Getting hot in the Middle East

Some interesting news recently: France has agreed to supply the Lebanese army with weapons, and Saudi Arabia has agreed to pay for it.

On the surface, this looks like just another arms deal in a world of arms deals. One commenter went so far as to suggest that this was an anti-semitic plot against Israel, but frankly, that's unlikely.

Make no mistake; this deal will have been done with Israel's tacit agreement.

The target of this deal is not Israel, but Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, supplied and supported by Syria and Iran, is a major force in Lebanon. An unofficial but very heavily armed and organised political and military force, it's proven too strong for Israel to unseat without getting stuck in an occupation quagmire, and the Lebanese army is too weak (deliberately kept weak by Hezbollah's involvement in the political process) to assert its authority over the entire country.

But the wind has been blowing against Hezbollah lately, with Iran feeling the squeeze of sanctions and strike threats, and Syria, its most immediate ally, now reeling in a Western-initiated, Saudi financed civil war. The fact that Hezbollah felt the need to intervene on the battlefield on Assad's behalf is a measure of how worried they are, and of how high the stakes are.

And, at this moment of turmoil and weakness, Saudi Arabia just happens, for no apparent reason, to open its generous cheque book to the Lebanese Army.

The implications are obvious - Saudi Arabia is looking to provoke a civil war, this time in Lebanon itself, with the aim of crushing or weakening Hezbollah.


Turning up the heat

In the war for geopolitical influence in the greater Middle East, and in the conflict between Sunni and Shia, Saudi Arabia is winning. And it is doing so without the deployment of a single Saudi soldier.

Well, if you don't count the ones they sent to Bahrain to stamp on the embers of the so-called 'Arab Spring' there.

But with the retreat of, first, the USSR, then the US, from the region, Saudi Arabia is emerging as a colossus.

It was involved, along with Qatar, in the removal of Gaddafi and his meddlesome, pro-African revolution, anti-oil dollar ways. He's gone now, and Libya is in turmoil, but no matter. It is no longer a threat to Saudi Arabia, and it can stay in turmoil for all the Saudis care - it's one less oil producer to compete with.

The Saudis were also involved, this time snubbing Qatar, in bringing down President Morsi in Egypt and returning the country to military rule. The grinding down of the Muslim Brotherhood (Saudi Arabia's most hated enemy) that is currently going on will be much to Saudi Arabia's liking.

Saudi Arabia, of course, has been instrumental in keeping the Syrian civil war going, doing all it can to knock out Iran's last ally in the Middle East. And it has been making sure that the Saudi backed militias prevail over the ones backed by the US, EU and Qatar. The Syrian Opposition is a mess of competing loyalties, and while it appears to be losing against Assad's forces on the ground, it nonetheless continues to keep the country in an unstable state. If Assad is busy handling problems on his doorstep, then he will have less time to meddle with Saudi Arabia's plans in the rest of the Middle East.

And so we come to the next domino: Lebanon. You see, the real war in the entire Middle East is between (Shia) Iran and (Sunni) Saudi Arabia. And Iran is having its tentacles in the Gaza Strip, Syria and Lebanon slowly snipped off. Turmoil in Lebanon will look terrible in the Western media, but for the Saudis it will be a welcome message to Iran: Look at what is happening to all your friends.


Try the Falafel

So how do other countries feel about this? Well, Israel is happy, as it has been quietly allied with Saudi Arabia ever since the Saudis requested (and paid for) their help a couple of decades ago to solve a problem in the Yemen. With the British no longer willing to fight in Aden or the Arabian Peninsula, the Saudis needed other soldiers to fight their wars. Pakistani mercenaries are useful, and America's willingness to stamp on Saddam Hussein proved very useful, but nothing is as useful as Israel's vociferous anti-Iran stance and its willingness to ignore international law to enforce its interests. So Saudi Arabia can use Israel's help, and it can provide a useful service in return.

It can make sure Egypt honours its peace deal with Israel and maintains its side of the Gaza blockade (which Morsi's government had gone soft on). It can keep Syria, Israel's old enemy, destabilised and no threat to anybody anymore.

And it can kick the legs out from under Hezbollah and leave them too busy fighting for their own survival to bother Israel any more.

So Israel is happy.


Non?

Then there is France. Now what France is up to in all this is something of a mystery to me. Just lately France has gone interventionist mad, with robust insertions into Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic. When you consider that they were once mocked as being Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys for not getting involved in the Invasion of Iraq, you can see that this is quite a change for the truculant Gallic nation that prefers to say 'Non'. And having just lost their triple-A rating on the world finance markets, you'd think the French would be more cautious about getting into expensive interventions.

Then again, that may be why it is happy to boost its defence industry with Saudi money. And who wouldn't? And France remains a staunch ally of Israel anyway, in spite of the EU's weak finger wagging over the Palestinian issue.


You're either with us and against us?

And how does the US feel about this? Well, that's a difficult one too, as the US has long since ceased to pursue a rational foreign policy, mixing as it does its geopolitical interests with its humanitarian interests - feeling sorry for downtrodden people while supporting Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Since its disastrous venture into Iraq, where it was forced to leave empty handed, the US has declared its intention to pivot towards the Far East (and antagonise China instead). It committed aircraft to Libya but declined to do so in Syria, even as the CIA trained anti-Assad militias in Jordon and unleashed them across the border in a major offensive (which failed). And while backing Israel and the Sunnis in the west, and maintaining its hostility against Shia Iran in the east, it offers drones and missiles to the Iranian backed Iraqi government in the centre.

What is the US trying to achieve? Quite honestly, I don't know. It could be a plan so cunning that mere mortals like myself cannot understand it. Or it could just be foreign policy incompetance on a grand scale.

Either way, it looks a million miles away from what Saudi Arabia is doing.

So keep an eye on Lebanon. If those arms get delivered, and if the conflict next door is unresolved, it could blow up.