Hezbollah's role in the Lebanese government stands to widen when it names the new health minister though it will not be putting a party member in the job, sources say, as the United States extends sanctions against the movement.
By picking the health minister, Hezbollah will be moving beyond the marginal role it played in past governments: this ministry has the fourth biggest budget in the Lebanese state, outgoing Health Minister Ghassan Hasbani says.
Hasbani told Reuters that recent foreign aid to his ministry included $120 million from the World Bank to be spent over five years from 2019. The ministry also receives a lot of medicine from the World Health Organisation and European Union, he said.
Two sources familiar with Hezbollah's choice said the new health minister would be Jamil Jabak, a Shiite doctor who they said is not a member of the heavily armed, Iranian-backed group. Hezbollah will also run two less significant ministries.
The composition of Lebanon's new government is expected to broadly reflect the outcome of the parliamentary elections that took place in May, with the share of cabinet seats held by PM-designate Saad Hariri's Future Movement, which opposes Hezbollah's arms, set to fall.
And while the staunchly anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces (LF) nearly doubled its number of MPs in the election, it was unable to secure all the cabinet seats it wanted, ceding ground to Christian rival President Michel Aoun and his Free Patriotic Movement, who are political allies of Hezbollah.
In Lebanon, government posts are parcelled out based on sect: the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament a Shiite Muslim. Posts in the cabinet of 30 ministers must be split equally between Christian and Muslims.
A US State Department official said on Tuesday Washington hoped Lebanon's next government would be willing to work with it and expressed concern over Hezbollah's rising political clout.
US President Donald Trump's administration has made Hezbollah a target of its policy to isolate Iran. Washington has hit Hezbollah leaders with new sanctions and tightened legislation seeking to sever their funding channels worldwide.
