Nawaf Salam (Prime Minister of Lebanon from Feb 2025; former ICJ president) — Euronews interview, 4 Feb 2026: the state's monopoly on arms and restoring state authority — "the army is our main tool to enforce our goal to have the monopoly over arms and to restore state authority over all the Lebanese territory" — plus condemning Israel's occupation of the south. The reformist / state-sovereignty pole.

We will need their help, because the army is our main tool to enforce our goal to have the monopoly over arms and to restore state authority over all the Lebanese territory.

Unfortunately, we must address the issue of Israel's occupation of parts of the south, the daily violations of its sovereignty, and the detention of a number of our citizens.

[SECOND DOCUMENT for Nawaf Salam — his prior record is essentially an appointment notice; this captures his actual DECLARED POSITIONS. Source is English (Euronews interview, 4 February 2026; Salam, a former president of the International Court of Justice and career diplomat, is fluent in English); tier-2; confirmed verbatim against the fetched page.] Declared positions of Nawaf Salam — Prime Minister of Lebanon (from February 2025), a former president of the International Court of Justice and longtime UN ambassador, who took office after the 2024 Israel–Hezbollah war as the standard-bearer of a REFORMIST, SOVEREIGNTIST agenda ("Lebanon 3.0" — from "a resilient people to a resilient state"). His government's defining commitment is restoring the STATE'S MONOPOLY ON ARMS — i.e. bringing Hezbollah's weapons under state control — and re-establishing the state's authority over all Lebanese territory: "the army is our main tool to enforce our goal to have the monopoly over arms and to restore state authority over all the Lebanese territory." He pairs this with a defence of Lebanese sovereignty against Israel, condemning "Israel's occupation of parts of the south, the daily violations of its sovereignty, and the detention of a number of our citizens," alongside an IMF-aligned reform program (banking-secrecy reform, institutional revival, rule of law). This is the LEBANESE REFORMIST / STATE-SOVEREIGNTY pole — the monopoly of legitimate force in the state (vs non-state militias), institutional and economic reform, and the rebuilding of central authority — distinct from Hezbollah's "resistance"-arms doctrine (Naim Qassem) and from the old confessional patronage politics. [Axes: state-authority / sovereignty (the state's exclusive monopoly on arms; restoring central authority over all territory; the state alone decides war and peace; UNSCR 1701), governance / reform (rule of law; institutional revival; IMF-aligned banking/financial reform; anti-corruption), Israel-Lebanon (condemning Israel's occupation of the south and sovereignty violations; releasing detainees), regime-type (a technocratic-reformist state-building project vs militia power and confessional clientelism).]