The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Abrupt resignation feared to be power play by Saudis
Lebanon could be pulled into regional fight for supremacy.
BEIRUT — Stunned Lebanese fear that Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s surprise resignation last weekend — announced from Saudi Arabia in a pre-recorded message — was a power play by the kingdom aimed at wrecking a delicate compromise with Hezbollah and taking a swipe at regional rival Iran.
The move has thrown Lebanon into turmoil, potentially dragging the small nation back into the regional fight for supremacy between Saudi Arabia and Iran — at a time when Iran and its allies are seen to have won the proxy war against Saudi-backed forces in neighboring Syria.
Sunni-led Saudi Arabia, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been intensifying its confrontation with Shiite powerhouse Iran. The two camps support rival sides in countries across the region, worsening conflicts in Yemen, Syria and elsewhere.
Each also has proxies in Lebanon, but in recent years, Lebanese parties have tried — largely successfully — to prevent those tensions from blowing up into full-scale violence in a country still haunted by memories from its own 19751990 civil war. Shiite Hezbollah dominates Lebanon, but it has sought not to provoke the Sunni community, which in turn has avoided crossing the guerrilla force.
The fear among some Lebanese now is that Saudi Arabia will upset that balance, trying to compensate for its losses in proxy wars elsewhere.
In Syria, Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed fighters allied with President Bashar Assad’s forces have recaptured large areas and are working to secure a muchprized land corridor stretching from Tehran to the Mediterranean through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. By contrast, Saudi Arabia has been stuck in a fruitless war in Yemen against Iranian-backed Shiite rebels, and a Saudi bid to isolate Qatar has failed to achieve its goals.
Saudi fingerprints were seen all over Hariri’s resignation on Saturday.
Hariri appeared on Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV in a recorded video from an undisclosed location, haltingly delivering a statement in which he accused Iran of meddling in Arab affairs and the Iranbacked Hezbollah of holding Lebanon hostage.
“Iran’s arms in the region will be cut off,” he said, adding that he felt compelled to resign and that his life was endangered.
The resignation came exactly a year after Hariri formed a coalition government that included Hezbollah, shortly after Michel Aoun, a Maronite Christian and Hezbollah ally, was elected president. That arrangement was the product of a rare understanding between Saudi Arabia and Iran for calm in Lebanon, ending a two-year period during which the presidency was vacant.
It has been an uneasy partnership between Hariri and Hezbollah. As the Shiite militia and its allies advanced in Syria, Hariri came under pressure from Washington and Riyadh to distance himself from the group. In recent days, Lebanese government ministers have bickered publicly over sending an ambassador to Damascus and repatriation plans for hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees living in Lebanon.
Still, officials had denied the tensions threatened the unity government.
Last week, Saudi Minister for Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sabhan predicted on Lebanon’s MTV station that “astonishing developments” were coming for Lebanon.
After Hariri’s resignation, rumors spread in Lebanon that he was under house arrest in Saudi Arabia — especially after news broke over the weekend of arrests in the kingdom of dozens of Saudi princes, ministers and influential businessmen in a sweep purportedly over corruption.
Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on Sunday accused Saudi Arabia of drafting Hariri’s resignation letter and forcing him to read it on Saudi TV. He even asked whether Hariri was being held against his will.