Leader of the Sunni-majority Future Movement party and former prime minister Saad Hariri announced on 24 January that he will not run in upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for May 2022 and is withdrawing from Lebanese politics. In a TV speech, a red-eyed Hariri, speaking behind a portrait of his father, Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in 2005, said he had decided to suspend all of his roles in political life. “I am convinced that there is no room for any positive opportunity for Lebanon in light of Iranian influence, international disarray, national division, sectarianism, and the c…