July 29, 2010 - Now Lebanon - Guess who’s coming to Baabda?

Matt Nash

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz are expected to visit Beirut together on Friday to mediate and likely manipulate the game of brinksmanship undoubtedly going on behind closed doors, now that the word “crisis” is again appearing alongside “Lebanon” in headlines around the world.

Talk of tension intensified this month, particularly since Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on July 22 that Prime Minister Saad Hariri told him some party members would be indicted by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the 2005 assassination of Hariri’s father by year’s end, which Hariri allegedly denies.

The two heads of state, according to media reports and politicians’ statements, are first and foremost concerned with calming the situation in Lebanon and ensuring that renewed speculation that civil war is a formal charge away remains just that.

Even if the men – two of the three top regional patrons of local political parties – do not meet in Beirut, Abdullah is in Damascus Thursday to meet with Assad, where Lebanon will certainly be on the table, if only metaphorically, along with their own slowly-thawing relationship. (As of press time, Syria had not confirmed that Assad would attend.)

Should the meeting here take place, Rosanna Bou Mounsef, senior staff editor at An-Nahar, told NOW Lebanon, “what [the foreign heads of state] can do is bring all [Lebanese politicians] together to be calm and preserve the stability of Lebanon,” adding she’s not sure if that is just hopeful thinking.

Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, told NOW Lebanon he saw the regional maneuvers as a way for key players to brainstorm ways of handling what is arguably now an anticipated indictment.

After Nasrallah said Hariri would publically recognize that any Hezbollah members indicted were acting in an “undisciplined” way, Hariri himself told As-Safir on July 23 that he would divorce his personal reaction from his response “in my quality as the prime minister of Lebanon,” keen to maintain stability.

However, sweeping an indictment of Hezbollah members under the rug might not be enough, Salem said, depending on reactions from not only Arab states, but also Iran, Israel, the US and Europe, particularly given the row over Iran’s nuclear program and frequent talk of war with Lebanon coming from the south.

“If the indictments come out [as expected], Hezbollah cannot simply ignore everything as if it didn’t exist or as if it’s all an Israeli plot,” he said. “If the indictments are very serious, this will require backdoor negotiations with Hezbollah and Syria to see what sort of compromise or middle-of-the-road” approach can be taken.

Talk of clipping Hezbollah’s wings militarily – though not disarming it – might arise, and regional states might demand Hezbollah take a more moderate tone toward Israel.

The message from Abdullah and his regional allies in the coming weeks and months may be willingness to help Hezbollah and its allies absorb a shock from the tribunal, but only if met halfway, Salem said.

“Now this may be put on the table, but at the end of the day it’s up to Iran and Hezbollah if they want to negotiate their way out of this or simply rebuff everything and just hold tight,” he said, adding he expected negotiations.

“If they’re indicted, it’ll be hard for the Arab world, for Turkey, for Europe, for anybody to stand by them if they don’t respond,” he added.

Bou Mounsef, Salem and Andrew Tabler, the Next Generation Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who worked for years as a journalist in Syria, agreed that nudging Syria away from Hezbollah and Iran – the talk of the town late last year as Riyadh and Damascus began mending fences – is not only unlikely to be on Abdullah’s agenda, but also unlikely in the long term.

“The relationship between Syria and Iran is very, very strategic,” Bou Mounsef said. “It’s fruitful for Syria, and why not; it has not harmed [Syria] until now.” Just as Iran and Turkey are beneficial allies for Syria, Tabler noted the economic perks Damascus – which has unemployment concerns, falling oil revenues and is dealing with water problems related, though not exclusively, to a drought that has internally displaced 300,000 – can secure from closer ties to Saudi.

“The Saudis are very good because they just have cash,” Tabler said. “When you have an economy that is opening but not reforming, not rapidly changing, like Syria’s, you need these cash injections to keep the system going.”