This is not the time for a lack of clarity between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon

The Lebanese and others were surprised, and perhaps even shocked, when they heard of Saudi Arabia’s decision to stop providing aid to the army and security agency, and to reconsider its relationship with the country’s political institution. Some have asked why.

To answer this question we need to look at what happened in the Saudi city of Taif in 1989. Not the agreement reached in Taif to end the Lebanese civil war, but something that happened on the fringe of the talks which led to that deal.

Once the new draft constitution had been finalised, the negotiators agreed on the need to disarm all of the Lebanese militias in order to ensure the end of the actual fighting. In this context, a proposal was made to exclude Hezbollah from this requirement; it came from the late Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad. Why Hezbollah? Well, southern Lebanon was under Israeli occupation at the time, and there was a need for legitimate resistance. The late King Fahd Bin Abdulaziz agreed to the proposal and considered it an addition to what was already achieved.

Why is it important now to refer back to a matter that seemed marginal to such a major achievement? It’s simple: the fact that Saudi Arabia agreed in 1989 to exclude Hezbollah from being disarmed suggests that the government in Riyadh supported Lebanon’s right to resistance, which is only natural, and that it was never originally against the Lebanese militia. More importantly, it also means that by agreeing to exclude Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, along with Assad senior’s Syrian government, provided major Arab cover for the group to be armed, even while knowing its relationship with Iran and that Iran was the source of its arms.

Events in 1989 overlooked the danger of Hezbollah being a religious party representing just one segment of the Lebanese people, and that the cover provided by Saudi Arabia was actually a cover for policies that target Arab countries’ structure, security, stability and identity. It has since been revealed gradually that Hezbollah is not a resistance movement in the proper sense of the term, but rather an Iranian proxy playing a sectarian role beyond Lebanon’s borders. Its activities extended to Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen even before the Arab Spring.

What the latter has done is expose Hezbollah’s hitherto hidden roles, which lay behind a veil of haziness and Lebanese-Arab political deception. Hence, Saudi Arabia was surprised to find that the party for which it had provided with a cover for its armament, against US and even Egyptian wishes at the time, is conspiring against it on its eastern border with Bahrain, its northern border in Iraq and its southern border in Yemen.

It could be said that it is unfair to deny the resistance aspects of Hezbollah, which played a vital role in liberating southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation. This is true, but we must consider this carefully. Hezbollah did not liberate the south for the sake of Lebanon; it did it, as Iran wanted it to, in order to serve a cause going beyond Lebanon.

Technically, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, says this himself when he stresses repeatedly the fact that he works under the “banner of Wilayat Al-Faqih” (a Shia political system under the “guardianship” of a competent Islamic jurist, who was originally Ayatollah Khomeini) rather than under the Lebanese flag, and he is proud of this. This makes the party a proxy for a foreign country — Iran — working against the Arabism of its country and people. Basically, since 2006, Hezbollah has not been targeting Israel (as it would under a “resistance” banner), but at the Lebanese, Iraqi and Syrian people, and always as part of an overall Iranian strategy.

Nasrallah claims that his party fights “takfirists” (Muslims who declare other Muslims to be steeped in “kufr” — disbelief) in Syria, on the basis that they are not what he and his party are. This is not accurate, first in terms of “resistance”, which Hezbollah hides behind, as it does not coincide with the idea of sectarianism; and secondly because the group is committed to its sectarian identity as Shia and alliances locally and regionally, and to a sectarian reference on the political and doctrinal level that is beyond Lebanon and the Arab world.

It is strange that Nasrallah says this in all of his speeches while, at the same time, he salutes and praises only Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), his immediate relatives and a select few of his companions. This stems from his religious beliefs that the other companions do not deserve such praise and is thus an implicit “takfirist” position on his part, albeit different from that of Daesh’s Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

In 1989, Hezbollah was a local party that we knew little about. No one thought at the time that the idea of the arms exclusion clause would be a political trap and that the idea of resistance was a cover to restore sectarianism and turn it into a political operation inside Arab countries which aims to implant the ideas of militias therein. However, that is what happened and is where Saudi Arabia’s recent position on Lebanon stems from. It targets the Sunni and Shia militias and aims to put an end to them due to the danger they pose to the Arab world.

Riyadh has been shocked by the fact that Hezbollah, which it perhaps feels owes it something for that cover in 1989, is turning against it based on Iranian policies, and is using its weapons to target Saudi Arabia in Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and Iraq. The then government in the Saudi capital made a decision against its own interests and those of its own citizens for the sake of the resistance, whereas Hezbollah lied and claimed the “resistance” mantle for the sake of its sectarian affiliations. As such, the Saudis do not want Lebanon to fall into the same trap and end up like Iraq, which is dominated by militias, and dominated by Iran through these armed groups.

This leads me to the statement made by Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, in which he said, “Between Arab consensus and national unity, we side with national unity.” This would be true if there was actual national unity within Lebanon, and that is what Saudi Arabia wishes for. In terms of national background, Hezbollah is Lebanese, but its loyalty is to Iran, as its secretary-general states in his positions, behaviour and goals.

What is the position of the foreign ministry in Beirut on Hezbollah’s involvement in operations that target Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries? Will we be told, or does “national unity” not allow for this question to be addressed?

“The injustice that we’re facing is the price we’re paying for creating an independent policy that neutralises Lebanon,” claimed Bassil. What injustice? Where is the independence he is referring to when the strongest component of the Lebanese political system is being funded and armed by a foreign country and is acting according to the agenda of a foreign government? Where is the neutrality when this component is fighting in Syria under the cover provided by the foreign ministry, and even the parliament? The minister is allowing a Lebanese militia to be governed by the will of a non-Arab country at the expense of the Arab countries, and he calls this neutrality and independence. This deception between the state and the militia, and between independence and foreign influence via the militia, is what Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries are waiting for Lebanon to overcome.

It is this deception which was formed on the fringe of the Taif agreement all those years ago, but it is time to right this wrong; Saudi Arabia will not accept anything less than that. Its mistake was made due to the haziness of Arab policies, but there is no alternative but to escape from such lack of clarity and put an end to the lies. In its capacity and role as a terrorist militia, Hezbollah is no different to Daesh in the eyes of Saudi Arabia; one raises the banner of a caliphate while the other raises the banner of Wilayet Al-Faqih, but they both commit acts of terrorism and murder on a sectarian basis and target countries with Arab identities. It is logical that mistakes will be made, but it is a faulty state of mind to continue with such mistakes because, with time, they tend to lead to political suicide.

Translated from Alhayat, 28 February, 2016.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.