With Lebanon on the brink, the Arab world waits for Washington

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The writer is director of regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies

The war that has been brewing since October 2023 has started in earnest. The new phase of the Israeli campaign against Hizbollah, the Lebanese Iran-backed militant group, has been intense. Israeli officials have not yet decided to launch a ground operation but some are already arguing for a maximalist approach that would “destroy” an organisation that appears weakened and disoriented, though not yet broken.

Despite some diplomatic activity, there is a sense of futility and resignation among Middle Eastern states, whose efforts to end the war in Gaza have been fruitless. For Arab leaders, the containment of that war and now the conflict in Lebanon is a western responsibility. Let Washington make a solution happen and figure out what follows, they say. Having signalled again their readiness to make peace with Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state, they don’t want to take the initiative again only to be blindsided by Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu. 

They are also pleased to see that a chastened Iran is reluctant to escalate and reassured by the conciliatory tone struck by its new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, at the UN General Assembly in New York this week. Whether he will be able to withstand pressure from his hardline competitors in Tehran is another matter.

While Iran’s influence campaign and the credibility of its deterrence have suffered real setbacks in the past year, Tehran has succeeded in maintaining cordial relations with countries that were its primary antagonists not so long ago. Arab officials are watching as Iran tries to revive nuclear diplomacy, wondering if Tehran will offer to help in Gaza and Lebanon in exchange for sanction relief and other benefits. These officials also revile Hizbollah as much as Hamas. The Saudis publicly lambasted the militant group for initiating the 2006 war with Israel and subsequently, along with the UAE and others, tried to isolate and punish it, albeit with little success. A more patient and skilful Iran outmatched them.

Arab states have not suddenly become naive about Iran. But given the inconsistency of western policy, they have decided that accommodating Tehran is a price worth paying if it keeps them out of a regional conflict. There is no point in confronting Iran when there is no consensus, strategy or collective determination, when the potential costs are so high and when Israel is seen as the regional villain. In Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, the priority is the countries’ respective economic and connectivity agendas.

Arab leaders regard Israel as strategically blinkered and politically insensitive and ungrateful, struggling to turn its operational successes into tangible results and unable to accept compromise. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who came close to normalising relations with Israel last year, has now stressed that “the kingdom will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without . . . the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital”. His domestic legitimacy and international standing matter more than a risky entanglement, at least for the moment.

There is another reason for the sense of regional resignation: Lebanon’s fall from grace. The battered country is finding out the hard way that it does not have many friends left. This is the legacy of decades of taking its partners for granted, of accommodating Hizbollah and of failing to enact crucial political and economic reforms.

What a difference from the 2006 war. Then, Lebanon was the darling of the west and the Arab world. It had just emerged from three decades of Syrian occupation and Israel’s occupation six years before that. Western countries cuddled up to Lebanon. And Arab states saw Lebanon as a crucial arena for Arab-Iranian competition. After the war, money and attention flowed, but Lebanon’s dysfunction just got worse.

It is now the region’s problem child. Hizbollah’s regional interventions from Syria to Yemen, the ineptitude of the Lebanese political class and the economic collapse since 2019 have driven away Gulf states, foreign assistance and tourists. Regional indifference to Lebanon is palpable. Without outside cajoling or guidance, the country’s politicians are adrift and have spent the past two years arguing about the identity of the next president.

Regional apathy has compelled Washington, Paris and others to step into the breach, linking a ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah to financial assistance, presidential elections and regional integration for Lebanon. Paris cares about the fate of the many French-Lebanese dual nationals and the profound links between the two countries. Washington managed to get Lebanon and Israel to delineate their maritime border in 2022, a real achievement given that they are enemies. The current crisis, though, is of a wholly different magnitude, and US diplomacy appears adrift and impotent.