The resignation of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri on November 4, 2017 unveiled hidden tensions within Lebanon and mutual escalation between regional powers. His resignation carries implicit messages, including protesting against fait accompli policies adopted by Hezbollah at home, rejecting the moves to drag Lebanon into civil conflicts in Syria and Iraq, the unraveling of Hariri-Aoun agreement, as well as sparing Lebanon the costs of Hezbollah’s proxy role in achieving Iranian expansionist policies in the Middle East.
Significance of Timing
Saad Hariri’s resignation from the premiership of Lebanon coincides with several highly important internal and regional developments, which are as follows:
1- A year on Hariri-Aoun agreement. Hariri’s resignation came almost a year after Hariri-Aoun agreement in 2016, ending the presidential vacancy deadlock, which stretched for nearly two years and four months. Under the agreement, they agreed on electing Hezbollah-backed Michel Aoun as president of Lebanon after the approval of Saad Hariri, the leader of the Future Movement.
The resignation reveals that the agreement was reviewed by Saad Hariri and the Future Movement. In addition, the initial evaluation made after a year of the agreement showed clear violations to its main terms, chiefly Hezbollah’s failure to adhere to the terms of settlement, especially in light of the growing threats to the sovereignty of Lebanon and the military establishment and Hezbollah’s increasing interventions in regional crises.
2- Mounting tensions between Hezbollah and Israel. Hariri’s resignation is inseparable from the renewed hidden tensions between Hezbollah and Israel, mounting Israeli threats to launch military strikes against Lebanon in response to Hezbollah’s growing military strength including its rocket arsenal, and Hezbollah's quest to acquire “weapons to break the balance” as described by its leaders. This is closely linked to Israel’s continued air strikes on the party’s arms shipments on the Syrian-Lebanese border, stoking fears that Lebanon may be drawn to an ill-calculated military confrontation, especially given that the Syrian air defense forces countered recent Israeli air attacks.
3- Hezbollah’s growing involvement in Syria. Hariri’s resignation is tantamount to tacit protest against Hezbollah and its allies for their attempts to implicate Lebanon in the Syrian conflict, as revealed by Hezbollah’s deals in August 2017 with ISIS and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly al-Nusra Front). These deals sparked widespread protests inside Lebanon for bypassing the Lebanese Army in protecting national borders, and renewed claims for the need to end the “military duplication” in Lebanon.
On the other hand, the resignation is connected with the efforts of Hezbollah and its allies to strengthen their relations with the Syrian regime, as the Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil met with the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on September 21, 2017.
4- Regional and international consensus to curb Hezbollah. Several indicators confirm the existence of regional and international consensus on curtailing the role of Hezbollah. The report of the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, issued in October 2017, called for “disarming Hezbollah”, because its intervention in the region threatens stability. Moreover, the U.S. Congress endorsed a new package of sanctions against the party on October 25, 2017, including an embargo on providing arms.
At the regional level, Saudi State Minister for Arab Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sabhan, through his account on twitter in September 2017, expressed Saudi’s rejection of Hezbollah’s actions. Al-Sabhan blasted Hezbollah for its links to terrorist organizations, its crimes against humanity in Syria with the support of Iran. This is also inseparable from Hezbollah and Iran's involvement in “Abdali cell” in Kuwait.
The above-mentioned indicators reveal the mounting threats of Hezbollah to internal, regional and international stability, and its insistence on using the Lebanese state as a cover for the implementation of this regional role, despite all attempts to integrate it and treat it as a political party and overlook its previous violent actions.
Return to 2005 Status-Quo Ante
The resignation letter delivered by Saad Hariri, on Al-Arabiya news channel, focused on the role of Hezbollah in unleashing tensions and divisions inside Lebanon, stressing that the party “over the last decades has managed to impose a fait accompli in Lebanon by the force of its weapons, which it alleges is a resistance weapon. This weapon is directed against Syrians, Yemenis and Lebanese. Hezbollah has in fact established “a state within the state and controls all its levers”.
Hariri said Hezbollah is nothing but “Iranian arm, not only in Lebanon but in Arab countries”. Hariri’s criticism centered around the Iranian interference in Lebanon and Arab countries, referred to Iran’s hostile policies in the Arab region and accused Hezbollah of implicating Lebanon in regional conflicts, triggering “futile” antagonisms with Arab countries, and trying to “kidnap Lebanon from the Arab and international environment”.
However, what is remarkable in his speech is the comparison between the current situation in Lebanon and the period leading up to the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005, making successive references to covert attempts to target his life and threaten his personal security.
