Lebanon caught in Saudi-Iranian political crossfire

Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Hezbollah have become the centre of international attention
On March 2, the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations, of which Saudi Arabia is a member, designated Hezbollah a terrorist organisation, driving a deeper wedge between the Sunni countries and the Shi’ite movement that has long been an instrument of Iran.
Just days ago, the Saudis and some of their friends from the Gulf states urged their citizens not to travel to Lebanon.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) declared such trips “illegal” and downgraded its diplomatic mission to the country.
The latest move from the Saudis and their friends stemmed from the fallout of the Syrian conflict that has pitted Saudi Arabia against Iran, Hezbollah’s chief patron.
It wasn’t always like this. Saudi Arabia, until the outbreak of hostilities in Syria, had always maintained a flexible policy towards Lebanon’s various “confessionalists” – ethnic and geographical-based religious groups competing for political power in the country’s sectarian divide.
The US and France considered Hezbollah, one of Lebanon’s confessionalist groups a “terrorist organisation, while the EU and the UK have only banned its military wing.
As for Saudi Arabia’s “flexibility” towards the situation in Lebanon, the approach enabled Riyadh to mediate and broker the1989 Taif Agreement that paved the way to end the bloody Lebanese Civil War.
Today, it appears that the Saudis favour confrontation over accommodation as backchannel deals and discreet negotiation make way for microphone and chequebook diplomacy. And the ones who will bear the brunt of this new hard-hitting approach will, of course, be the ordinary people, especially Lebanese Shi’ites, working in the Gulf countries.
With Gulf citizens not permitted to visit Lebanon, the next natural course of action would be expulsion or denial of work permits to the Lebanese. Sadly, all this is happening because Saudi Arabia wants to punish Hezbollah and the Shi’ites in Lebanon.
But the punishment has been extended to Lebanon’s military as well. Upset at Beirut’s refusal to condemn the attack on the Saudi diplomatic mission in Tehran after the execution of an influential Shi’ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, Saudi Arabia decided to stop its $4-billion military aid, saying the hardware – armoured vehicles, attack helicopters, and artillery – would fall in the hands of the Hezbollah.
How did Riyadh not think about this before deciding to help modernise Lebanon’s military inventories.
The decision probably came after the Saudis realised that their chequebook diplomacy was not really winning local Lebanese over to their anti-Bashar al-Assad coalition.
And if the Saudis are walking away from Lebanon, Iran has already said it is standing by the Lebanese.
What was the Saudi thinking? That the Lebanese would abandon the Hezbollah and run into their arms? Chequebook diplomacy and ill-defined policies don’t take into consideration issues like human dignity.
The Hezbollah’s actions in Syria are not necessarily good for Lebanon. But because of the power it wields, politically and as an armed entity, political groups in Lebanon will have to continue to engage the Shi’ite outfit to prevent further strife.
But with the power game being played out between Saudi Arabia and Iran in Lebanon, not to mention the presence of more than 1 million Syrian refugees in the country, preventing further strife may be beyond the control of the local people.
But that has always been the fate of this beautiful Mediterranean country; Beirut was once known as the Paris of the East.
Instead of basing their decisions on the political interests of their country, regional powers should think about putting the interests of the people first.