On the 11th of November 1943, French forces raided the houses of several Lebanese officials, including the President Bechara Khoury and his Prime Minister Riad Solh, three days after the Lebanese Parliament had unilaterally abolished the French mandate in Lebanon. Emile Edde was appointed as President, the parliament was dissolved, and Lebanon’s leaders were arrested and imprisoned in the Rashaya citadel. France eventually yielded to Lebanese and international pressure, and the release of the prisoners on the 22nd of November has since been celebrated as the Lebanese Independence Day.

That was the last time a foreign country so obviously pressured a Lebanese Prime Minister to resign. Enter 2017.

Exactly 74 years later, on the 4th of November 2017, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri unexpectedly resigned from Saudi-Arabia, ending almost a year of stability and shared rule between Lebanon’s rival parties, blaming Hezbollah and Iranian interference, and citing assassination plots against him. Contrary to popular opinion, the resignation of a Sunni Prime Minister from a Hezbollah-led coalition ahead of parliamentary elections in 2018 made perfect political sense. There was however something fishy about that entire political development: Hariri had resigned from Saudi Arabia, in a previously recorded televised speech, using an extremely violent rhetoric, unseen since at least Hariri was last ousted from power in 2011.

The textbook definition of regional pressure

Ideally, Hariri’s resignation was a Machiavellian maneuver to win next year’s elections, except it wasn’t – in fact it might have put the entire electoral process in jeopardy. It was rather a result of Saudi pressure on the Lebanese Prime Minister who also happened to also be a Saudi-Lebanese citizen with a business empire in Saudi Arabia. The fishy resignation address was enough to raise suspicion, but a regional context of Saudi-Iranian political escalation, a succession crisis in Riyadh, as well as the arrest of several Princes in Saudi Arabia that exact same day was enough to highlight the amount of (financial? non-financial?) pressure the Saudis could have exerted on the premier to resign. Even in the aftermath of the resignation, Hariri didn’t head back to Beirut to officially present his resignation and instead stayed in Saudi Arabia for two weeks, fueling rumors that he was under house arrest and was being treated like the other arrested Princes in Saudi Arabia. The confusion in Hariri’s party, the Future Movement, even raised more eyebrows, and the party’s call for their leader to return home only added more substance to the rumors. By the end of the first week of the resignation, stories started emerging on how the Lebanese Prime-Minister was immediately treated as a prisoner from the moment he landed in Saudi-Arabia.

While both Saudi-Arabia and Hariri denied that the premier was forced to resign and was under arrest, increasing Lebanese and international pressure to clarify the situation led Hariri to take part in a live interview in order to prove that he was indeed free in Saudi-Arabia, but even that interview was full of awkward and uncomfortable moments for Hariri. And when it was eventually decided that Hariri would leave Saudi-Arabia to his first destination outside the gulf – France,  it looked as if the Prime Minister was going into exile (especially that the move was preceded by a visit from the French President to Saudi Arabia). Even the New York Times speculated that Hariri’s kids remained in Saudi Arabia as a leverage on the PM.

Winning the narrative

The foreign interference in Lebanese politics was so high this month even Lebanon’s politicians weren’t really understanding what’s happening at the beginning. The Lebanese President tried to stall at first, asking Hariri to come home, then considered the Premier to be under arrest when the President’s demands that the Premier returns to Beirut were ignored. Berri, probably in denial that something was happening outside his control, refused to accept the validity of the resignation, and Nasrallah quickly tried to win the narrative while trying to calm things down , considering that Hariri was being forced to resign, turning Hariri into a victim and Saudi Arabia into a culprit, and implying there was a rift between the regional and local leaderships of the anti-Hezbollah camp. I don’t think there’s anything more humiliating to Hariri than being defended by Nasrallah as a hostage in Saudi Arabia, and soon enough, almost every pro-Hezbollah party in the country embraced Nasrallah’s political stances. By defending Hariri and refusing to escalate, March 8 parties were successfully containing the Saudi political offensive on Hezbollah, which led to even more escalation from Saudi Arabia that considered Lebanon – via Hezbollah – had declared war on it, 2 days after the resignation, soon calling all Saudi citizens to leave Lebanon. Nasrallah would later on counter those stances on the 10th of November by saying the exact opposite thing the Saudis said. As for the stances of the rest of the Lebanese politicians, they should be regarded as temporary speeches that would vanish and reappear as new developments unravel between Saudi-Arabia and Iran, stances that also have absolutely no impact whatsoever on the de-facto state of Lebanese affairs. As Hariri eventually leaves Saudi-Arabia, the take-home message is that every minute Hariri spent more in Saudi-Arabia was a disaster for the Future Movement and his allies in Beirut. Foreign interference in Lebanese politics by a regional power hasn’t been as evident since at least 2005, and as a leader of a bloc that ironically calls itself “Lebanon first”, every single part of Hariri’s trip to Saudi Arabia backfired on his party, his Lebanese allies and Saudi Arabia. In the end, Hezbollah was winning in the chaos, which was not really a win for Hezbollah since it could have been what the Saudis wanted in the first place. Or is it?

