SAUDI ARABIA v. IRAN. . .IN LEBANON. NEXT STOP: YEMEN..

Updated: 1/14/06


Saudi Arabia, in close coordination with Empire’s mandarins, wants to ease America’s nightmare in Iraq. It's not a selfless act: The Kingdom needs U.S. troops for protection against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Experience has shown that American troops are not welcome on Saudi territory. Iraq therefore is the place of choice to house them. Kuwait (where the Islamists are quite influential) and Al-Adid (in Qatar) may not be hospitable or large enough.

As a consequence, a disjointed Saudi policy is evolving: Contain the Islamic Republic by buying out its presence in the Arab periphery.

One fringe benefit of this policy: The Israel lobby has eased its campaign against the Kingdom, a weapon it has used in the United States. After all, by standing up to Iran, the Kingdom finds itself in Israel's camp. One therefore wouldn't expect the Israel lobby to keep up its financing of books and publications against Saudi Arabia, would it?

With an income that has about quadrupled in the past couple of years, the Kingdom is now the train that can. Or it thinks it can.

(The Kingdom, Russia, Iran, and China can thank the Greenspan-Bush dollar glut for their increased wealth and concomitant power. Refer to the earlier article, “An Imperial Blind Spot..”)

In Israel/Palestine, Saudi King Abdallah has recently lent a financial hand to the Palestinian Authority, the alternative to the Iranian-funded Islamists. But here, the possibilities for success are minimal since the Israelis will need 2000 more years to come to terms with the fact that they have to work with--not against--some Palestinian leader(s). Logically, better work with even Hamas than wait for a new and larger generation that is even less compromising. But logic has never been the hallmark of any state's national consensus.

Currently, the most revealing aspects of the Kingdom’s invigorated foreign policy , by far, are the Kingdom’s initiatives in Lebanon.

And therein, my dear Watson, lies the possibility–maybe even probability–of a bloodbath.

Three Lebanese personalities are currently in the Kingdom, invited there by its government:

--The Sunni Prime Minister, Fuad al-Saniora;

–-the Sunni Deputy to Parliament, Saad al-Hariri; he is Mr. Saniora’s political boss; and

–-the Shia Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri.

Mr. Saniora and Mr. Hariri control the (Saudi) money. Mr. Berri controls armed Shia Amal, a para-military organization that competes with armed Shia Hizbollah.

What’s Hizbollah?

It’s a political party with a solid popular base among the Lebanese Shias. Its men and women had defeated the Israeli army in South Lebanon, forcing it to withdraw back to Israel. (They used the same weapons the Iraqis are using against U.S. troops.) It's also built around the provision of needed services and doesn't suffer from extreme corruption--somewhat of an Arab specialty.

Is that all? A local political party?

No, that’s not all. Hizbollah is also an extension of the regional strategy of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its junior ally, Syria.

Do Amal and Hizbollah get along?

Yes, though not always. But, you see, when the United States began to tilt towards the Arab Sunnis in Iraq and the region [Refer to the earlier article, “The Arab Street Marches Forward”] Hizbollah and Amal closed ranks. Their objective: To balance in Lebanon the pro-American block that is headed by Saad al-Hariri.

Iran and Syria probably had much to do with the two Lebanese Shia organizations coming closer. Iran pays them, and Syria and Iran supply them with weapons.

But what are the three Lebanese leaders doing in Saudi Arabia? They’re Lebanese, right; so shouldn’t they be negotiating at some hotel on the shores of that great blue sea?

You’re right; they should. But there’s no money on the shores of that great blue and old sea--and hardly any fish, either. In sharp contrast, there’s plenty of money on the shores of the Persian Gulf. For as long as the kingdom’s income from oil is huge, you can expect all Lebanese leaders to be Saudi at heart.

Who would you say is the most important of the three leaders?

Mr. Berri. He is the Kingdom’s most important Lebanese guest. Why? Not only does Mr. Berri head the para-military Amal; he also carries a lot of weight within the ranks of the Lebanese armed forces whose recruits are predominately Shia. They owe him their secure jobs!

I don’t understand: Why would that make Mr. Berri’s Saudi Arabia’s most important Lebanese guest?

The answer: If they can persuade (pay) Mr. Berri to contain Hizbollah, they would diminish Iranian and Syrian influence in Lebanon. Right?

I see your point. Out of curiosity, what would you say Mr. Berri’s price tag is?

It’s got to be high since a virtual bloodbath is certain to ensue should Mr. Berri’s Amal move against Hizbollah. Not to mention that the Palestinian refugees will come to Hizbollah’s aid. Rumor has it that Iran spends around $100 million per year in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia will have to spend a few hundreds of millions if it is to make a dent.

But isn’t there an easier way to do all of this--to dislodge Iran and Syria from Lebanon?

Yes there is. There exists a blood-less option. But you'd need Israel's cooperation. You’d need Israel to strike a deal with Syria and withdraw from the Golan–all the way to pre-June 5, 1967 lines. The Saudis and Empire’s mandarins are helpless on that.

