by Mohamad Bazzi
The Arab League meeting capped a month in which the Middle East suddenly seemed to plunge toward a wider regional conflict.
On
Nov. 19, Arab foreign ministers gathered in Cairo for an hourslong
gripe session against Iran and its ally, Hezbollah. The Arab leaders
accused Tehran and the Lebanese Shiite movement of destabilizing the
Middle East, but they fell short of agreeing on concrete action.
The Arab League meeting capped a month in
which the Middle East suddenly seemed to plunge toward a wider regional
conflict. Saudi Arabia charged that a missile fired at its capital from
Yemen on Nov. 4 was provided to Yemeni rebels by Iran and constituted
"an act of war." Saudi leaders then pushed Lebanese Prime Minister Saad
Hariri into a surprise resignation during a trip to Saudi Arabia as a
way of exerting pressure on Iran and Hezbollah. "Wherever Iran is
involved, there is nothing but devastation and chaos," Hariri said in
his resignation speech on Nov. 4, which was broadcast from the Saudi
capital, Riyadh. He added, "Iran's hands in the region will be cut off."
These actions underscore a newly aggressive
Saudi foreign policy, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is
eager to challenge Iran more directly and has amassed tremendous power
under the rule of his father, King Salman.
But forcing Hariri to resign and ratcheting
up tensions with Iran over Yemen has backfired on the prince and his
advisers. The lack of support from fellow Arab leaders for tougher
action against Iran and Hezbollah shows that few Saudi allies are
willing to confront Iran directly.
Saudi Arabia had invested years of
political effort and tens of millions of dollars to support Hariri and
his political movement in Lebanon, especially after the assassination of
Hariri's father, Rafik, in February 2005. The elder Hariri had served
as Lebanon's prime minister for more than a decade, and he became the
country's most prominent Sunni leader and Saudi Arabia's most important
Lebanese ally.
Saad Hariri took office in late 2016,
forming a national unity government that included Hezbollah. The
power-sharing agreement was approved by Iran and Saudi Arabia. But in
recent months, Saudi leaders grew worried that Hariri, who has strong
ties to Western and Sunni Arab leaders, was becoming a fig leaf for a
government dominated by Hezbollah and its supporters, including Lebanese
President Michel Aoun.
Saudi leaders thought that they would be
able to push Hariri aside, withdraw political cover from Hezbollah, and
make it easier for Sunni Arab states – along with the United States and
Israel – to target the group. After an earlier round of sanctions, the
U.S. Congress is considering a new sanctions bill targeting Hezbollah
and its funders.
But after Hariri's sudden departure,
Lebanese from all political factions rallied around him and insisted
that his resignation was invalid because Saudi leaders coerced him. As
international concern grew that Hariri was being held captive by his
Saudi patrons, French President Emmanuel Macron invited him to Paris.
Hariri met with Macron on Nov. 18 and returned to Lebanon for the
country's Nov. 22 Independence Day celebrations.
Tensions have eased over the past week, and
it's unlikely that the latest crisis will escalate into a military
confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran. But while the prospect of
direct clashes between the two regional rivals has eased, their ongoing
proxy war is destabilizing the Middle East.
The two powers have backed competing
factions in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon since the United States
invaded Iraq in 2003. While the conflict is partly rooted in the
historical Sunni-Shiite split within Islam, it is mainly a struggle for
regional political dominance between Shiite-led Iran and Sunni-led Saudi
Arabia.
Their proxy battles, which now also involve
other powers like Russia and the United States, are at the root of much
of the death and destruction in the Middle East in recent years. They
have cost hundreds of thousands of lives, especially in Syria, where
more than 400,000 have been killed since the March 2011 uprising against
the regime of President Bashar Assad, which is supported by Iran and
Hezbollah. The Syrian war has also produced more than 5 million refugees
whose search for sanctuary has triggered political crises in
neighboring countries as well as Europe.
In January 2015, Saudi Arabia's King
Abdullah died after 20 years in power. He was succeeded by his brother
Salman, who quickly pursued a more aggressive foreign policy. Instead of
relying on U.S. military intervention and battling Iran through
surrogates and checkbook diplomacy, as his predecessor had done, the new
king and his advisers launched a war against Houthi, mostly Shiite,
rebels in Yemen in March 2015. As the war has dragged on, airstrikes by
Saudi Arabia and its allies caused most of the estimated 10,000 civilian
deaths.
Saudi Arabia is now bogged down in the
Yemen conflict. Despite intensive airstrikes and a blockade, Riyadh and
its allies still have not been able to dislodge the Houthis from Yemen's
capital, Sanaa.
Yemen has become a central arena of the
proxy battle, especially after Saudi Arabia's "act of war" accusation
against Iran. The kingdom claimed that the ballistic missile it shot
down on Nov. 4 en route to the Saudi capital had been smuggled into
Yemen in parts. Saudi officials say members of Hezbollah and the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps assembled the missile and then helped Houthi
rebels fire it from Yemeni territory. Iran and Hezbollah denied
involvement in the missile launch.
Saudi leaders have since scaled back their
efforts to declare Lebanon a hostile state. Already overstretched by
Yemen and embroiled in a diplomatic crisis with Qatar, the kingdom
cannot effectively challenge Hezbollah, Iran's main ally in Lebanon,
without assembling a broader Arab and international coalition. But this
is still a dangerous moment in the Middle East. As long as Iran and
Saudi Arabia view their rivalry as a zero-sum game – where one can only
gain at the expense of the other – there is a risk of miscalculation
that spirals out of control.
Mohamad Bazzi is a journalism professor at New York University and former Middle East bureau chief at Newsday.
Mohamad Bazzi
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/how-saudi-arabia-overreached-on-iran-lebanon/
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