Lebanon’s Vanishing Prime Minister Is Back at Work. Now What?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/world/middleeast/lebanon-saad-hariri-iran-saudi-arabia.html

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BEIRUT, Lebanon — After a bizarre three-week international sojourn during which he shocked his country by suddenly quitting the government, Saad Hariri, the prime minister of Lebanon, is back home and still in his job — at least for the time being.

But while his return and the promise of political dialogue about the country’s future have temporarily pulled Lebanon back from the brink of a political void, the issues that set off the crisis remain as serious and intractable as they were before he left.

This small country remains a battleground in the struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran for influence in the Middle East. It is also home to Hezbollah, the militant group that has grown into a regional force in its own right.

Although Mr. Hariri has denied it, Lebanese politicians and foreign diplomats say that Saudi Arabia forced him to resign — and even considered replacing him with his brother — in the hope of inciting a change in the status quo that would weaken Hezbollah.

That plan failed, in part because Saudi Arabia’s Western allies say they were caught off guard and pressured the Saudis to back down.

Now Mr. Hariri is at home once again — and everyone is trying to figure out what comes next.

“Where do we go from here?” said Nadim Munla, senior adviser to Mr. Hariri. “Everybody is monitoring Iran and Hezbollah, and I really believe that the ball is in their court.”

Mr. Hariri’s strange trip underlines how vulnerable Lebanon remains to clashing regional and international agendas. In the country’s sect-based political system, most major parties rely on foreign powers for funding, with the expectation that the parties will then advance the interests of their international backers.

Mr. Hariri has played that role for Saudi Arabia since taking it over from his father, Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister who was killed in a car-bomb attack in Beirut in 2005. Countries like the United States and France also support him, considering him a moderate, pro-Western leader.

Hezbollah plays that role for Iran, which helped create it in the 1980s. Iran now relies on the militant group as a strategic threat against Israel and as an expeditionary military force in the Arab world, including in Syria.

Besides their divergent views on Lebanon’s role in the world, there is bad blood between Mr. Hariri and Hezbollah.

Mr. Hariri has criticized Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria, and some of its members have been indicted for involvement in his father’s killing. Hezbollah says it played no role.

But a deal last year brought them together in a power-sharing government, with Mr. Hariri as prime minister and a Christian ally of Hezbollah, Michel Aoun, as president.

That arrangement worked domestically. But as Saudi Arabia and its young, assertive crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, grew more alarmed about the activities of Iran and its allies in the region, they found it increasingly untenable that their Lebanese ally was heading a government with members of a group they consider a terrorist organization and security threat.

Their pique came to a head on Nov. 4, when Mr. Hariri was summoned to Riyadh and forced to resign, according to foreign diplomats and politicians close to him. Hours later, Saudi officials said they had shot down a missile fired from Yemen as it neared the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Saudi officials blamed Hezbollah for helping Yemeni rebels, and Thamer Sabhan, the Saudi minister for Gulf affairs, accused Iran and Hezbollah of “an act of war” against Saudi Arabia.

It remains unclear what the Saudis expected to happen next, but they had at least entertained the idea of replacing Mr. Hariri with his older brother, Bahaa, believing that he would take a harder line on Iran, according to foreign diplomats and Lebanese politicians.

“It was part of saying that Hariri is not ready to do this, so let’s find someone who can,” said Alain Aoun, a member of Parliament from the president’s party.

But the plan backfired, with politicians across the political spectrum and other members of Mr. Hariri’s family rejecting the idea that Saudi Arabia could swap out politicians as it pleased.

“We are not herds of sheep, nor a plot of land whose ownership can be moved from one person to another,” Nouhad Machnouk, the interior minister and an ally of Mr. Hariri, told reporters this month.

“In Lebanon, things happen though elections, not pledges of allegiances,” he said, in a jab at Saudi Arabia’s monarchical system.

Western countries like the United States and France have worked to keep Lebanon stable, in part because it has taken in more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees, giving it the highest refugee count per capita of any country in the world.

The Saudis had not informed their Western allies of their plans for Mr. Hariri, and officials in Paris and Washington were horrified when he announced his resignation.

When Mr. Sabhan, the Saudi minister, arrived in Washington a few days later, officials at the State Department berated him for pushing a rash act they felt could destabilize Lebanon, American officials said.

France intervened as well. President Emmanuel Macron invited Mr. Hariri to Paris and repeatedly called the Saudis to press them to let him leave.

After stops in France, Egypt and Cyprus, Mr. Hariri landed in Beirut on Tuesday to a hero’s welcome. The next day, during a celebration of Lebanon’s Independence Day, he announced that he was holding off on his resignation to allow for dialogue with other political leaders.

Any dialogue will have to address Hezbollah’s activities abroad, an issue that Lebanese politicians have avoided because they know they have little leverage over a military force much more powerful than the national army.

Mr. Aoun, the member of Parliament, said that Mr. Hariri had returned stronger than before, thanks to an outpouring of support from Lebanon and its foreign allies.

“He is coming back with a great opportunity,” Mr. Aoun said. “No one sees him as responsible for what happened. They see him as a victim of what happened.”

He said that he expected the dialogue to focus on the idea that Lebanon should stay out of conflicts in the region. Hezbollah has flouted that by sending fighters and advisers to Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

But the breadth of Hezbollah’s activities has lead many to conclude that addressing them is not Lebanon’s responsibility alone.

“It is not through a Lebanese dialogue that we can address these issues,” Mr. Aoun said. “They need to be discussed internationally.”

And the parties’ foreign backers may not give them much room to negotiate.

In an interview published on Friday, Prince Mohammed of Saudi Arabia compared Iran’s supreme leader to Hitler and said that Mr. Hariri could not provide political cover for a government that the Saudis consider to be controlled by Hezbollah.

The day before, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohammad Ali Jafari, stood up for Hezbollah, saying that it should have the best weapons to protect Lebanon.

“This issue is nonnegotiable,” he said.

Mr. Munla, Mr. Hariri’s adviser, said the coming negotiations would need to address Hezbollah’s regional role, but that it was unclear whether it or its Iranian patrons would be willing to give that up.

“Given what we are hearing from them, one would wonder if they are willing to compromise,” he said.