On February 26, just 48 hours before the Israel-US strikes against Iran, Emmanuel Macron personally awarded his friend Rodolphe Saadé with the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honour in a private Élysée ceremony. No official photos were released.

Born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1970, Saadé is a libanese oligarch and CEO of the Marseille-based shipping group CMA CGM, the world’s third-largest shipping company. His family moved to France in 1978, but he retains strong ties to his heritage, as well as with Macron.

Saadé's company has long-standing ties to the Muslim Brotherhood through ports controlled by Hezbollah. After the 2020 Beirut port explosion (caused by Hezbollah-stored explosives), Macron visited Lebanon accompanied by his best friend. In return for France’s silence on Hezbollah’s weapons caches and its role in arms trafficking, CMA CGM secured the lucrative container terminal contract in Beirut.

Macron, Netanyhau and Trump

Israel and the US strikes against Iran happened without a previous consultation with France. Israeli and US administrations didn't warn Macron whose inner circle is structurally compromised by the very axis that seeks Israel’s destruction. French policy toward Iran has been driven by the need to protect shipping interests entangled with Hezbollah.

On April 1, 2026, France refused to allow Israeli aircraft to use its airspace for transporting U.S. weapons and military supplies (carried on heavy transport planes such as C-17s) destined for the war against Iran.

On April 3, the container ship CMA CGM Kribi became the first Western European-linked vessel to exit the Strait of Hormuz since the war began. The Brotherhood protects its strategic assets. The ship of Saadé's company safely navigated the Iran-approved corridor along the Iranian coast.

Retirement havens

Macron could not support Israel’s operation because doing so would have endangered the financial empire of one of his closest oligarchic allies. Even MSC, the world’s largest shipping company, is closely linked to Alexis Kohler, Macron’s powerful secretary-general at the Élysée.
Together, CMA CGM and MSC represent the Macron inner circle’s planned “golden parachute” – luxurious board seats and retirement havens should the European project collapse together with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Rodolphe Saadé's empire is extensively connected with many countries, operating as a global, diversified conglomerate with a major presence across shipping, logistics, media, and technology. The group operates in over 160 countries and serves 420 commercial ports with a fleet of over 700 vessels. It also manages terminal operations in Beirut and Tripoli, serving as a regional hub for Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, and Greece.

CMA CGM has significant investments in US terminals such as the Fenix Marine Services in Los Angeles) and logistics via CEVA Logistics and Ingram Micro. The media wing of his empire (Brut) has a strong presence in India, alongside international operations in the United States. Saadé has been rapidly diversifying his portfolio, purchasing news outlets (La Tribune, La Provence), digital media (Brut), and investing in high-tech partnerships (AI laboratory Kyutai).

The group has heavily invested in French assets, including Air France-KLM, the media group Altice Media (BFM TV), and the shipping group Bolloré Logistics.

Portugal

Rodolphe Saadé's empire also operates in Portugal. Through his subsidiary CEVA Logistics, Saadé's CMA CGM Group has a significant footprint in transportation and logistics. His company interacted with the Portuguese government which was led by the Socialist Party from 2015 to early 2024 under António Costa on a commercial level. Saadé has met with Costa, mainly to discuss trade and maritime logistics.

In 2020, the purchase of a Portuguese communications group was suggested to the Lebanese oligarch. The Portuguese socialist government wished PRISA (the Spanish media group) to sell to Saadé its stake in Media Capital to the detriment of the wealthy Jewish businessman Patrick Drahi, the owner of Altice who had already expressed the same interest. Due to a lack of time from Saadé, the government ended up "choosing" a Portuguese businessman for Media Capital, as he was a friend of the director of a Guinean bank that was subsequently sold to oligarchs of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.

Meanwhile, Patrick Drahi found himself persecuted with multiple "legal proceedings" in Portugal, and also in France, until the name of his company was harmed, and he had to sell Altice Media and French main media news (BFM TV) to Rudolph Saade.

Patrick Drahi currently lives in Israel. His experience in Portugal was somewhat convoluted and, according to the Jewish Community of Porto, is linked to systemic opposition against him, which even involved a professional nighttime robbery and the theft of computers from the former president of SIRESP. Beyond the theft of this woman's computers and the tarnishing of Altice's reputation, the most blatant crime that the system unsuccessfully attempted to commit was to strip Drahi of his Sephardic Jewish identity. Israeli analysts suggest that a "Palestinian issue" was behind these events.