IT would be difficult to ruffle the feathers of Lebanese President Michel Aoun.

The last time this veteran soldier and statesman occupied the Presidential Palace in Beirut, as military head of government in 1990, he was chased out at gunpoint by the Syrian army and then into 14 years of exile in Paris.

Now he is back with an overwhelming vote of the Lebanese Parliament and calling the shots as he attempts to protect his country from another disastrous ordeal as the theatre for proxy wars.

This week’s demonstrations by Palestinians in response to the Trump move on Jerusalem underline the fragility of the peace in Lebanon society and the fine balancing act the authorities are forced to pursue.

When I interviewed him in Beirut for this week’s edition of the Alex Salmond Show, he was safely ensconced and calmly stabilising his government after its threatened disintegration of the past few weeks.

“Tell me the differences and similarities between Scotland and Lebanon,” said the president in my pre-interview audience.

I had a stab at the climate for the difference and the large expatriate community for the similarity.

“I was thinking more of problems with the neighbours,” laughed Aoun.

To be fair to our nearest and dearest, Scotland’s own recent difficulties with Brexit-inclined England are as of nought compared with the invasions, excursions and proxy conflicts to which Lebanon has been subjected over the past generation.

In the past few weeks the country has been pushed back to the brink of conflict with the resignation under Saudi pressure and indeed custody of Prime Minister Saad Hariri. This is crucial as Lebanon runs a “confessional” system of government where each major religious group is guaranteed a specific office of state. Hariri is a Sunni Muslim, Aoun a Maronite Christian.

It has been suggested that the new assertive Saudi leadership wished someone rather more aggressive as their Sunni man in office and that they had misread the signals from the recent US presidential visit as giving the green light to a Lebanese adventure.

Aoun responded by coolly refusing to accept the prime ministerial resignation and after some deft discussions with the White House and, in particular with the Elysee Palace, secured first the prime minister’s “release” from Riyadh and then his position in office in Beirut.

Aoun speaks warmly of the French role in assisting his administration. As a soldier he was trained at Ecole Superieure de Guerre, while his own lifetime stretches through the entire period of Lebanese independence declared by General de Gaulle in 1943.

He has seen a Lebanon thriving and prosperous as the financial and commercial centre of the Middle East and he has seen it disintegrate in the face of repeated invasions from Israel and Syria, cleaving open division in the communities of Lebanon.

Now he is determined to keep his country on that difficult narrow road of peace and prosperity. He exudes confidence about the danger of further Israeli incursions, believing the Lebanese army now strong enough to deter the threat. He is calm about the fears that some Lebanese communities have about the influence of the armed Shiite militia Hezbollah, arguing that only once in history has this force acted against the Lebanese state.

Despite the Trump-inspired demonstrations of the weekend, the past two weeks have been politically positive and on the very afternoon of our interview his entire Cabinet met together as one and all. “The political crisis is now over,” the president declared to me confidently.

Of more underlying concern to the president has been the lack of assistance to the Lebanese state from the international community to cope with the one and a half million Syrian refugees in his country of barely four million Lebanese. This adds to the long-standing half a million or so displaced Palestinians.

It should be a worry to the United States, and indeed to Britain, that he specifically absolved Russia, Iran and Turkey from his general frustration over lack of help. If the western powers cannot sustain the confidence of the major Lebanese Christian politician then allies in this region are indeed becoming thin on the ground.

However, for now at least this lively octogenarian has a spring in his step at plans for the future.

As the one remaining leader in the Middle East who recalls speaking as a lad of the contemporary exploits of the wartime giants Churchill and De Gaulle, it would be as well to listen to his voice of authority.

He knows from first-hand experience the ruination of war and civil strife.

And yet, if the communities of Lebanon can be left to harmoniously co-exist then what a template it would provide from which others across the region could draw inspiration.

It may be an elusive prize but President Aoun knows that a peaceful Lebanon could once again become the “jewel of the Levant”.

The Alex Salmond Show is broadcast on RT, Thursdays at 7.30 am, 6.30pm and 11.30 pm GMT, on Freeview 234, Freesat 206 and Sky 512