Aug 22, 2013

Lebanese officials are holding their breath in worried anticipation of what might befall their country in the near future. The security and political situations already suggest that this small country may not be able to safely skirt the repercussions of events engulfing the region. It is now believed that Lebanon is not only being buffeted by the Syrian crisis, but also by the sectarian fighting in Iraq, which itself is now connected to events in Syria. The country is also being affected by the sometimes discreet, oftentimes open, and always wide-ranging tug-of-war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

A new conviction seems also to be making its way through the corridors of political power in Lebanon, according to which the country will not succeed in averting a fall into the looming precipice — unless an Iranian-Saudi agreement were to be reached in this regard. Current political realities do not, however, point to such an eventuality in the near term, as the Iranian-Saudi conflict appears to be at a peak, with international and regional circumstances colluding to prolong it.

The conflict’s most dangerous aspect, as far as Lebanon is concerned, revolves around Tehran and Riyadh both having chosen, so it seems, to use the Levant as their battleground, while they endeavor to safeguard the Gulf from the repercussions there. Any damage to Gulf security will directly affect their domestic situations at the geopolitical, security and economic levels.

The chronicles of the conflict in the Levant — from Iraq across Syria and Lebanon to Palestine — confirm that both the Saudis and Iranians are immersed in a cold war-style confrontation. In Iraq, for example, the Saudis are encouraging the Sunni community to rise up against the government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, an Iranian ally. In the meantime, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is backing Maliki’s war against his opponents in Iraq’s Sunni triangle.

In Syria, Iran’s support and arming of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is equaled in intensity by Saudi Arabia’s sponsorship of the Syrian Sunni opposition, composed of an amalgam of Salafists and defecting officers who have joined the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the most prominent among the defectors being its chief of staff, Gen. Salim Idriss.