Mick Hartley

Michael Young, opinion editor of Lebanon’s Daily Star, is always interesting. Here he is on what’s keeping Syria’s Bashar Assad awake at night:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy got all the attention last weekend when he announced that his government was cutting off contacts with Syria over Lebanon. This detracted from the equally important statement of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who also blamed Syria for the Lebanese impasse. This was the same Mubarak who had repeatedly tried to mediate between the Syrians and Saudis, and who, last November, floated the idea of army commander General Michel Suleiman (then regarded as acceptable to Syria) as a presidential candidate. The fact that Mubarak should have expressed public exasperation with Syria alongside Sarkozy, as the Syrians prepared to torpedo a joint effort by Egypt and Saudi Arabia to hold an Arab League foreign ministers meeting on Lebanon, suggested he is close to the end of his tether with Assad.

It’s difficult to have much confidence in the Arab states, but Lebanon’s fate has become an existential issue for the Saudis – beyond the question of their support for this or that faction. With Iraq effectively under Shiite control, Iran now spared an American attack, at least momentarily, and Syria and Iran having undermined the inter-Palestinian Mecca Accord, Saudi Arabia is not about to cede more ground in Lebanon.

This week, a story in the Kuwaiti daily As-Siyassah quoted a Lebanese diplomat in Cairo as saying the Saudis believe Syria has sponsored anti-regime Salafists in the kingdom itself. As-Siyassah is close to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and no Lebanese diplomat would have made such a charge on the record without getting a Saudi green light to do so. Whatever the truth of the accusation, it is an extremely serious one, underlining that the Saudis are increasingly willing to label the Assad regime a threat to their stability. The logical flip side is that Riyadh might retaliate by playing domestic Syrian sectarian politics.

Pro-regime media and analysts in Syria have lately put out the word that Syria is confident the Arab League summit scheduled for March in Damascus will be successful. That bravado betrays deep anxiety. The summit is supposed to be a crowning moment for the Assad regime, where it can prove that it is a bona fide regional heavyweight. The Syrians hope to use the gathering in one way or another to cash their Lebanese chips in. They also probably hope that a diplomatic triumph will strengthen their hand with Iran, buying Syria more credibility in the partnership and more room to maneuver throughout the region. If the summit is a fiasco, Syria could be shown up as being regionally irrelevant.

No amount of car bombs in Beirut will make the Arab summit a success if the Saudis and Egyptians, like the Americans and French, believe that a dangerous and unreliable Assad merits isolation. A Lebanese civil war, in turn, assuming that Iran would ever agree to push Hizbullah into such a mad venture, could have negative repercussions for Syria itself. Hafez Assad, who always hooked Syrian behavior to a regional consensus; who avoided placing Syria at the forefront of Sunni-Shiite tension for too long; and who always kept an open line to Riyadh, must be rolling in his grave.