US withholds $105m in security aid to Beirut

The Trump administration is withholding $105 million in security aid for Lebanon, two days after Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s resignation. The State Department told Congress that the White House budget office and National Security Council had decided to withhold the foreign military assistance, officials told Reuters.

The US has given an average of $70m annual aid to the Lebanese army and security forces, and is seeking to put pressure on the Lebanese leadership for a swift formation of a government that could enact tangible reforms. “We will support Lebanon when it takes the decision to reform.

No one is going to bail out Lebanon,” a US senior official told The National on Thursday. The popular protests that have rocked Lebanon since October 16, forcing the resignation of Mr Hariri on Tuesday, are a cause of hope and anxiety in the Trump administration.

A senior US official called the upheaval “remarkable” but voiced “a concern over stability” as protests, strikes and partial bank closures drag into a second week.