8 bloc.

The new cabinet struggled to juggle national unity and stability with the severe financial crisis and national security. With the country burdened by one of the worst debt balances in the world, investors faced a poor outlook, and consumers were forced to tighten their belts as the government undertook austerity measures. Typical sources of foreign investment and assistance were reluctant to help a government wherein Hezbollah enjoyed so much clout: the Arab Gulf countries were slow to offer unconditional support, and the United States imposed partial sanctions. Heightened tensions with Israel, including exchanges of cross-border strikes, also added pressure on the new government. Corruption, moreover, underlined its inability to address these issues quickly; this was especially true for Hariri when news broke in September 2019 that he had paid $16 million to a South African model (although in 2013 before the current crisis and between his terms as prime minister). In October, after the government announced a new tax on voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) as its latest austerity measure, Lebanese across the country took to the streets in the country’s largest protests since March 2005. The tax was quickly canceled, and Hariri’s cabinet rushed through an emergency package meant to quell the protesters’ frustrations, but the demonstrations continued, and the protests called broadly on the country’s top officials to resign. On October 29, 2019, amid the ongoing protests, Hariri and his government resigned, though he remained prime minister of a caretaker government in the interim until a new government was appointed in January 2020.

As Lebanon entered into a period of hyperinflation in July 2020 and an explosion in Beirut in August caused nearly 200 deaths and extensive damage, the new government resigned. Hariri was again tasked with forming a government in October, but, unable to form a government well into following year, he resigned as prime minister-designate in July 2021. He announced the suspension of his political career in January 2022, citing an insurmountable degree of division in the country. His estranged brother, Bahaa, emerged as a public figure in the lead-up to parliamentary elections in May.