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Will Lebanon become Saudi's next Yemen?
[Al Jazeera] A week after the surprise resignation of Saad Hariri Second son of Rafik Hariri, the Leb PM who was assassinated in 2005. He has was prime minister in his own right from 2009 through early 2011. He was born in Riyadh to an Iraqi mother and graduated from Georgetown University. He managed his father's business interests in Riyadh until his father's assassination. When his father died he inherited a fortune of some $4.1 billion, which won't do him much good if Hizbullah has him bumped off, too.broadcast on Saudi-owned al-Arabiyya from Riyadh, Leb has stopped asking where he is and has started demanding his release. Lebanese President  Michel Aoun...president of Leb, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hizbullah... called the circumstances of his disappearance "ambiguous and mysterious" and asked Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... for clarification. In meetings with foreign ambassadors, he has gone further and declared Hariri "kidnapped". It has become clear that Hariri was planning for a short visit in Riyadh and was scheduled to return to Leb that weekend. He is set to appear for the first time tonight in an interview from Riyadh. I spoke to Habib Ephrem, president of the Syriac League in Leb and secretary-general of the Levant Encounter, a think-tank known to be very close to President Aoun. He showed me an entry in his calendar from last week titled "11:30am Hariri" scheduled for Monday, November 6. He had received a call from the office of the prime minister on Saturday, November 4, hours before Hariri resigned in front of al-Arabiya's cameras. Clearly, not even his team in Beirut knew what was going on. Hariri now seems stuck in Riyadh, like another head of government, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Yemen's president, who reportedly has not been allowed to leave the Saudi capital for months. And with all the posturing from Riyadh, the fear in Beirut is that the country might be facing a proxy war, just like the one in Yemen. The Lebanese are not 'a herd of sheep' According to the latest reports, Saudi Arabia took the decision on Hariri's resignation because "he was unwilling to confront Hezbollah". He was handed his resignation speech while waiting to see Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. There have been also rumours that Saudi Arabia is setting the stage for Saad's older brother, Bahaa, to replace him, and has demanded that members of the Hariri family go to Riyadh to pledge allegiance. Posted by: Fred 2017-11-13 |
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