Middle East & Africa | The other palace coup

The Saudi hand in Saad Hariri’s resignation as Lebanese prime minister

Saudi Arabia effectively hands control of Lebanon to Iran and Hizbullah

Can I go now?

AS IF shuffling one government were too slight a task, Saudi Arabia’s ambitious young crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, has changed two. On November 4th, the same day as the Saudi purge, Lebanon’s prime minister, Saad Hariri, unexpectedly appeared on television to announce he was resigning. Although he said he was stepping down because his life was in danger—he denounced Iran and its powerful Lebanese ally, Hizbullah—there was little to disguise the Saudi hand in his statement. The announcement was recorded in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, and broadcast on a Saudi television channel. Since then he has stayed out of reach under Saudi guard and possibly under arrest.

A few days earlier the kingdom’s Gulf-affairs minister, Thamer al-Sabhan, had promised “astonishing” developments to topple Hizbullah, a Shia militia-cum-political-party that calls the shots in Lebanon.

At first glance Saudi Arabia’s desire to oust Mr Hariri, a Saudi-born Sunni, makes little sense. The kingdom and America had long supported him as a bulwark against Hizbullah. After taking office last December, Mr Hariri passed Lebanon’s first budget since 2005 and secured agreement for the first parliamentary elections since 2009. Tourism in Lebanon has been picking up. Agreements for offshore oil projects were in the offing.

With Mr Hariri out of the way, Saudi Arabia can now denounce Lebanon’s government as a stooge of Iran and its Shia proxy. It may have a point. The Taif agreement that ended Lebanon’s long civil war in 1989 disarmed all sectarian militias bar Hizbullah’s. That may have been justifiable when the group was fighting against Israel’s occupation of its self-declared “security zone” in the south. But since Israel withdrew its troops in 2000, the group has torpedoed every political and military attempt to make it lay down its weapons.

Rafik Hariri, Saad’s father and a popular former prime minister, was assassinated in 2005 when he tried to disarm the group. Several of its members are being tried in absentia in The Hague, where they are accused of involvement in his murder. And Israel’s efforts to defang Hizbullah during a short war in 2006 ended in stalemate. Since then the group has pushed far beyond its southern confines. In 2008 its militiamen briefly took over the capital, Beirut, and thousands of its fighters have fought against Sunni rebels in Syria.

They have returned battle-hardened. Earlier this year they defeated jihadists who flew Islamic State’s black flag over their encampments in Sunni parts of Lebanon’s mountainous north. Now Hizbullah’s green-and-yellow flags flutter above checkpoints on roads between Sunni villages. Its secret policemen round up dissenters and its fighters work closely with the supposedly neutral Lebanese army. No other force—the army included—can match its clout.

Yet Saudi talk of removing Hizbullah sounds like little more than bluster. The kingdom is already bogged down in one war with Iranian proxies in Yemen and could not sustain another. And even though Israel worries about Hizbullah’s growing arsenal of rockets and missiles, it will not fight to a Saudi timetable.

Still, Saudi Arabia has other cards to play. Without its financial backing, Lebanon will struggle to stave off bankruptcy. Saudi deposits prop up Lebanon’s banks and about 400,000 Lebanese nationals work in the Gulf, sending home a large chunk of the remittances that make up about 14% of Lebanon’s economy.

Mr Hariri’s resignation has already sent Lebanese bonds spiralling and prompted warnings of a cut in its credit rating. Financial sanctions that America imposed on Hizbullah in October will further tighten the screws. A donor conference on aid to 1.5m refugees that was expected before the year’s end could be postponed.

Hizbullah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is not one to buckle under pressure. But he may be forced to compromise to salvage the economy. The Saudis hope that popular pressure could force him to give priority to butter over guns.

Update (November 16th 2017): The original version of this article said that remittances make up 20% of the Lebanese economy. Estimates vary, but 14% is the latest figure from the World Bank.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline "The other palace coup"

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