In his first public appearance in front of Future TV cameras, Saad Hariri, weak and almost in tears, said: "the Syrian regime wants me dead. So I resigned by taking all the precautions for my safety. Since the Saudi king regards me as a son, although we disagree on everything, I came to Riyadh". And finally: "I'm not an enemy of Hezbollah, but I can not even allow them to ruin Lebanon".
The CNN immediately re-launched, announcing that the Lebanese premier was essentially a prisoner of the Saudis, recovering what was asserted during the interview - well 80 minutes - to the journalist Paula Yacoubian, who then declared impossible, given her condition, to convince anyone world that was not under arrests in Riyadh.
Of course, Hariri, who is also a Saudi citizen, has always been supported by the royal family, but obviously the mysterious encounter with the Iranian emissary immediately before departing for Riyadh may have been the beautiful casus that triggered all subsequent events.
It is worth recapitulating the story at this point: Hariri - Prime Minister for an agreement between President Michel Aoun and Hezbollah - November 3 met in Beirut, breaking the protocol because the visit was unannounced, Ali Akbar Velayati (photo at dx ), Gray Eminence, and Ali Khamenei's foreign policy advisor, Iran's supreme leadership. Velayati seems to have brought the instances of the now consolidated Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah axis to support Assad and to guide all future moves of the Lebanese government.
This was the last straw, along with the recent discovery by the Saudi intelligence that a Hezbollah battalion joined the Houti in the Yemeni swamp and that Hariri knew it and had not moved a finger to stop the Lebanese Shiite militiamen .
Hence the flight to Riyadh, to reaffirm his loyalty to the Saudi throne, Trump and the Sunni coalition, of which the Lebanese premier is a part. In Lebanon, in fact, the president belongs to the Christian Maronites (Michel Aoun), the Prime Minister to the Sunnis and the President of the Parliament to a Shiite.
If so, he resigned from the Saudis and not from their prisoner. He would then do it to scramble the cards and let the Iranian-born, openly protected by the faithful President Michel Aoun, an old general broken up to all the alliances, even the most unpredictable, even to remain afloat.
It is in fact that Saad Hariri has not returned to Lebanon until now, fearing that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who after Assad's survival in Syria with his powerful help is stronger than ever, he would prepare his funeral, as happened to Father Rafik Hariri in 2005.
To complete the picture, 15 November Nahra Hariri, 51, the premier's brother, said Hezbollah is trying to take full control of Lebanon and thanked the Saudis for the support given to the freely elected government and Saad.
Aoun, the oblique president, has said that Hariri was captured in the purges carried out in Saudi Arabia in the anti-corruption campaign, distorting the reality that sees raids and killings wanted by the heir to the throne Salman to consolidate his power at court , weakened after the defeats in Yemen suffered by the Saudi armed forces, which he initially boldly led.
In summary, the whole story seems to say that the civil powers in Syria are re-opening the game of Mediterranean destabilization, pointing this time on Lebanon, a divided and fragile country, strategically overlooking the eastern Mediterranean, whose ports, much close to Israel, must not fall, like the Syrians, in the hands of the Russians and therefore of the Iranians.
And as in all recent events in the Mediterranean, the inclusion of France in the dramatic story could not be missing: Macron invited Hariri to Paris. The Parisian nights and French intelligence await him. The new partition of Lebanon is about to begin.
Prof. Arduino Paniccia
President of ASCE - International School of Economics in Venice and Professor of Strategic Studies.
(Images: Future TV / IRNA)
