Power plays between friends in Beirut

No one could fail to notice that it was a Syrian spokesperson, Wi’am Wahhab, who spilled the beans recently about Hizbullah members being called in for questioning by investigators working on behalf of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. It was also Wahhab alone who mentioned the possibility of a link between the late Imad Mughniyeh and the Hariri assassination. This has raised interesting questions about what Syria is trying to achieve.

Of course, Wahhab’s professed purpose was to warn against what an accusation directed against Hizbullah might mean for Lebanon’s stability. This has been a recurrent theme sounded by the Syrians and their allies in recent years. However, party officials must also have suspected that Wahhab’s comments, by providing information no one else had, threw the light, uncomfortably, on Hizbullah to avoid it falling elsewhere.

Beyond the tribunal, there are other dynamics at play specifically related to the Syria-Hizbullah relationship. In its effort to reassert its hegemony in Lebanon, Damascus has not only sought to wear down its one-time adversaries in March 14; it also seems to be looking for ways to tighten its control over its more autonomous allies, above all Hizbullah.

It’s not difficult to grasp why. In the five years after Syrian soldiers left Lebanon in April 2005, the party became the pre-eminent defender of Syria’s interests in Lebanon. With no soldiers on the ground the regime of President Bashar Assad had to watch as Iran’s sway over events in Beirut increased, because although Hizbullah remained close to Syria, there was never any question that it was, above all, an Iranian venture.

For Assad, this was unwelcome. From the moment his men left Lebanon, his ambition was to recover the country as a Syrian card in regional politics. But if it was Iran that was primarily calling the shots, because Syria remained so dependent on the pro-Iranian Hizbullah to defend its Lebanese stakes, all that really meant was that Assad was a secondary player in Lebanon. That is, until the Saudis came to the rescue.

In February 2009, King Abdullah “reconciled” with Assad at an Arab economic summit in Kuwait. After having spent more than three years trying to isolate Syria regionally, only to see Saudi Arabia itself become more isolated, the kingdom’s leadership concluded that it was time to change tack. With Iran gaining power and developing a nuclear capability, and Iraq perceived as being under the control of a Shiite regime, the Saudis decided that Lebanon was a distraction worth dispensing with.

What appears to have emerged from that rapprochement is a quid pro quo with Syria, explicit or more likely implicit: the Syrians would be granted considerable leeway in Lebanon, in the process containing Hizbullah, while Syria and Saudi Arabia could find common ground in looking the other way on Iraq’s destabilization, each for its own reasons. A byproduct of the understanding was that Saad Hariri, if he became prime minister, would visit Damascus in the context of a lowering of hostility between Lebanon and Syria. This could be placed under the rubric of “Arab solidarity.”

While Syria has done almost nothing to curb Hizbullah, the Saudi calculation may have been more subtle. In handing Assad great latitude to impose Syrian priorities on the party, Riyadh probably took the minimalist view that it was better to have an Arab state in charge in Lebanon than Iran. That hard-nosed assessment preserved little of the sporadic sovereignty that Lebanon enjoyed after 2005, but the Saudis were too preoccupied with the future of their own regime to pay much heed to this.

That is where the Hariri tribunal comes in. Although the Syrians want to ensure that the investigation does not harm them or Hizbullah, the situation offers political opportunities. A Hizbullah feeling the heat, even if this is unjustified, is also one more vulnerable to Syrian power plays in Lebanon. Assad and party officials have denounced prosecutor Daniel Bellemare’s investigation as politicized; they have raised the pressure on him by warning that indictments might carry Lebanon into a new civil conflict; and they will both use the ensuing fears to politically emasculate Hariri, who will find it difficult to approve measures that might threaten civil peace.

But within this complex game is another one, whereby the mere prospect of an accusation against Hizbullah makes the party doubly exposed: toward its traditional enemies such as the United States and Israel; but also toward Syria, which could make Hizbullah more beholden to it by using its weight in Beirut to ensure that the Lebanese government defends the party’s innocence. Syria’s developing rapport with Hizbullah would bring home that Hizbullah now needs Syria to protect its margin of maneuver in Lebanon rather than the other way around following the Syrian departure.

This does not mean that Syria and Hizbullah are on a collision course. Both share multiple aims. Wahhab’s recent criticism of Michel Sleiman was perhaps, in part, a sign of Syrian displeasure with the president’s endorsement of municipal elections, which Hizbullah wanted to postpone. Both Syria and the party are collaborating to control the Palestinian camps by marginalizing officials recently appointed by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. For Assad to depict Hizbullah as a problem that only Syria can resolve, he must give the party room to be a problem.

That is why we should understand statements by Hizbullah officials as addressed both at the party’s foes and, somewhere, at Syria. Hizbullah does not relish becoming a Syrian bargaining chip once again, even if it has no choice but to cooperate with Damascus. But the grip is tightening on all.