After going two years without a president, Lebanon’s parliament selected Michel Aoun for the post on Monday. Aoun, a Christian, was once one of his country’s most anti-Syrian politicians; but since 2006, he and his Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) have unabashedly sided with Syria, Hizballah, and Iran. While Tehran has, quite reasonably, proclaimed the election “a victory for Hizballah,” David Schenker notes that it is not a complete one:

Given current realities, Hizballah will continue to possess a massive arsenal of weapons outside the government’s authority for the foreseeable future. It will also continue deploying into Syria at will to fight on the Assad regime’s behalf, with or without Beirut’s consent. . . .

For these and other reasons, many in the United States and the region are declaring Aoun’s election a victory for Hizballah and Iran. Yet . . . it is difficult to imagine an Aoun presidency being worse for [the anti-Syrian] March 14 [alliance]—or for U.S. interests—than the ongoing vacuum. Aoun may even surpass the extremely low expectations for his presidency. . . . Most importantly, the agreement to elect him apparently received Saudi Arabia’s blessing [and] perhaps will spur Riyadh to reengage in Lebanese politics as a useful counterbalance to Iran. . . .

Finally, . . . with or without Aoun, Hizballah and Iran remain the country’s dominant political actors. Absent an effective U.S. policy that deals Tehran and its proxies a setback in Syria, Lebanon will remain on the precipice of crisis.

There is little doubt that if Hizballah had participated more intensively in Saturday’s attack, Israeli air defenses would have been pushed past their limits, and far more damage would have been done. Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, trying to look at things from Tehran’s perspective, see this as an important sign of caution—but caution that shouldn’t be exaggerated:

Iran is well aware of the extent and capability of Israel’s air defenses. The scale of the strike was almost certainly designed to enable at least some of the attacking munitions to penetrate those defenses and cause some degree of damage. Their inability to do so was doubtless a disappointment to Tehran, but the Iranians can probably still console themselves that the attack was frightening for the Israeli people and alarming to their government. Iran probably hopes that it was unpleasant enough to give Israeli leaders pause the next time they consider an operation like the embassy strike.

Hizballah is Iran’s ace in the hole. With more than 150,000 rockets and missiles, the Lebanese militant group could overwhelm Israeli air defenses. . . . All of this reinforces the strategic assessment that Iran is not looking to escalate with Israel and is, in fact, working very hard to avoid escalation. . . . Still, Iran has crossed a Rubicon, although it may not recognize it. Iran had never struck Israel directly from its own territory before Saturday.

Byman and Pollack see here an important lesson for America:

What Saturday’s fireworks hopefully also illustrated is the danger of U.S. disengagement from the Middle East. . . . The latest round of violence shows why it is important for the United States to take the lead on pushing back on Iran and its proxies and bolstering U.S. allies.