So you're telling me that what they are doing will not help much? Why are they doing it then?


They need to place pressure on Iran so that the Islamic Republic will take it easy on U.S. troops in Iraq. Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries have never been known for the excellence of their armies. Iraq in the past had provided deterrence against Iran. Now they only have U.S. troops to protect them. They dread the thought of being left alone to face the Islamic Republic.


The Saudis and the imperial mandarins of course would do much better if they can get Israel to strike a deal with Syria and return the entire Golan back. But that's not going to happen--not without the historic necessity of a war of liberation, something similar to what Hizbollah did in south Lebanon, and to what the Islamists are doing in Gaza and on the West Bank. Syria is doing this through Lebanon. Countries simply don't withdraw because they are wise. They're not. They're built around a stiff national consensus which lacks flexibility, and is only altered after defeats.


(There's a glimmer of hope--but only a glimmer. Israel has recently announced that it would allow the Palestinians of occupied East Jerusalem to vote in the planned --though unlikely to take place on time--future Palestinian elections.)


You see, the Saudis and the Americans can't sit idle just because they cannot do something correctly. These are men with jobs (to quote George Castanza) and they have to justify these jobs. So they bring in Speaker Berri and try and divide Shia ranks in Lebanon--the next best thing to having Israel give back the Golan. If blood is spilt, it'll be (cheap) Shia Lebanese blood.

But isn’t Mr. Berri worried about the bloodbath you described?

You bet he is. Mr. Berri, as we write, is probably describing the bloodbath to his Saudi hosts. “I can’t do it,” he’s telling them. “we’ll be murdering each other. It’s happened before and it wasn’t pretty.”

The Saudi hosts’ retort: “We’d be glad to buy Hizbollah. What’s its price?”

Mr. Berri: “You don’t understand; this can’t be done in one stroke. The price will be high, but will have to be paid over an extended period of time."

He explains: "This will be a slow process where you send me money, and I buy allegiance from local Hizbollah lieutenants. My hope is that, little by little, I can wean away from Hizbollah its most effective junior commanders. Sure, there’ll be assassinations and kidnaping, since Iran will be increasing its counter-financing of Hizbollah. But that would beat an outright intra-Shia civil war.”

He sighs, “I can’t really deal with another civil war. I’d rather go back to Detroit and run my gas stations than live through another civil war.”

He takes a sip of his cardamon-scented Saudi coffee, sighs yet again, and takes a stab at raising the price tag: He reminds his hosts of a somber probability: “Hizbollah and Iran will try to assassinate me.”

(The Syrian president just returned home from a Saudi visit. His men will take a break for a while, in exchange for a stop to the Saudi anti-Syrian campaign and Saudi statements asserting the Arab identity of the Golan. The men and women of Hizbollah and Iran will take over for the time being.)

An American mandarin who speaks Arabic like a retard (and is proud of it) jumps in; his government has always had good relations with Mr. Berri--hence the fact that it never froze his assets. “We’ll raise the price, and get you the best American security firm to protect you,” he says. The Saudis smile at him; they know his Arabic sounds Arabic-like; but he is a mandarin, after all, and they now understand his logic, if not his Arabic. Mr. Berri is bewildered by what he heard: something that sounded like Arabic, but wasn't. The Saudis, seeing his bewilderment, hastily interpret into actual Arabic what the mandarin said. (In fact their Ministry of Information had provided the mandarin with an Arabic-Arabic inerpreter.)

Mr. Berri thinks to himself: How naive can these people be? He takes another sip of the aromatic coffee and thinks about the late Mr. Hariri and about the best security firm protecting him. He thinks about Iranian TNT exploding heavily-armored American tanks in Iraq.

But the lure of creating yet more jobs for the Shia, using Saudi money, now that he and the late Mr. Hariri had bankrupted the Lebanese state, is too powerful.

“Let’s start,” he says. “We’ll see where we go from here.” He continues: "Have you arranged the 'roles' each of us will play?"

(UPDATE: 1/14/06: The three Lebanese leaders are claiming that no agreement has been reached; that, in other words, the meeting in the Kingdom was a failure. That is to be expected. They wouldn't claim that an agreement has been reached to contain Hizbollah, would they? Then again, they could be telling the truth. Rest assured: Hizbollah, Iran, and Syria will be monitoring every move by Mr. Berri.)


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Your task, should you want to pass this exam, is to discuss among yourselves the following issues:

What’s the Islamic Republic thinking about? Will it accept the clipping of its wings in Lebanon? Will it retaliate against Saudi Arabia? If so, where and how? Will it give Mr. Berri breathing room to explain himself before it pops him? Or has the Islamic Republic accepted a tacit agreement to limit its activity to the prize Mr. Bush had handed it–Iraq--and accept in exchange the spread of Saudi influence in non-oil rich places like Lebanon? But why would it? It needs Lebanon badly to deter Israel from bombing its nuclear sites. It already owns the Iraqi piece of real estate–or at least the part that matters. What kind of a deal is this anyway?

Next stop for the Iranian-Saudi clash-by-proxies: Yemen.