External powers need to do more to insulate Lebanon from regional tensions

After Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara’s successful recent visit to Washington, many Lebanese wondered what it meant for their country. They may have recalled what the US envoy Tom Barrack said last July, speaking of the Lebanese: “I honestly think that they are going to say ‘the world will pass us by’. Why? You have Israel on one side, you have Iran on the other, and now you have Syria manifesting itself so quickly that if Lebanon doesn’t move, it’s going to be Bilad Al Sham again.”

There are three broad approaches to the Levant today – that of the US and Israel, that of the Arab Gulf states and that of Iran. While Syria has sought to be part of the first two, and has firmly rejected the third, a divided Lebanon is caught in a twilight zone among the three, and risks paying a heavy price for its uncertainty.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Mr Al Shara formally joined the anti-ISIS coalition, bolstering his anti-terrorism credentials with the Americans. Reportedly, he also committed to combatting Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Lebanon, meanwhile, is being accused of failing to disarm Hezbollah, which the US regards as a terrorist organisation. In early November, a US Treasury delegation, accompanied by the White House’s senior director for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, visited Beirut to look into ways of cutting off Hezbollah’s sources of financing.

Lebanon is being buffeted by all sides in the region, with limited capacities to satisfy any one of them. This requires a new approach. The Lebanese have to move urgently on several fronts, while regional countries must remember that, unless Lebanon is stabilised, it may become a potentially dangerous hub for regional rivalries.

The problem Lebanon faces is the profound divisions in its society. While most communities agree that only the state must hold weapons, Hezbollah opposes this because Iran rejects such an outcome. For Tehran, the group’s disarmament would constitute the loss of a valuable regional card, after the Iranian defeat in Syria.

Amos Hochstein: On The Record with Hadley Gamble 20:48

Complicating matters, the Islamist government in Damascus, which many in Lebanon’s Shiite communities view as hostile, has further hardened Hezbollah’s and its allies’ refusal to disarm.