In Beirut last week, former Lebanese MP and cabinet member Michel Samaha was arrested and later confessed to “planning terrorist attacks in Lebanon at Syrian orders.” A longtime ally of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Samaha was apparently acting under the direction of Damascus to stir sectarian strife in Lebanon between Sunnis and Alawites, as well as between Sunnis and Christians.

A recent campaign of kidnappings between the borders of the two countries, featuring Lebanese Shiite clans and the Sunni-majority Free Syrian Army, is yet more evidence that the main sectarian divide in the region is between Sunnis and Shiites, but it seems that Samaha’s latest campaign was directed primarily against Christians. When he was caught he was reportedly preparing a bombing attack in north Lebanon to coincide with a visit by the Maronite patriarch Beshara al-Rahi. It seems that the purpose of the operation was to cast blame on the Sunni community for the assassination of Lebanon’s most important Christian religious and political, figure, and lend more evidence to the Syrian regime’s claim that once Assad falls. Sunni Islamists in both Syria and Lebanon will slaughter not just Alawites, but Christians, too.