Syria Civil War Causes Return Of Saudi Influence to Lebanon

Saudi Arabia is seeking to inherit Syria’s role in Lebanon, which began in the 1970s and lasted until Syrian troops withdrew from the country following accusations that Syria was behind Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination in 2005.

Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Lebanon has undergone many phases. During the rise of Nasserism, Riyadh espoused in Lebanon a policy of opposition to the Egyptian leader. After Gamal Abdel Nasser’s death in 1970 and the beginning of the Lebanese civil war and the growth of Syrian interference there, Riyadh vacillated between having an adversarial, peaceful or even harmonious relationship with Damascus in relation to Lebanon.

During the last 10 years, Lebanon has become akin to a mirror of the sometimes intimate, and other times strained, relationship between Riyadh on one end and the Damascus-Tehran alliance on the other. The last harmonious period Syria and Saudi Arabia had in Lebanon occurred following King Abdullah’s initiative aimed at reconciling with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the 2008 Arab Economic Summit in Kuwait. This led to the Lebanese adopting the term “seen-seen” (Arabic for S-S) to describe the Syrian-Saudi Arabian accord relating to the management of the Lebanese crisis. This accord, in turn, led to Lebanon enjoying a period of political calm and the formation of a national unity government headed by Riyadh’s most prominent ally, former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, which included members of Hezbollah and representatives of all the components of Lebanon’s incongruous political factions.

But, the S-S understanding soon collapsed, with Hezbollah turning against Hariri’s cabinet. The reason was that Damascus, under Iranian pressure, had forsaken another of its agreements, namely to work together toward guaranteeing that Ayad Allawi, and not Nouri al-Maliki, became prime minister of Iraq.