The United States has called on Lebanon’s parliament to elect a new president, as the country marks six months without a leader at the helm amid grinding political and economic turmoil.

“The United States calls on Lebanon’s political leadership to move expeditiously to elect a president to unite the country and swiftly enact the reforms needed to rescue its economy from crisis,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

Pulling Lebanon out of its presidential vacuum has become imminent, an Arab diplomat said.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil on Sunday urged a Christian agreement on a new president.

Observers have made a link between Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s visit to Lebanon and remarks about the presidential file by top Hezbollah MP Mohammed Raad.

Three civilians were wounded Saturday in Israeli air strikes near the Syrian city of Homs, Syrian state media reported, with a war monitor saying a Hezbollah munitions depot was hit.

During more than a decade of war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions.

Iran's top diplomat has visited Lebanon's border with Israel where he expressed support for Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah in its struggle against their common enemy: Israel.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian began his visit to Lebanon on Wednesday, meeting top officials and expressing Tehran's readiness to help build power stations in an effort to try to end the small country's prevailing electricity crisis.

European investigators probing Lebanese central bank chief Riad Salameh's wealth will question officials from two international firms previously tasked with auditing the central bank's accounts, a judicial official said.

Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab on Friday held a meeting with MP Mohammed Raad -- the head of Hezbollah’s Loyalty to Resistance parliamentary bloc.

“The meeting was necessary and important and aimed to evaluate the stage that we are going through and to seek to find exits and common denominators among the parliamentary blocs,” Bou Saab said after the talks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein-Amir Abdollahian was dismayed Thursday by the Lebanese opposition’s boycott of a meeting that he called for at the Iranian embassy in Beirut, media reports said.

The embassy had invited all parliamentary blocs to the meeting except for the Lebanese Forces, MP Michel Mouawad and nine members of the Change bloc.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said he is not expecting the worst, and that his words were misinterpreted when he said he only sees negativity.

"I am neither pessimistic nor optimistic," Berri told al-Liwaa, in remarks published Friday. He added that the foreign indications are positive concerning the election of Marada leader Suleiman Franjieh.