Shortly after Lebanon’s army chief Joseph Aoun was chosen this month as the country's next president, giant banners of him and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman were unfurled on a building’s facade in the northern Lebanese province of Akkar, hailing Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler as the "leader of the Arabs.”

The oil-rich kingdom and its 39-year-old leader — who backed Aoun to get the presidency — are emerging as one of the biggest winners in the fallout of the 15-month conflict in Gaza, which has tilted the balance of power in the Middle East against its longtime rival Iran. As a fragile ceasefire deal came into effect on Sunday, Tehran’s influence has been crippled, for now: its proxies in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories decimated, its Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad deposed and its enemy Israel emboldened. Saudi Arabia is wasting no time filling the void.

“This is a clash between an ambitious young man who realizes the world is changing and an elderly cleric clinging to an outdated ideology that brought him to power,” said Mustafa Fahs, a Beirut-based commentator who hails from a clerical family critical of the Islamic Republic, referring to the Saudi crown prince and Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, respectively.