by debkaFile
Whatever the case, Hariri’s flight to Saudi Arabia must be seen in the light of the events leading up to it and its consequences.
Saad
Hariri resigned as Prime Minister of Lebanon Saturday, Nov. 4. Speaking
from Riyadh, he accused Iran and Hizballah of plotting his
assassination, and said he would not be returning to Beirut for the time
being.
Hariri boarded a plane to Saudi Arabia straight
after meeting in Beirut Friday with Ali Akbar Velyati, Iranian supreme
leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s senior adviser on foreign affairs. .
In the convoluted, lethal politics of Lebanon, Saad
Hariri, 47, has changed his spots time after time before he took office
last November as the head of a broad coalition government, including
his own Sunni-led Future Movement and the Shiite Hizballah.
He has always lived in the shadow of the 2005
assassination of his father, prime minister Rafiq Hariri, who died in a
huge explosion in Beirut that was contrived by Syrian intelligence and
Hizballah agents, killed 21 other people and kept the country in turmoil
for years.
After repeated visits to Saudi Arabia in the last
few days, Hariri announced his resignation as prime minister in a
televised broadcast from Riyadh. He accused Iran and Hizballah of sowing
“fear and destruction” in several countries, including Lebanon. “We are
living in a climate similar to the atmosphere that prevailed before the
assassination of martyr Rafiq al-Hariri,” he said. “I have sensed a
covert plot to target my life.”
As recently as July 25, Hariri stood on the White
House lawn in Washington beside President Donald Trump. He came to
Washington to sell Trump on a plan for the Lebanese army to take part in
a military operation led by Iran, Syria and Hizballah to root out the
Islamist State and Nusra Front strongholds embedded in the
Syrian-Lebanese border region.
The US President enthusiastically embraced the
plan. However, neither Trump nor Harari – and even more surprisingly,
Israel – grasped that the scheme for ousting the jihadists also opened
the door for Iran to gain another segment of its strategic corridor via
Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean.
The Lebanese Sunni politician made several visits to Saudi Arabian in the last few days. His most recent was last Tuesday, Oct. 31, when he sat down with Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. Sources in Riyadh reported Saturday that, upon returning home, he escaped an assassination plot hatched by Iran and Hizballah. This may or may not be true. If it is, why would the Lebanese politician agree to meet Velyati on Friday?
Whatever the case, Hariri’s flight to Saudi Arabia
must be seen in the light of the events leading up to it and its
consequences.
- Hariri himself contributed to the Iranian/Hizballah success in
solidifying their grip on Beirut when, in October 2016, he helped the
Christian leader Michel Aoun, friend of Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah,
become president of Lebanon, by joining a deal between the three rival
factions of Lebanon, his own Sunnis, the Christians and the Shiites. He
also stood by when the national Lebanese army was made into an
operational arm of Hizballah, a step that gave Nasrallah the leeway for
sending his troops to fight for Bashad Assad in Syria.
In the light of these actions, Saudi Arabia cut its longstanding family ties with Prime Minister Hariri. - Iranian and Hizballah sources attributed his flight to Riyadh to a conspiracy against them hatched between President Trump and Prince Muhammad, or more precisely US and Saudi secret services. But there is no denying its immediate consequence: Iran and its Shiite puppet have come out on the top of the political heap in Beirut and strengthened their control of Lebanon’s border with Israel, after shortening their distance to Israel’s border from Syria.
debkaFile
Source: https://www.debka.com/lebanese-pm-hariri-steps-strengthening-iranianhizballah-grip-beirut-israeli-border/
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