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Lebanon, for example, is a little over a quarter, each Sunni and Shiite and a third Christian, with 6 percent of the population belonging to the esoteric Shiite branch, the Druze. When center-right Christians ally with Sunnis, as in the parliamentary elections of 2009, Sunnis may have a strong prime minister. (In Lebanon, the president is always a Christian, the prime minister is Sunni and the spokesman of the Shiite parliament). In 2016, Michel Aoun was elected president by 83 members of the 128-seat parliament. Aoun, a popular former general and a Christian ally of Hezbollah, oversaw the formation of a national unity government and persuaded Sunni leader Saad Hariri to serve as prime minister, although his anti-Hezbollah position had clearly become a minority. Hezbollah dominated the cabinet and had an ally in the presidency, which put Lebanon firmly in Iran's orbit.
Hariri's father had made billions in Saudi Arabia as a contractor decades ago, and Hariri has Saudi citizenship. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman seems to have forced him to resign, putting Lebanon in turmoil. Perhaps a more anti-Hezbollah prime minister would have to be brought or perhaps the position remains vacant. Beirut would go from being a unified Iranian badet to a set of small fiefdoms with crossed purposes to each other. The problems could have flourished to the point where Aoun would be expelled as president (something that Aoun himself clearly feared). With the parliamentary elections set for May 2018, which will be carried out under new proportional voting rules, it was not impossible for a Sunni coalition with right-wing and anti-Aoun Christians to do well and set aside Hezbollah and its allies.
According to a filtered diplomatic cable, this scheme quickly gained support behind the scenes of the Israeli government, and Israeli officials suddenly became very frank about their alliance with the Gulf states like Saudi Arabia against Iran and its regional allies. Pressuring Hezbollah to leave Syria, now that the al Qaeda affiliate and ISIL have been defeated there, could also have been part of Mohammed bin Salman's game plan. This objective is also shared by the Israelis, who have threatened to bomb any Hezbollah base established in Syria more than 40 miles from the Israeli border.
The ploy of keeping Hariri under house arrest and forcing him to resign, however, produced so much international reaction that French President Emmanuel Macron could convince the crown prince to let his prime minister be held hostage in Paris. Last week, Hariri returned to a hero's welcome in Beirut, where he rescinded his resignation. He remains, like his Saudi supporters, against Iran's influence in Lebanon and the disproportionate role played by Hezbollah's regional militia, but it is clear that Hariri did not agree with Riyadh on the strategy.
Hariri is unwilling to relinquish the little power he has, and can calculate that his Future Party has a better chance in the May elections if he has the advantage of incumbency. In 2009, the last time that Lebanon held a general election, the Party of the Future won 26 seats, and with its coalition partners in the Alliance on March 14 it won a solid majority (71 out of 128 seats) in Parliament. The Hezbollah Alliance on March 8, including the Free Patriotic Movement of Aoun, won 57 seats. (March 8 and March 14 refer to the dates of mbad demonstrations for and against Syria in 2005)
The Saudi attempt to divide and rule Lebanon has failed for the time being, though ironically Riad has largely polished – on its own – Hariri's reputation with the Lebanese public, which saw him as the nationalist victim of a plot. external Saudi instead of an Iranian. However, it is unlikely that the Saudi elite will renounce their strategy and may try behind the scenes to fill the coffers of the extreme right Christian parties that oppose Aoun.
In other places, too, divide and rule has had few successes. Saudi Arabia's attempt to use air power to overthrow the Helpers of God or the Houthi movement in Yemen has only managed to turn that country into the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, and more than 50,000 children are expected to die this year from starvation or disease Iranian pro-Iranian Shiite politicians are firmly installed in Iraq, and the Syrian Bashar al-Assad, a fierce enemy of Riyadh, seems to go nowhere. Mohammed bin Salman's attempt to force Qatar to break ties with Iran has failed, causing Doha and Tehran to move substantially closer and likely to destroy the Gulf Cooperation Council, which had been a vehicle of Saudi power in the Gulf region. Gulf, which grouped it with Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Qatar. So far, the division and government of Saudi Arabia have simply become a destabilizing factor in an already troubled region, and have not made a dent in Iran's influence.
