Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri reversed his plans to resign as he returned to Lebanon on Nov. 22, punctuating an already volatile November with abundant uncertainty throughout the region. Hariri previously announced from Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4, his plans to step down as Lebanon’s prime minister citing, among other things, Iran’s influence in the region.
The reversal adds a new twist to a saga that has continued for weeks. It’s not a simple scenario, and is one that impacts the entire region from the eastern Mediterranean across southwest Asia. Several analysts around Washington spoke with Homeland411 before Hariri’s decision to return, all noting the complexity of this ever-evolving situation.
Clare Lopez, vice president for Research & Analysis at the Center for Security Policy, cited a possible re-energized Sunni-Shiite split in the region.
“I think this goes back again to Saudi Arabia, because what the Saudis are seeing, of course, is a resurgent, very aggressive, belligerent regime in Tehran solidifying a Shiite crescent … surrounding the Arabian peninsula with its proxies and puppet regimes,” Lopez said. It includes everything from Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Beirut to Damascus, across to Tehran, through Baghdad, and then Yemen.
The same day Hariri resigned, Houthi rebels in Yemen fired a missile at Saudi Arabia that was intercepted over Riyadh. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told CNN the missile was Iranian, launched by Hezbollah operating in a Houthi-controlled portion of Yemen.
“Lebanon is going to be perhaps the next focus—unfortunately for the Lebanese people—of the intra-Islamic, 1,400-year-old sectarian fight,” Lopez said.
Peter Mandaville, professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Homeland411 that if the Saudis orchestrated Hariri’s resignation, it’s a message for Iran.
“It’s a way for Riyadh, for Saudi Arabia, to signal to Iran that, ‘Hey, if you Iranians think that you call the shots in Lebanon, we are the ones who actually have the ability to directly shape and control the government in that country,’” Mandaville said.
But he added a note of caution. “I think there have probably been a lot of world leaders making the point to [Saudi crown prince] Mohammad bin Salman that this route that he’s taking could eventually backfire on him,” he said.
Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Homeland411 after Hariri initially resigned that nothing in this is transparent.
“None of this is done sort of by rule of law so to speak, but the interesting thing is you had Iran essentially with a stranglehold over Lebanon for the last several decades, and now you finally see some action taken against this illegal activity,” Schanzer said. “And it may be illegal in its own right, but all’s fair in this contest.”
Although he says he welcomes the recent changes, Schanzer is cautious.
“I am obviously concerned about the extent to which Saudi Arabia will ensure that things don’t spiral out of control as a result of these moves,” he said. “But overall I think the weakening of Iran’s stranglehold on Lebanon should be welcomed across the board.”
He said he sees some of the outrage at Saudi Arabia for its recent moves as selective, with individuals ignoring Iran’s decades-long meddling in Lebanon.
Changing U.S.-Saudi Relationship
Schanzer said the context of what is transpiring now can be pegged to the past four years or so. He particularly noted the interim nuclear deal with Iran in 2013, the signing of the deal, the Iran sanction release, continued Iranian meddling in the region, and Hezbollah’s efforts.
“What you have is a crown prince who is, I think, feeling his oats, so to speak, getting a sense of his own power, and I think looking now to reshape the map and perhaps overturn some of what the Saudis view as historic mistakes … in the region by the Obama administration,” he said. “Inasmuch as the Iranians viewed the nuclear deal and the Obama doctrine as a tacit green light to expand their influence in the region during that period, I think you have a similar situation now with the Saudis working under the understanding that they have that tacit green light to roll back some of Iran’s activities.”
Mandaville also noted bin Salman’s recent moves, particularly the fact that he has his father King Salman bin Abdulaziz’s backing to assert himself in everything from politics and security to economics.
“He has an American partner … unlike the Obama administration, where I think there was some serious question marks about Saudi Arabia’s role in the region,” he said. “The bigger picture of this is a young, ambitious, and aggressive, empowered Saudi prince who feels that he has free reign domestically—and in the eyes of the kingdom’s chief international partner … the United States—to reassert Saudi influence across the region.”
Bin Salman’s influence and efforts within the kingdom have been nothing short of decisive in recent months.
Economic Necessity
Lopez noted the recent arrests of 11 royal princes, officials, ministers, and Wahhabi clerics as particularly significant, and there’s another aspect to this as well. Bin Salman’s moves illustrate the Saudis cannot continue with just one economic engine—namely petroleum products and petroleum extraction.
“They simply can’t continue that, especially [with] the American technological revolution in fracking,” Lopez said. “Other indicators show they have to diversify, they have to modernize, and [bin Salman] has been given charge of that.”
It’s an ongoing process that has included relaxing some of the kingdom’s strict religious enforcement.
“For a year and a half now—I don’t know if people have noticed this—the very feared religious police [mutaween] that sort of monitor the population on the streets for adherence to Sharia, to Islamic law, have not had the powers of arrest,” Lopez said.
She said there’s more improvement that can be made, and some of the reforms are out of sheer necessity rather than “the goodness of their hearts,” but they’re still positive steps.
“They’ve got to harness that economic power as a productive workforce [where] something like 50 percent of those, of course, are women,” Lopez added. “We want to say, ‘Yeah, good on you for doing this,’ but it’s about the economy; it’s a very practical reason.”
Schanzer cautioned against the debate becoming “binary,” with observers trying to determine whether bin Salman is either solidifying authoritarian power or simply implementing sweeping reforms.
“I believe that the answer is that he’s probably doing both,” Schanzer said. “You can engage in reform while also invoking authoritarian practices, and I believe that’s what’s happening right now.”
He also added that he gets the sense that some media reports are simply “stabs in the dark” about what’s happening. “You’ve got all these people who are kind of breathlessly trying to analyze what’s going on,” he said. “Their governance is not something where they have full transparency. … We should expect to not fully understand these things.”
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