Riyadh Realpolitik

Not in my view. On the contrary, the new and tougher Saudi approach seems to me more realistic—and (unsurprisingly) in line with the new Israeli approach. And both are not actions but reactions to the reality that Hezbollah is in fact in charge of Lebanon.

First, a bit of history. In the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, Israel made a sharp distinction between Hezbollah and Lebanon. Israeli attacks decimated Hezbollah targets but did not focus on Lebanon’s infrastructure. For example, to put the Beirut airport out of use the Israelis hit the runway, making takeoffs and landings impossible. They did zero damage to the terminal and hangars, so that repaving the runway and opening the airport could be done fast when hostilities ended. Similarly, I recall visiting Beirut with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the conflict and seeing the tall lighthouse in the port. An Israeli missile had gone right through the lighthouse’s top and taken out its searchlight. There was no significant damage to the structure, so that all that was needed was a new searchlight for the lighthouse to be operational again. Israel made a special effort to avoid major damage to the Lebanese national infrastructure, despite claims to the contrary from the Lebanese government.

In May 2008, Hezbollah ended a government crisis over its own powers by using its weapons—allegedly meant only to protect the country from Israel—to seize control of Beirut’s streets and effectively of the entire state. The New York Times quoted one expert on Hezbollah concluding back then, “This is effectively a coup.”

In the near decade since, Hezbollah’s power has grown and so has its domination of Lebanon. During the war in Syria since 2012, Hezbollah has served as Iran’s foreign legion and sent thousands of Lebanese Shia across the border to fight. A story in the New York Times this August summed up the current situation:

That story concluded that “few checks remain on Hezbollah’s domestic power” in Lebanon. And throughout 2017, Israeli officials have been warning that the distinction between Hezbollah and Lebanon can no longer be maintained. Hezbollah is quite simply running the country. While it leaves administrative matters like paying government salaries, paving roads, and collecting garbage to the state, no important decision can be taken without Hezbollah’s agreement.

Lebanon’s president must constitutionally be a Christian, but today that man is Michel Aoun, an ally of Hezbollah since 2006. That is why he got to be president in 2016. As an analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel put it, “Hezbollah has been very squarely backing Aoun for president, and this was always the deal between Aoun’s party and Hezbollah. Hezbollah has upheld its end of the deal. With this election .  .  . you can see Hezbollah being consolidated in terms of its political allies as well as its position in Lebanon.”

Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who specializes in Lebanon, concurred: “In terms of the actual balance of power, the actual power on the ground, regardless of the politics, regardless of the cabinets, regardless of the parliamentary majorities: It’s Hezbollah.”

The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), a recipient of U.S. assistance, is increasingly intertwined with Hezbollah. David Schenker of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy described the situation this way:

Where does all that leave Lebanon? Last summer Badran, in an article entitled “Lebanon Is Another Name for Hezbollah,” concluded, “The Lebanese state .  .  . is worse than a joke. It’s a front.”

That is the situation to which Mohammed bin Salman is reacting. The key man in maintaining this façade has been Lebanon’s prime minister, who must constitutionally be a Sunni and is Saad Hariri. Hariri is the son of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister assassinated in 2005 (almost certainly in a joint effort by Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria). Mohammed bin Salman looks around the region and sees his own country in danger of being sandwiched between an Iranian-dominated Iraq and an Iranian-dominated Yemen, while Iran—and Hezbollah—increasingly dominate Syria as well as Lebanon. Saad Hariri has always been subject to Saudi pressures, in large part because his family’s fortune was made in Saudi Arabia and depends to this day on Saudi largesse. Mohammed bin Salman must have wondered why he was paying to maintain that façade, propping up a Lebanese government that does not govern and instead allows free rein to Hezbollah. Indeed, Hezbollah is part of Hariri’s coalition government, and his resignation collapses that coalition.

In addition to pressuring Hariri, the Saudis have several ways of pressuring Lebanon economically. The Saudi deposit of $860 million in the Lebanese Central Bank, meant to stabilize Lebanon’s currency, might be withdrawn. Remittances from Lebanese working outside the country are critical for the country’s economy, constituting about 15 percent of Lebanon’s GDP, and Lebanese working in Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies provide a significant portion of that; those workers could start to be sent home. Eighty percent of foreign direct investment in Lebanon comes from the Gulf, and it could decline precipitously. Finally, Gulf tourists are a key part of Lebanon’s tourism sector both in numbers and per capita spending. “The number of Saudi tourists to Lebanon increased by 86.77 percent in the first seven months of 2017 compared to the same period last year,” the Daily Star of Beirut reported in August, but now the Saudis and other Gulf nations have told their citizens to leave Lebanon. This will hit the tourism industry hard.

* *

Why punish Lebanon? There is no doubt that such measures can affect every Lebanese—but that is the point. The Saudis are no longer willing to prop up Lebanon while it serves as the base for Hezbollah’s military and terrorist activities in league with Iran. They are asking a different question: What will it take for the Lebanese to pressure Hezbollah to cut back on its actions and to allow the Lebanese state to govern again? Is it possible that as all Lebanese—not just Sunnis, Christians, and Druze but also Shia—pay a higher price for Hezbollah’s subservience to Iran, Hezbollah might begin to worry about its own political base in Lebanon? One estimate in Newsweek puts Hezbollah’s own toll at 2,000-2,500 dead and 7,000 injured in Syria, meaning that every Shia village and most Shia families have suffered some loss. The Shia population is about one million, so about 1 percent has been injured or killed fighting for Iran in Syria, and every casualty of course affects a much larger family group.

It is not Mohammed bin Salman, then, who is bringing danger to Lebanon; it is not the Saudis who are bringing Lebanon into the region’s wars; it is not Saudi policy that threatens to collapse Lebanon’s coalition politics. It is the actions of Hezbollah, abandoning any national role in order to act as Iran’s enforcer and foreign legion. What the Saudis are doing is saying: Enough—let’s start describing Lebanese reality instead of burying it. Let’s stop financing a situation that allows Hezbollah to feed off the Lebanese state, dominate that state, and use it as a launching pad for terror and aggression in the Middle East, all on Iran’s behalf.

There is of course no guarantee that this approach will succeed: The Lebanese may be too terrified of Hezbollah. And success will require action by the United States and its allies, particularly France. If all Lebanon’s friends take the same approach, demanding that Hezbollah’s grip on the country and the state be limited, we may embolden Lebanon’s citizens and its politicians to protest Hezbollah’s chokehold. Economic assistance to Lebanon and military assistance to its army should be made dependent on pushing back on Hezbollah and regaining Lebanese independence. The price Lebanon pays for Hezbollah should be made far clearer, and the advantages Hezbollah gains from its control of Lebanon should be reduced—and made far more controversial.

Are these outrageous demands? On the contrary, they are in fact required by U.N. Security Council resolution 1701, adopted in August 2006 to end the war between Hezbollah and Israel. It’s worth recalling what started that war: an unprovoked attack by Hezbollah into Israel, killing and kidnapping Israeli soldiers. Resolution 1701 includes these provisions:

In other words, what the Saudis are demanding is what the U.N. Security Council demanded unanimously over a decade ago—and the Lebanese government accepted days later. Now, Hezbollah is once again thrusting Lebanon into deadly conflicts in the region—including the risk of another war with Israel. These dangers will not be avoided by burying our heads in the sand, nor will Lebanon’s sovereignty be restored by ignoring Hezbollah’s destruction of that sovereignty. A better way forward is to tell the truth about the situation in Lebanon and use both diplomatic and economic pressure to undermine Hezbollah’s iron grip.

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.