Finance Minister Yassine Jaber (left) with Saad Hariri (right) in Bait al-Wasat on Feb. 15, 2025. (Credit: @saadhariri/X)
After his comeback, Saad Hariri held multiple meetings with Lebanese figures Saturday at Bait al-Wasat in Beirut, Hariri announced on X. He met with Finance Minister Yassin Jaber and discussed "the general situation and the latest developments."
Hariri also held discussions with Beirut Governor Judge Marwan Abboud and Beirut Municipality Mayor Abdullah Darwish, focusing on "the situation in the capital."
Additionally, he received Patriarch Raphael Bedros XXI Minassian and discussed "the general situation in the country."
Hariri also met with a delegation of Beirut mukhtars, led by the head of the Beirut Mukhtars Association, Misbah Eido, in the presence of the head of the Beirut Association for Social Development, Ahmed Hashemieh.
Hariri, son of assassinated Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, announced the return of his party, the Future Movement, to politics during a speech Friday marking 20 years since his father’s death.
"This movement will remain and will be your voice in all upcoming elections and stations,” he told a crowd of around 70,000 gathered at Martyrs’ Square for the commemoration. Hariri served as Lebanon’s prime minister twice, from 2009 to 2011 and again from 2016 to 2020. He withdrew from politics and left the country in 2022 after failing to form a government.
Rafik Hariri was assassinated on Feb. 14, 2005, when a massive truck bomb detonated as his convoy passed by, leaving a 30-foot-wide crater in the ground outside the historic Saint George Hotel on Beirut’s waterfront. Twenty-one others were killed alongside Hariri, and more than 200 were injured.
Several figures involved in the investigations into Rafik Hariri’s killing were also assassinated, and no one was ever arrested for the attack, although a special international tribunal found a senior Hezbollah member guilty. None of the suspects were questioned or stood trial in person. The U.N.-backed court’s panel of judges also stated that it had no evidence proving Hezbollah’s leadership or the Syrian government were directly involved in the assassination.