The last tango dance in Beirut?

Michael Young

On October 8, just before the start of the parliamentary consultations to assign a prime minister the task of forming a new government, Saad Hariri, the first Sunni political figure in Lebanon, received an invitation from the prominent journalist Marcel Ghanem to appear on his talk show. Ghanem’s main goal was to find out the extent of Hariri’s willingness to replace the caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab.

The initial expectation was that Hariri would refuse, especially since Saudi Arabia, his main regional sponsor, likely did not want him to provide cover for what it considered to be the system dominated by Hezbollah. But Hariri not only agreed to name him Prime Minister, but considered him, as the most powerful Sunni political figure in the country, that he was the natural candidate for the position that is part of the Sunni share in the Lebanese sectarian system.

But Hariri’s speech that evening also included a message that was not adequately addressed. He was asked about his two former political allies, the Maronite Christian politician Samir Geagea and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who had opposed Hariri in previous months. Hariri responded by sending a veiled warning to Geagea and Jumblatt, who belong to two smaller sects, to the effect that if he, as a Sunni, reached an agreement with the two main Shiite parties, Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, then representatives of the other sects could join them if they wanted, but he would move forward with the agreement until If they didn’t.

So, in an unsurprising move, two days after Hariri’s media appearance, Jumblatt, whose reactions have always been a good barometer of Lebanese politics, has lined up alongside Hariri, who was commissioned by the House of Representatives to form a government on October 22. Jumblatt realized that compatibility between Sunnis and Shiites could lead to the isolation of other sects, including the Druze and Maronite sects.

Although the process of forming the government has stalled for months, Hariri has not changed his desire to form a new government based on his partnership with the Shiite duo. When Ghanem asked him about the possibility of the success of the government reform program necessary to receive foreign aid funds for Lebanon, Hariri replied that this was the main question he posed to Hezbollah. In other words, Hariri was clearly calling on the two Shiite parties to support his agenda.

Hariri’s approach is based on the ambiguity in his relations with the Saudis. It is true that he will never break with Riyadh, and he cannot bear the consequences of that, but he sought to expand the margin of maneuver available to him. There is no doubt that he remembers the humiliation he was subjected to at the hands of the Saudis in 2017, when he was detained in the kingdom against his will, according to what was rumored. But his position today seems to stem from his feeling that his relationship with the Kingdom may bring more benefit to both parties if he presses more, as his father did in the past. Hariri also realizes that if he stays outside the premiership for a long time, he will lose his value entirely in the eyes of the Saudis, which means the end of his political career.

The Saudis gave him no reason to ignore their desires, after he was politically excluded in recent years. At the same time, however, they did not publicly express their opposition to the government headed by him. Their ambassador echoed, in his private councils, that Hariri would have to put in place a specific program if he wanted to head the government. It seemed that Hariri fulfilled this condition when he told Ghanem that he aims to form a new government that will work to implement the economic reform plan drawn up by France for Lebanon and put forward by President Emmanuel Macron last September.

In addition, it appears that Hariri is currently enjoying great support among Sunnis at home, partly due to his disagreements with President Michel Aoun and his son-in-law Gebran Bassil over the prime minister’s powers in forming a government. Aoun contributed to strengthening Hariri’s position within his sect, by stressing that the President of the Republic is an equal partner to the Prime Minister in the process of forming the government, which is strongly rejected by a large number of Sunnis. The irony, then, is that Hariri is counting on Sunni support to facilitate rapprochement with Hezbollah and the Amal movement, which most Sunnis oppose.

Then, what is the meaning of Hariri’s aspiration for a Sunni-Shiite partnership, and on what basis can this be based? One of Hariri’s priorities is to remove Bassil, who, as a prominent Maronite politician, seeks to succeed Aoun in the presidency and bears the greatest responsibility for undermining Hariri’s recent government. Hariri considers that if he succeeds in ousting Basil, he will be in a position to reach the presidency of another Maronite with whom he has good relations, such as Suleiman Franjieh, who might give Hariri a greater margin to move as he pleases.

But this is based on two possible fallacies. The first is the assumption that Franjieh, if elected as president, will remain as he was before the presidency, that is, a friend of Hariri and hostile to Basil, but nothing guarantees that. For example, if Franjieh seeks to improve Lebanese relations with the Syrian regime, which he has always been close to, Hariri may become caught between the president’s desire on the one hand and Sunni voters who regard Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as a symbol of evil on the other hand. What will Hariri do then?

The second fallacy might be the assumption that Hariri can build a stronger relationship with Franjieh than with Hezbollah. Even if Hezbollah wants a better relationship with a widely represented Sunni political figure, it is more likely that it will choose to support the constitutionally weaker president in the face of the prime minister. Why? Because the Council of Ministers represents the executive authority in Lebanon, so pressure on its president allows influencing the government agenda.

Does this mean that Hariri should not strengthen his ties with the two Shiite parties? No, this is not what is intended, but simply that he is mistaken if he assumes that this partnership will secure him more than a slight margin for maneuver in some situations. That might be enough for Hariri. The reason is that one of the other implicit messages he passed in his interview with Ghanem is that he is not committed, in principle, to implementing economic reform, as much as he is determined to implement reforms to save the system and the stakes and interests of the political class in it. This is exactly what Hezbollah wanted, and for this reason it vehemently opposed the popular uprising that began in October 2019.

Time will tell whether Hariri’s bet will succeed, or whether it will push him to the same blind path he took in 2016, when it seemed to him that he could work with Aoun and Bassil. If Hariri suffers a new failure, he will be alone and his credibility will be completely destroyed.

Courtesy: (carnegie-mec.org)