Rich Gulf patrons turn the screws on a bankrupt Lebanon
Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies are losing patience with a state under the shadow of Iran and Hizbollah
The row between a ruined Lebanon and its rich erstwhile patrons in the Gulf is tragic. It may start closing off Lebanon’s last significant cash inflow as its economy nears total implosion with almost three-quarters of its people sunk into poverty.
Saudi Arabia and its closest Gulf allies, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain, last week expelled Lebanon’s ambassadors and recalled their own envoys. The Saudis have banned Lebanese imports. But the spectre of restrictions on flights, visas and, above all, a hit to remittances to Lebanon from the Gulf is a greater threat.
Lebanese workers in the Gulf typically repatriated $3bn-$4bn a year, regional economists say, before the de facto collapse of Lebanon’s banking system over the past two years shut them out of their accounts. Though the banks are, in effect, confiscating their savings, the flows continue outside them in order to keep Lebanese families afloat.
The current storm has been in the offing so long it is mystifying that the Saudi-led boycott of Beirut took this long to materialise. When the Sunni Gulf looks at Lebanon, it sees the sentinel of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on the Mediterranean. In Hizbollah, the Shia paramilitary force that dominates an enfeebled Lebanese state, it sees the spearhead of Tehran in the Levant and Gulf.
The crisis erupted when George Kordahi, information minister in the new Lebanese government, gave a TV interview criticising the Saudi-led war in Yemen against Iran- and Hizbollah-backed Houthi rebels. The Saudis have been trying to disengage from this military fiasco and humanitarian catastrophe, as the UAE already largely has. But the Houthis keep winning. The timing of the Lebanese comments was bad.
Kordahi protests that he recorded the interview before being named minister. True, but disingenuous. A TV veteran, he was made rich and famous by MBC, a media giant owned by the Saudi royals, where for 10 years he hosted the Arabic version of Who wants to be a Millionaire? He parted company with the Saudis for siding with Bashar al-Assad’s butchery of a Sunni-led rebellion in Syria. Minister or not, he knew which hornets’ nest he was poking.
It was not as if Gulf rulers were champing at the bit to ride to Lebanon’s rescue, as so often in the past. The Gulf financed much reconstruction after the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war. After the 34-day war between Hizbollah and Israel in 2006, a $5.7bn emergency rebuilding plan was assembled in five weeks, most of it from the Gulf, former ministers say.
The idea that white horses will keep emerging from the Arabian Desert to save Lebanon’s political elites from their folly is an enduring myth. In October 2019, then prime minister Saad Hariri held talks in Abu Dhabi about leasing the UAE control of Beirut’s port and airport, a former ally said. This came to nothing and his government fell to a civic uprising. After the port blast of August 2020, the UAE may feel it dodged not so much a bullet as a mushroom cloud. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia banned all fruit and vegetable imports from Lebanon earlier this year because some were used to conceal drugs shipments.
The Lebanese too have grievances, chief among them that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, effectively held Hariri hostage in Riyadh in 2017. But the context is important to the present row.
Hariri had enabled Michel Aoun, the Hizbollah-allied Christian leader, to reach the presidency in 2016. Riyadh, angry it was funding an Iranian takeover, cancelled $4bn in military aid. By 2018, an alliance of Aounists and Shia with Hizbollah at its core won a parliamentary majority. Ali Akbar Velayati, eminence grise to Iran’s supreme leader, greeted Aoun’s triumph as a victory for Iran and Hizbollah.
The geopolitical context is no less important. It has been clear since the dying days of the administration of Donald Trump — which appeared to give carte blanche to Mohammed bin Salman and his peers — that the US “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran was empowering hardliners in Tehran and sealing their regional victories. To that, Joe Biden’s team seems to have no answer.
Kordahi could hardly resign or be dismissed once Hizbollah publicly supported him. If he goes now, Hizbollah will expect action to hobble the judicial probe into last summer’s port blast. Its recent agitation against presiding judge Tareq Bitar caused the worst street-fighting in Beirut for more than a decade.
Lebanon is not like Qatar, the gas-rich emirate that survived a Saudi-led blockade in 2017-21 because it is wealthy and has friends. Lebanon is bankrupt and bereft.