The republic of (conspiracy?) theories

In fact, according to the first theory explaining the regional motives of the resignation, Saudi Arabia was removing Hariri from power in order to force the creation of an entirely pro-Hezbollah government as part of a plan to push Israel to go to war with Hezbollah. A second theory, fueled by Hariri’s meeting with Vilayati the day before the resignation happened, is that Hariri was trying to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran. A more developed version of this theory (bring the popcorn), circulated on Social media, is that Hariri resigned because he tried to plot – helped by the other arrested Princes – an Iranian-backed coup against the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohamad Bin Salman, a coup that was unraveled by the Crown Prince in the hours before the resignation and the arrests. Another theory claims that Saudi-Arabia was planning to replace Saad Hariri with his brother Bahaa’, with multiple parties secretly endorsing the Prime Minister’s brother (what is this, The Godfather?). Another, more simplistic theory, is that Saudi-Arabia was simply trying to escalate things with Iran as a distraction while the Crown Prince MBS consolidates power. Or perhaps Saudi Arabia simply wanted to escalate things with Iran in Lebanon after struggling to improve its influence elsewhere.

There is a fine line between theories and conspiracy theories, and in such a context, everyone is free to draw the line wherever he wants – The most important thing remains Popcorn. As Elias Muhanna from Qifa Nabki puts it: Saad Hariri is the Schrödinger’s Cat of politicians: Until Hariri emerges from the sealed box of Saudi Arabia  (feel free to replace “sealed box” with “house arrest”, “exile” or any other “leverage” on the PM), he is simultaneously prime minister and not prime minister of Lebanon, and it will be a while till we truly know and understand what happened in the Kingdom as well as the Saudi motives for the resignation.

The Saudi-Iranian Mandate for Lebanon

The common denominator for all those theories? It’s full of Saudi Arabia and Iran (on the bright side, not a lot of Syria).

There is too much foreign interference right now by Saudi Arabia and Iran, and when a Lebanese Prime-Minister resigns under pressure from Riyadh while Iran tries to make use of that resignation, know that the “independent” Lebanese Republic in 2017 is no more independent than the Lebanese republic was under the French Mandate in the 1930s. If a miracle somehow happens and politicians agree to proceed with the 2018 elections, Lebanese voters will have a choice: Either renew their trust in the 2009 members of the Parliament, confirm the Saudi-Iranian mandate for Lebanon and turn the country into an arena for proxy wars, or finally start heading towards a sovereign independent country that answers to no one but its people.

Lebanon’s ruling political parties and politicians might try to conceal this chaotic month with future calls of dissociation policy and coalition “happy ending” governments such as the ones we had to endure for the past decade. But as long as they are militarily equipped by one country, or pressured to resign by another, there will never be a free will in Lebanese politics.

Lebanon as whole is a country that is a hostage of Saudi-Iranian politics, and as the month of November 2017 made it perfectly clear, there is only one war that matters in Lebanon, and it shouldn’t be the Saudi-Iranian one on Lebanese soil. It’s the electoral war that rids Lebanon from the influence of both countries and the turmoil they bring with them. And that war is here.

To be honest here, the blog had always tried to figure out the little details of Lebanese politics without trying to rely on regional events. There was a certain beauty in the madness of Lebanese politics, but the madness is now erupting into a regionally induced chaos and Lebanon will be the first to pay the price. Lebanese politics always made a little bit of sense – except this time – and it’s for the simple reason that there is nothing Lebanese right now about Lebanese politics, which is why I will stop posting on the blog until the cloud of regional interference clears a little bit.

 

 

On the 4th of November 2017, one year after he was named Prime Minister (on the 3rd of November 2016), and in what might be the most unpredictable political stance of 2017, Prime Minister Saad Hariri unexpectedly resigned from his post of Prime Minister, citing Iranian interference, Hezbollah’s arms, and fear of assassination as motives for his resignation, and opening a new chapter in Lebanese politics.

