With Israel’s air strikes still pounding Beirut and Donald Trump packing his diplomatic team with Middle East hawks, many Lebanese have pinned their hopes for peace on one man: the automotive tycoon Massad Boulos.
As a Trump in-law, no other Lebanese voice is as close to the president-elect, or seemingly as well placed to win his ear.
Boulos, whose son Michael is married to Trump’s youngest daughter Tiffany, spent most of the past year drumming up support for Trump among Arab Americans in the battleground state of Michigan. Palpable anger over the Biden administration’s record in the Middle East was one factor in tipping the state to Trump.
Now many in Lebanon hope Boulos will bring his powers of persuasion to helping end the conflict that has ravaged this small Mediterranean nation for the past 13 months.
“Definitely the fact that he’s Lebanese, wants [what is best for] the long-term interests of his country, this could be a positive,” one Lebanese official told the Financial Times. “But we have to wait and see.”
Trump has often put family members and in-laws in key positions on the campaign and in the White House. Boulos would be the latest acolyte to be elevated into Trump’s political orbit.
Over the past 10 days, Lebanese media have feverishly reported that Boulos would take an official position in the Trump administration as an envoy to Lebanon and help negotiate a ceasefire. Boulos has batted down the reports, telling Reuters they were “totally wrong”.
Lebanese officials say Boulos has not been in touch with the government in an official capacity or with a mandate from Trump. But in the past 10 days, in Washington, he has met with Lebanon’s economy minister Amin Salam as well as the leader of the Christian Kataeb party, Samy Gemayel, who virulently opposes Hizbollah.
According to the ministry, Boulos and Salam discussed “several Lebanese issues”, including ongoing ceasefire negotiations. Boulos was quoted as saying that “Donald Trump is committed to his pledge for a ceasefire” in the region, emphasising the need to “establish lasting peace . . . accompanied by an economic plan” and a framework to address the Palestinian question.
An Arab diplomat said Boulos also met with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September to open up a channel of communication between the Palestinian president and the Trump camp.
Boulos declined the FT’s request for an interview, saying only that he would speak “soon”, and would not comment on what role he could play in the administration.
Boulos first entered Trump’s orbit in 2019, when Michael was dating Tiffany Trump and brought him to the White House Christmas party.
Boulos hails from a Christian family from Kfar Akka in Lebanon’s northern Koura district but moved to Texas as a teenager to attend the University of Houston, where he has said he began dabbling in Republican politics.
After graduating from college, he joined his family’s automotive business in Nigeria. His family is part of a long line of influential Lebanese dynasties with businesses in the country, many of whom have lived in Nigeria for generations, enjoying influence and access to the country’s top political leaders.
Boulos rose to become the chief executive of his in-laws’ company, Scoa Motors Nigeria, which was founded in 1926 and sells and distributes German group MAN’s buses and trucks in the west African country. He also runs his namesake company based in Nigeria, Boulos Enterprises, which deals in the distribution and assembly of motorcycles, tricycles and power bikes.
Boulos enjoys a near-total monopoly in the Nigerian market and is the sole importer and distributor of Japanese Suzuki vehicles and China’s Jincheng motorcycles. With many Nigerians moving around on two-wheelers, this is a privileged position to enjoy in a country of more than 200mn people. Boulos also has several US based-companies.
His wife, Sarah Fadoul Boulos, is the daughter of another wealthy Lebanese-African tycoon, with companies spanning west and central Africa as well as Europe and Lebanon. She and Boulos have four children: Fares, Michael, Oriane and Sophie.
The family is devout, with Boulos said to have promoted traditional family values along with Trump’s promise to end wars in the Middle East to woo Arab-American voters.
Boulos’s proximity to political power has come as little surprise to people in his hometown, where his family has long been active in local politics: his father was mayor of Kfar Akka until his death in 2011, while his great uncle was an MP and minister. Boulos himself attempted to run for a parliamentary seat in Lebanon twice, unsuccessfully.
Boulos’s brother Philippe, who serves on the municipal council, told Lebanese daily L’Orient Le Jour that “politics runs in [Massad’s] veins”.
Boulos has said he is not affiliated with any political party in Lebanon. But he is known to have close ties across Lebanon’s Christian political class, including with Suleiman Frangieh, a leading Christian politician and Hizbollah’s preferred candidate to fill the vacant presidency.
In a June interview with the Associated Press, Boulos described himself as a friend of Frangieh, the leader of Lebanon’s Marada Movement, who has close ties with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Al-Assad’s leadership has been propped up by Iran and Russia during his country’s civil war.
In Lebanon, hopes are high that a Lebanese man in the inside could help moderate important figures in Trump’s foreign policy line-up, who include ardent supporters of Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu such as Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defence secretary, and Steve Witkoff, who is set to become special envoy for the Middle East.
Witkoff is expected to take over attempts previously led by Biden adviser Amos Hochstein to broker an end to the conflict.
Outgoing US officials have renewed their attempts to end the conflict, with a draft of a revised proposal handed to Lebanese negotiators last week. But Lebanese officials tamped down expectations of a breakthrough, after previous proposals put forth by Hochstein included terms unacceptable to the Lebanese state.
Since the election, reporters have descended on the home of Boulos’s mother in Kfar Akka, curious for a glimpse of the man seen as having potential to sway Trump’s foreign policy.
Marie Therese Boulos has declined journalists’ requests for interviews but has welcomed them in, along with other well-wishers, for coffee and Arabic sweets, thanking them for the prayers that helped elect Donald Trump.
“We have had enough of this war,” said Anthony Saade, a cashier at a supermarket not far from the Boulos family home. “He is a son of this country. He should use his influence to tell Trump to stop it now.”
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