Saudi Arabia orders its citizens out of Lebanon as crisis builds

BEIRUT — Saudi Arabia on Thursday ordered its citizens out of Lebanon while officials in Beirut demanded the immediate return of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who abruptly announced his resignation last week in a television appearance from the kingdom, where he has been holed up since.

The developments were the latest twist in the saga of Hariri, whose fate increasingly resembled a mystery-thriller that has gripped his nation and sent tensions soaring with Saudi Arabia.

With the Lebanese government in limbo, officials in Beirut said they haven’t heard from Hariri since he departed for Saudi Arabia last week. Hariri’s own Future Movement party called Thursday for his immediate return home for the “dignity of the nation.”

In his pre-recorded resignation speech on Saturday, Hariri accused Iran and its Lebanese proxy, the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, of meddling in regional affairs and holding Lebanon hostage. The move shattered his yearold coalition government and stunned the Lebanese, including some of Hariri’s aides who had no advance warning that he intended to resign.

Beyond a phone call on Saturday informing President Michael Aoun of his resignation, Hariri has not made contact with Lebanese officials. Aoun has said he would not accept the resignation until Hariri returns to the country and explains the circumstances of his decision to step down.

Late Wednesday night, Hariri’s private plane took off from Riyadh and flew back to Beirut — and Lebanese eagerly awaited his arrival, only to discover he Workers in Beirut on Thursday put up a poster of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who remains in Saudi Arabia. wasn’t on board.

On Thursday, Hariri’s Future Movement party delivered its sharpest rebuke yet over Hariri’s absence, demanding that he be returned home immediately — the clearest sign so far that it believes he is being held by the Saudis against his will.

“The return of the Lebanese prime minister, the national leader, Saad Hariri, and the head of the Future Movement, is necessary to restore dignity and respect to Lebanon at home and abroad,” former premier Fuad Saniora said in the statement read on TV.

The Riyadh government, meanwhile, after days of leveling threats against Beirut, ordered all Saudis living in or visiting Lebanon to depart “immediately” and warned against travel to the country.

Hariri, the son of the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in an explosion in Beirut in 2005, is a Lebanese-Saudi national with business interests in the Gulf kingdom.

Saudi Arabia sees Hezbollah as a proxy of Iran.

Saudi Minister for Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sabhan warned this month that his government would deal with Lebanon as a hostile state as long as Hezbollah was in the Lebanese government. The Lebanese unity government that Hariri formed a year ago includes Hezbollah members — the result of an implicit Saudi-Iranian understanding to sideline Lebanon from the other proxy wars in the region.

That understanding came to an abrupt end with Hariri’s resignation, throwing the country back into the forefront of the SunniShiite regional conflicts.