An unpredictable and unexpected resignation

Until the last days of October 2017, things seemed to work out relatively smoothly between the anti and pro-Syrian regime parties of the Lebanese ruling coalition, with the appointment of a Lebanese ambassador in Damascus being the latest example of political events that could have blown up the coalition but didn’t. Other examples include state budget talks, voting an electoral law, passing a new tax law, and a new oil tax law. True, there were numerous confrontations between the ruling parties in 2017, but for the first time since at least 2010, there was peace and love in Lebanese politics. Who would have thought in 2009 that Hariri would name Aoun as his presidential candidate in 2016? That Aoun would afterwards name Hariri prime minister? That a government could be formed so fast in Lebanon? That they could agree on the garbage file or any other file? That an electoral law could ever be agreed upon by almost all of the ruling parties?

The idea that Amal, Hezbollah, the Future Movement, the FPM, the LF and the PSP could happily coexist together in a government led by Hariri in a Aoun Presidency seemed so surreal that everyone got adapted so quickly to it, and Hariri’s resignation will come as a shock for many Lebanese who got used to the climate of political cooperation between the anti and pro-Syrian regime parties that had been flourishing since last autumn.

Actually, not that unpredictable and unexpected

There remained however a major obstacle that couldn’t let that unconditional love (note: Read “unconditional love” with sarcasm) thrive in Lebanese politics: Lebanon’s parliament recently voted an electoral law based on proportional representation, which meant that it was now impossible for the Lebanese ruling parties to run together on the same ticket because such a scenario would open the door for third-option parties to thrive on the absurdity of such an alliance, and threaten the status-quo just like what happened in the 2016 Beirut municipal elections – except that this time the newcomers would be able to actually win seats because of the new proportional electoral system. It’s wiser for the traditional political parties to run against each other than to run together against a third option. As an example, it makes more sense for the Aounist electorate to vote against Hariri and for the FM electorate to vote against Aoun, and it would be easier for all the traditional parties to win back their electorates by creating sectarian tensions against one another than it is to win elections by proving that their cozy comfy alliance with a previous Civil War rival is healthy (also read this with sarcasm) and that they aren’t corrupt.

In the Lebanese political context, hate is more efficient when it comes to winning votes. Hariri’s resignation, including his violent anti-Iran quote in his resignation speech (“Our nation will rise as it did in the past and it will cut off the hands that are reaching for it”) was an essential requirement for him to distance himself from Hezbollah – with whom the Future Movement has been sharing power SINCE 2014 – and re-establish the two camps that shaped 2009 pre-electoral Lebanon: The March 8 and March 14 coalitions.

The Mikati-Rifi prophecy?

The only thing more predictable than Lebanese politicians is Lebanese politicians, and even in their unexpected Jumblatt-like stances, like Hariri’s recent resignation, Lebanese politicians do the same polititcal maneuvers when they are forced into similar circumstances. Hariri’s violent breakup with Hezbollah was thus likely  to happen anytime before the end of 2017: In my last post on this blog, in August, I had said that with the objectives of the ruling parties completed in parliament […] one should expect an environment of political escalation between Hezbollah and the FM as they progressively start to brace themselves for elections.

In fact, the unpredictable nature of Hariri’s resignation was part of a very predictable maneuvering pattern in Lebanese politics. On the 4th of November 2017, 13 years and 2 weeks after his father resigned from the Prime-Minister post ahead of scheduled elections, Saad Hariri did the exact same thing. But the Hariris are not the exception. In fact, they tend to be the rule: On the 22nd of March 2013, Najib Mikati resigned from the premiership of a Hezbollah-led cabinet, 2 months ahead of scheduled elections.  Less than three years later, on the 22nd of February 2016, two months before scheduled municipal elections, Ashraf Rifi also resigned from the Justice ministry of another cabinet in which Hezbollah was participating.

