On November 10, early in the morning, it was announced that US President Donald Trump would not hold an exclusive meeting with his Russia’s counterpart Vladimir Putin during the APEC summit in Vietnam. This announcement came as a big surprise for Moscow, since previously both Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that the meeting would take place. However, on Friday morning the White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanderssaid noted that there would not be no special meeting between Putin and Trump due to “different schedules” that the two presidents were going to have during the summit. At the same time, Trump himself has repeatedly stated before the launch of his big Asian tour that he was eager to meet with the Russian leader since they had some matters that had to be discussed. The media has even got its hands on the agenda of the meeting that was devoted to Syria, North Korea and Ukraine. At first, one would have a hard time proposing an explanation for such an abrupt change of heart.
Still, there’s been a chain of events that can allow us to explain this mystery, and this chain has been put put in motion in the region where Russia and US have had a lot of contradictions – the Middle East.
It seems that Saudi Arabia is determined at this point to restore its influence over Lebanon by forcing the pro-Western Prime Minister Saad Hariri to abandon his post during his stay in Riyadh. This decision was preceded by a leaked secret Israeli cable about a military conflict being staged in Lebanon by provoking a clash between the Hezbollah and the Sunni coalition that supports the now former Prime Minister of Lebanon. Then, on November 9, Riyadh and a number of the GCC countries demanded that their citizens would leave Lebanon without a moment’s delay on the pretext that pro-Iranian forces have seized all power in the country.
It seems that Saudi Arabia, with a certain amount of assistance provided by Tel-Aviv, is planning to destabilize the situation in the region by plunging Lebanon into a bloody conflict. Now that the former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri announces that he can be assassinated upon his return home, while blaming all the troubles that his country faces on the Hezbollah, the situation can get out of control pretty rapidly.
Reuters’ unnamed high-ranking source in the Saudi government has confined it to he news agency that Riyadh ordered Hariri to resign, while putting him under arrest. Another source of the agency, that is said to be familiar with the situation, has announced that Saudi Arabia is going to restrict the freedoms enjoyed by the former Prime Minister. Saudi Arabia would deny that it has put Hariri under arrest but would keep silent about the possible restriction of his freedoms.
It goes without saying that upon releasing a demand for its citizens to urgently leave some state, the state that issues such a demand is planning to go to war against the one that is demanded to be abbanonded. Apparently, the KSA and its allies are preparing to launch attacks against Hezbollah’s positions in Lebanon, and quite possibly in Syria. Should Saudi war planes start dropping bombs on Lebanese detachments in Syria, they would soon be supported by Israel and American aircraft.
There is no doubt that such a development can bury the already feeble balance of powers in the Middle East, opening a door to the unknown land where no scenario is too wild to happen. It seems that the French President Emmanuel Macron was fully aware of this fact since he would make an urgent trip to Saudi Arabia in a desperate bid to talk some reason into the heads of Saudi rules. After all, France has been the patron of the Christian and Sunni parts of Lebanon.
The situation that Hariri has got himself into reminds an impartial observer yet another political leader that was forced to live in Saudi exile – the former president of Yemen, Mansour Hadi, who technically must have left his post due to the fact that his term ended before making any formal visits, but instead he chose to flee to Saudi Arabia.
Mansur Hadi would return to Yemen with a bunch of Saudi friends armed to their teeth to violently suppress Shia rebels known as the Houthis, in spite of the fact that the latter managed to gain the support of the former President of Yemen Abdullah Sale. And now Riyadh has a formal pretext for starting a war against Iran as the Riyadh airport has recently been hit by a missile fired from Yemen, while Iran is being accused of supplying those missiles to the Houthis. Moreover, the actions Saudi Arabia has been taking against Yemen are not particularly legal in their nature, since it has imposed a food blockade against the poorest state in the region, which has been a cause for constant concern of the UN, as such a step can result in millions of civilians dying of starvation.
However, the ultimate goal is not Lebanon or Yemen, it’s Iran, while military aggression against other states is just a way of harming Tehran. The reason is also quite obvious: the successes of Iran and the Hezbollah in Syria and Iraq has allowed Iran to speak more confidently about the implementation of its “Shia crescent” policy in the region, which poses a direct challenge to the Arabian monarchies led by Saudi Arabia.
To be completely frank, we’re witnessing a regional war in the making. It’s unlike any of these proxy forces goofy mascarades that we’ve been witnessing so far, but a full-fledged military engagement. The Saudi army and the troops of GCC states are, without a doubt, nowhere to be found on the list of forces that can impress anybody with their military prowess, but their enemy has exhausted its forces in Syria and Iraq, which leads Riyadh to the belief that it somehow can get an upper hand. The field of possible military operations is the same – Syria and now, quite possibly, Lebanon. The allies of Saudi Arabia are quite predictable as well, as both the US and Israel in some form or another will get engaged in a direct war against Iran.
Yet, the conflict hasn’t started yet, as the parties are now announcing their intentions. Therefore, we need to understand what we should do if the conflict really flares up. Mohammed bin Salman seems to be pretty determined to go all in, while Riyadh persistently suggests that foreign diplomatic missions leave Sana’s, which can indicate that two simultaneous strikes against Lebanon and Yemen are on the table.
But the worst case scenario will occur should Israel, under the guise of supporting Riyadh, decides to launch strikes against nuclear facilities deep in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Then the war can get really ugly. And such a scenario cannot be ruled out. In addition, on the morning of November 10, Trump suddenly refuses to meet Putin. Is that a signal? One can assume that the answer is positive. Moreover, all this falls into the grand strategy of the US nicely, the one that can be briefly described as “to strangle Russia by any means possible.” Financial and economic steps haven’t been of any effect so far. What prevents Washington from trying the military scenario?
Peter Lvov, Ph.D in political science, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
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