-Analysis-
Iran’s revolutionary Shia regime and the conservative Saudi monarchy are again vying for influence in Lebanon following the election of a Western-backed president and formation of a government after a two-year hiatus. Reeling still from Israel’s battering of its regional proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, and the fall of its ally the dictator Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Islamic Republic will nevertheless try and retain as much of the influence it has enjoyed in the past 20 years through Hezbollah.
The Saudis and other Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf were influential here before the 2005 murder of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s prime minister through most of the 1990s, who had close ties to the kingdom.
That close connection was in large part a result of the role the Arab monarchies had played in forging the 1989 Taif Agreement to end decades of civil war. Today, their return is looking more likely under President Joseph Aoun and his prime minister, Nawaf Salam, both of whom enjoy the backing of Western powers and the United States in particular.
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Hariri was born in Sidon, but made his fortune as a construction magnate in Saudi Arabia. He returned to form a government in 1992 focused on rebuilding a homeland wrecked by the civil war that began in the 1970s.
Besides his expertise in construction, his Saudi and Gulf ties and the vast amounts of capital behind these, were undoubtedly of value to that end. And — persistent regional threats notwithstanding — he broadly succeeded in his reconstruction efforts, especially in Beirut, and in reviving some of the mercantile and financial clout Lebanon had enjoyed in the mid-20th century. The Arab world was once more placing money in Lebanese banks.
But Hariri was obstructing Hezbollah and its allies, Syria and Islamic Iran. His car-bomb murder on Feb. 14, 2005, most likely at the hands of foreign agents, altered the power equation in Hezbollah’s favor.
On the verge of bankruptcy
Today, the Saudis are returning hand in hand with powers like France and the United States, all of which had a role in Aoun’s election. Perhaps Saudi strength is tempered for now by the continued presence of Shia parties and those Christian factions backed by Tehran, which have succeeded in securing several key ministerial spots, including the economy ministry, in the Salam cabinet.
Lebanon’s fate is all-too reminiscent of other wealthy, prosperous states — like Iran or Venezuela.
For two years now Lebanon has been hovering on the verge of bankruptcy. The Lebanese pound lost 84% of its value over 2024, while devaluation provoked a run on deposits that led to banks refusing customers their own cash. The pound has plummeted in value from 1,500 to one U.S. dollar in the 1990s to around 100,000 earlier this year. As if people in Beirut actually had dollars to change.
More than 70% of the population has sunk into acute poverty over the past five years. The fate of a country once dubbed the Riviera of the Middle East is all-too reminiscent of other wealthy, prosperous states — like Iran itself or Venezuela — pushed into abject conditions thanks to revolutionary mayhem, militia violence and ideological dynamics.
Relying on Hezbollah
The situation of the country’s Shias, especially those living in Hezbollah-run zones, may have been better, at least until recently, given the militia’s welfare programs and handouts, paid for by Tehran. But Iranian monies are now reduced to a trickle, which makes the Saudi kingdom the country’s next big-money patron — on paper at least.
The Saudis are making aid and reconstruction payments conditional on Hezbollah’s disarmament and implementation of the 2006 UN Resolution 1701, which urges weaponry to be restricted to the Lebanese army, security forces and police. Its non-implementation effectively turned Lebanon into a country paralyzed by Hezbollah, and ultimately provoked the destruction caused by Israel’s recent onslaught against it.
Hungry people do not protest.
On a recent visit to Riyadh, President Aoun asked Crown Prince Muhammad bin-Salman to aid the army with at least US billion, without which, he said, there was no hope of disarming or supplanting Hezbollah. Lebanese economist Samir al-Nizari has told Kayhan-London that the “precondition to disarm the militias affiliated with the Islamic Republic is their political isolation, and the process can only begin by restarting the country’s economic engine so people are no longer forced to get by with aid money from Tehran. Only then will people take their distance from Hezbollah, which could no longer oppose disarmament if it lacks popular backing.”
Al-Nizari says Hezbollah has won and retained socio-political clout in past years by replacing an absent or dysfunctional state, so “it cannot be isolated without reordering the economy and improving people’s material conditions. Hungry people do not protest.”
The 2019 protests, he adds, “were against the rule of ineffective parties and especially Hezbollah. But, with an economic crisis gathering pace and the currency in freefall, people abandoned the streets. Worst of all, conditions have forced people to bite their tongue to receive minimal livelihood assistance and stop protesting altogether.”