In a way, 2013 Najib Mikati and 2016 Ashraf Rifi had warned us that a day like the 4th of November 2017 would eventually happen:  It is unwise for a Sunni politician to run for elections while being allied to Hezbollah. And for a politician who elected Hezbollah’s candidate as President, running for elections as a sitting Prime-Minister of a Pro-Hezbollah President after sharing power with Hezbollah for almost 4 years, is even more unwise. The timing of Hariri’s *unexpected* resignation is perfect: It gives an impression that Hariri is not a pawn of Aoun or Hezbollah (since he didn’t apparently consult with any of his partner in power before proceeding with his resignation), and sends an other interesting message. In fact, Hariri’s resignation from being Aoun’s Prime Minister happened outside Lebanon, in Saudi Arabia, and is technically very similar in terms of humiliation to what the FPM and Hezbollah did to Hariri when they brought his government down while he was meeting Obama in the United-States in 2010 (Hariri has probably waited for this moment for 7 years). It is usually preferable that the PM resigns from Baabda palace, and Hariri’s method of resignation, far away in Saudi-Arabia, is a message to both the FPM and Hezbollah: Aoun knew of the government resignation by phone. Revenge is a dish best served cold. Or via a phone call.

The resignation also creates many problems for Hariri’s Sunni rivals: Should the new designated Prime Minister come from outside the Future Movement or without its blessing, he will be definitely seen as Hezbollah’s puppet before elections. In a way, Hariri’s timing and place of resignation made it quite impossible for any of his major rivals to thrive instead of him in the premiership or make use of their new Prime Minister post for the upcoming elections, and the Prime Minister job opening at the Grand Serail will be a trap for any Sunni politician with an ambition to topple Hariri in the future. Just ask the Karamis of Tripoli.

The first consequence of the 2017 Adwan electoral law

One of the worst aspects of the new electoral law that was designed by Bassil and Adwan started to unravel: While the electoral law was based on proportional representation for the first time in the history of Lebanese parliamentary elections, it implemented a weird Kadaa-based preferential voting system that made it easier for sectarian parties to pick up MPs from their sect (so that the FPM and LF manage to win the Christian seats), which would potentially lead to even more sectarian-based political campaigning. A Hezbollah-FM electoral alliance would thus not be as efficient for those parties, and the two rivals would benefit the most from the new electoral system and would pick up same-sect seats the most if they run against each other instead of running on the same-ticket. The new electoral law doesn’t make it easy for cross-sectarian alliances to thrive, so Sunni-dominated-FM and Shia-dominated Hezbollah had no electoral reason to keep their alliance alive and run on the same ticket (like they did in 2005) .

In a way, it also helps explains why Hariri weirdly resigned from Saudi-Arabia: He could have resigned from the Grand Serail in Beirut, but he wanted to send an exclusive message to Lebanon’s Sunni population that he was the Kingdom’s chosen Lebanese politician, and that not voting for him in the next elections would be a vote for Iran. The Adwan-Bassil new electoral law gave a possibility for politicians to win seats from the same sect in a proportional system, and the resignation in Saudi-Arabia was a bold move from Hariri, with one goal: Turn the sectarianism button on, and rally as much as possible of the Sunni electorate in order to get the most possible religiously homogenous  parliamentary bloc in 2018.

A magnet for the LF?

Most of the events months of September and October 2017 went unnoticed in Lebanese politics, with the regular bickering between Lebanese politicians progressively escalating, inspired by the approaching elections. There were however several stances and political developments that set Hariri on this path: On the 9th of September, the deputy-PM and the LF’s highest ranking politician in the executive power said that Hezbollah infringes on Lebanon’s sovereignty, on the 13th of September Geagea was criticizing Iran, on the 16th of October, Geagea said that the return of Assad’s influence to Lebanon was a red line, and by the 23rd of October, Geagea was threatening a resignation of the Lebanese Forces ministers from the cabinet. Geagea and Gemayel had travelled to Saudi Arabia at the end of September, and while the LF and the FM were taking major anti-Hezbollah position in the government, new tensions started appearing when Berri took advantage of a chaotic context regarding the preparations for the elections, and said that the parliamentary polls should be brought forward if the magnetic card wouldn’t be used, which kind of stressed out everyone even more, eventually proposing a draft law to slash the parliament’s extended term. The debate on the mechanism of the next elections continued for two months, creating tensions between the FPM and the FM, with interior minister Machnouk arguing that “the pre-registration of voters has become inevitable,” while seeing an  “inability” to create voter cards—as per Bassil’s insistence– due to lack of time.

Regional influence and local politics

In his last cabinet meeting, a couple of hours before he resigned in Saudi Arabia, Hariri had reportedly told his cabinet that Saudi Arabia was “keen on Lebanon’s stability”, despite the fact that it was previously reported this week that Hariri was asked by Saudi-Arabia to distance himself from Aoun, and that it was also previously rumored in the mainstream media that the same things were asked of Geagea and Gemayel who visited the Kingdom in September. Saudi Arabia’s role in the resignation is crystal clear, and Hezbollah will probably use Hariri’s place of resignation against him (in electoral campaigning) till the end of time.