Later, it was revealed that watchtowers in Saad Hariri motorcade were disabled while moving within Lebanon, which confirms the growing prospects of renewed political assassinations linked to exacerbating internal divisions and regional polarization over Lebanon. This development prompted Saad Hariri to secure his departure from Lebanon to deny Hezbollah the opportunity to reverse Lebanon to the stage of political and security instability that followed the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005, which could have led to the eruption of internal clashes between Lebanese parties.
Internal and External Calculations
Hariri’s resignation from the premiership of Lebanon can be attributed to several reasons related to the intricacies of the internal, regional and international equations, the most notable of these motives are as follows:
1- Violation of the agreement principles. Lebanon’s policy of disassociation from the Syrian crisis was one of the essential terms of Hariri-Aoun agreement and one of the foremost elements of the agreed upon Lebanese foreign policy.
Over a year, the March 8 Alliance did not adhere to this principle, as most of its ministers made official visits to the Syrian regime, leading Saad Hariri to protest, especially after the meeting of Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil (the brother-in-law of President Michel Aoun) with the Foreign Minister of the Syrian regime, Walid al-Muallem, without consulting or informing the Prime Minister, who announced his disagreement.
2- Growing regional tensions. The current crisis in Lebanon is considered an application of what the author of “Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East” - book released in 2010- warned against. The book predicts that some of such countries may pose a threat to the security and stability of the major regional powers, which is evident in the case of Hezbollah, which seeks to dominate Lebanon and convert it into a source of threat to Arab countries, as part of the Iranian project.
In this regard, the argument presented by the President of the Lebanese Republic about Hezbollah’s weapons did not convince Arab countries, which classified the party as a terrorist group. Michel Aoun justified Hezbollah’s weapons by saying that the Lebanese State needs such weapons given the weakness of the Lebanese army. Furthermore, Aoun said that the solution to Hezbollah’s weapons depends on the progress in the “the Arab-Israeli conflict”.
To further complicate matters, the Iranian president Hassan Rouhani made comments about Tehran’s hegemony over the decision-making centers in Lebanon, and the Supreme Leader’s senior advisor for international affairs Ali Akbar Velayati, during his visit to Lebanon on November 3, 2017, said that the “victories achieved in Syria and Iraq are victories for the resistance axis”. These remarks coincide with the rhetorical escalation by Hezbollah against a large number of Arab countries.
This persistent behavior by Hezbollah and its regional sponsors tips the balance of confrontation for Arab States, as manifested in the stated positions of some Arab officials and leaders of the Future Movement in Lebanon about the approaching confrontation with Hezbollah and reassessing the political partnership with it.
Possible Scenarios
Hariri’s resignation will lead to the increasing complexities of the situation in Lebanon and the options of internal and regional powers are likely to be governed by two scenarios:
1- Reconsidering the settlement. This scenario hinges on the rationality and realism of Hezbollah and the alliance it leads, as well as Iranian calculations. This approach rests on that Hezbollah makes multiple confidence-building concessions, similar to those made by Hariri earlier in last year’s agreement. At the forefront of such concessions is, may be, to accept the formation of a new government without being represented in it, respecting the policy of disassociation by pulling out of Syria, and stopping the interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries.
2- Eruption of internal crises. This is the worst scenario for the Lebanese state, as the intransigence of Hezbollah and its inclination toward escalation will spark off several constitutional and military crises.
At the constitutional level, there is a possibility that a fait accompli government, associated with Hezbollah, will be formed, causing instability in Lebanon and the Middle East and disrupt the coming legislative elections in May 2018, and thereby impede the transition of power.
At the military level, Hezbollah may draw Lebanon into new military confrontations with Israel due to the party leadership’s insistence on developing its military arsenal as a deterrence against Tel Aviv. On the other hand, Israel seeks to anticipate this possibility and launch preemptive strikes to destroy the party’s arsenal. In addition, there are mounting regional and international pressures on Lebanon due to Hezbollah’s military interventions in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, and its threats to the security of Arab countries.
This conforms with what Robert Kaplan said in his book “The Revenge of Geography” about the adverse consequences of Iran’s regional policies and its sponsorship of terrorism through its alliance with Hezbollah on Iran’s regional power itself. Kaplan stressed that Iran’s regional role will remain limited as long as it follows the same hostile policies based on exporting terrorism, and pushing Middle East countries to team up with each other to cope with regional threats.
To conclude, it can be argued that Hariri’s resignation serves as a final warning to safeguard Lebanon's internal stability, which forms a “Buffer State” separating regional threats from the Arab region. The resignation and its contexts confirm that countering the aggressive policies of Iran and its allies and their sponsoring of terrorism remains a top priority for Middle East regional security.
