As Always, It's the Syrians, Stupid

So it’s as clear as a bomb explosion on St. Valentine’s Day: Lebanon’s government crisis is and always was about Syria and its yearning to regain the power over Lebanon that it lost in 2005. Prime Minister-elect Saad Hariri’s decision to present a cabinet lineup to President Michel Sleiman, by provoking an angry reaction from Syria’s allies, tore away the ambiguities surrounding the government formation process. The Syrians don’t want a government unless they can be seen as having blessed it themselves – which means Hariri must make a notable act of submission to Damascus. The Americans are telling Syria that its failure to facilitate a government will harm US-Syrian relations. And the Saudis have remained publicly quiet, but only because while they disagree with Syria over Lebanon, they appear to have an implicit understanding with President Bashar Assad in Iraq, where both countries, each for reasons of its own, seek to prevent stabilization of the country.

The latter detail may explain why Hariri himself did not press the cabinet issue very hard until this week. Perhaps he was hoping for a Saudi-Syrian breakthrough that would spare him headaches; or maybe he simply sought to avoid a Saudi-Syrian row, knowing Riyadh didn’t want one. Whatever the reason, to understand what is happening today we should watch closely what develops on the Saudi-Syrian front, and then see whether all the others involved in Lebanon accept it.