Several developments probably led to the resignation. The FPM-FM (Bassil-Machnouk) heavy political clash on the electoral mechanism of voting may have played a part in the collapse of 2016 Lebanese coalition , Saudi-Arabia’s rising influence and Hariri’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia where he met a Saudi minister who had taken a hobby of publicly criticizing Hezbollah might have given Hariri the Saudi-Arabaian green light (reminder that Hariri also resigned from Saudi-Arabia), but Geagea distancing himself from Hezbollah (inspired by the talks he did in Saudi-Arabia at the end of September?) should be seen as the main culprit in the collapse of the LF-FPM-FM-Hezbollah alliance. Hariri, via the timing of this resignation, was also probably trying to attract the LF away from the FPM by building on the Lebanese Forces tensions with Hezbollah in the cabinet. The LF are at a stage where they should choose between an electoral alliance between the FPM or the FM, and the FM exiting the Hezbollah-FPM-FM-LF coalition (via Hariri’s resignation) at a time when Geagea was criticizing  Hezbollah, could push the LF away from an electoral alliance with the FPM. It was Hariri who pushed Geagea towards Aoun in the first place when he endorsed Frangieh as his presidential candidate in 2015, and now an opportunity to bring Geagea back into the fold of a March 14 alliance had presented itself. Another key political development that played a part in the resignation was the reconciliation between Hariri and Jumblatt on the 9th of October, followed by the PSP’s criticism of Syrian regime via Marwan Hamadeh at the end of October.

With an alliance with the LF and the PSP now possible, Hariri’s abrupt resignation was possibly the first step towards achieving his ultimate goal of reforming the 2009 March 14 alliance ahead of the 2017 elections.  It remains to be seen how Geagea and Jumblatt would eventually react to the resignation and time will tell if Hariri’s maneuver will work, especially that the electoral law has changed, but it was nevertheless the best timing for Hariri to proceed with his move, a move that was necessary if he wanted to truly challenge in the next parliamentary elections while being seen by the Sunni electorate as a leader of a coalition that rebelled against the status-quo rather than a puppet Prime-Minister who had allied himself with the parties he initially ran against in the 2009 elections.

The republic of chaos-control

Four days prior to Hariri’s resignation, Aoun was celebrating the achievements of his first year in power, while not long ago, Hariri was also doing the same. When elections come, there will be a struggle between the FM and the FPM to define who was the main man behind the success, and who was the culprit behind the shortcomings of the cabinet. A particular example of shortcomings was during July and August when the Lebanese ruling parties allowed and banned rival protests regarding Syrian refugees, started a war in the Arsal and Ras Baalbak outskirts, and eventually set free hundreds of ISIS terrorists, while using all those distractions to pass a new tax law that was eventually deemed unconstitutional.

When they fail, Lebanese politicians change the political debate at a speed that makes it difficult for anyone to keep up with, while making sure they remain at the epicentre of any new political debate. This method of chaos control is frequently used by the traditional parties and the new political developments in Lebanon turned the Summer of 2017 into a distant past for everyone involved, while Hariri’s resignation from premiership at a time when the government was the least efficient leaves the responsibility of the fiasco of the Summer of 2017 resting solely on the shoulders of the FPM (via Aoun), although it is too soon to see how the Lebanese parties plan on campaigning before elections.

Another parliamentary extension?

Governmental resignations are not very promising when it comes to holding elections on time, and the last time a government resigned before elections in 2013, we ended up with 3 parliamentary extensions (it took 11 months for the government to be formed and the elections were due to be held in 2 months). Lebanese politicians now have the perfect opportunity to procrastinate regarding the formation of a new government that would oversee elections, and their true resolve on holding parliamentary elections on time will be tested soon enough. The sooner a new government is formed the more likely elections will happen.

The FM and the FPM knew exactly what they had to expect in government when they decided to go forth with their alliance in 2016, and the entire drama that will unravel in the next few weeks only has one goal: Electoral campaigning, and the reconstitution of the March 8 and 14 alliances that were shattered by the Presidential elections.

In other words, expect a lot of “Hariri is a Saudi puppet who resigned in Saudi-Arabia” vs “Iran wants to control Lebanon and we will not accept its meddling” in the coming weeks, and welcome back to 2008, Lebanon. It’s been a while.

This was the 31st post in a series of bimonthly / monthly posts covering developments in Lebanese politics since June 2014. This post is about the months of September and October 2017.