Saad Hariri lauds Hezbollah

Hariri lauds Hezbollah, wants ‘best of relations’ with Iran

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri has called for his county to be kept out of regional conflicts, lauding the Hezbollah resistance movement for doing its part to de-escalate the tensions

Press TV,

12 January, 2018

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Hariri said he was open to Hezbollah continuing to participate in the government following the elections slated for May.

“Hezbollah has been a member of this government. This is an inclusive government that has all the big political parties, and that brings political stability to the country,” Hariri said during Wednesday interview, defying pressure from Saudi Arabia to confront the resistance movement.

“My main goal is to preserve this political stability for the unity of the country,” said Hariri, who reached a power-sharing deal with Hezbollah in 2016.

Hariri abruptly declared his resignation from Saudi Arabia and from Saudi-owned television on November 4, accusing Iran and Hezbollah of interfering in the region and signaling that that was his reason to quit.

PressTV-New details emerge of Saudi Arabia's treatment of Hariri

New details emerge of Saudi Arabia's degrading treatment of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri during a recent forced stay in Saudi Arabia, where he was coerced into resigning.

But Lebanese President Michel Aoun, who suspected that Hariri had been forced to step down, refused to accept his resignation and demanded his return from Saudi Arabia first. Lebanese intelligence sources soon concluded that Hariri was under restrictions in Riyadh.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah secretary general, said back then that Saudi authorities had clearly and openly declared a war on Lebanon by holding Prime Minister Hariri hostage and forcing him to quit.

PressTV-‘Saudi in open war on Lebanon with Hariri arrest’

The Hezbollah chief says Saudi Arabia has openly declared a war on Lebanon by keeping Prime Minister Saad Hariri under house arrest.

That drama ended when Hariri returned to Lebanon on November 22 — partially after a diplomatic intervention by France — and rescinded his resignation on December 5.

In the Wall Street Journal interview, Hariri declined to discuss the details of his stay in Saudi Arabia.

The Lebanese prime minister then outlined in his interview a vision under which Lebanon will finally focus on its own affairs and reject foreign interference.

“We cannot accept interference from anyone in Lebanese politics,” Hariri said, adding “Our relationship with Iran—or with the [Persian] Gulf —has to be the best relationship, but one that serves the national interests of Lebanon.”

Hariri further highlighted Hezbollah’s willingness to comply with a policy of “disassociating” Lebanon from regional conflicts.

Hariri, however, admitted that Hezbollah’s withdrawal from Syria will take time as the situation there is more complex.

Hezbollah has been helping the national Syrian army in the fight against terrorists in an effort to prevent the spillover of the crisis into Lebanon.

The Lebanese premier also cautioned Israel against any military action against Lebanon, saying any such war would be counterproductive.

”Every time, they say they [Israelis] want to launch a war with the purpose of weakening Hezbollah. And every single time they went to war with Lebanon, they actually strengthened Hezbollah—and weakened the state.”

Hezbollah is Lebanon’s de facto military power, and has been fighting off recurrent acts of Israeli aggression against the homeland. Riyadh, which reportedly maintains clandestine ties with Tel Aviv, however, has made no secret of its opposition to the group, and has been trying for more than a decade to weaken it.

Lebanon has repeatedly praised Hezbollah’s key role in the war against terrorism, with Lebanese President Michel Aoun defending the resistance movement’s possession of arms as essential to Lebanon’s security

Saad Hariri in Paris

Hariri Does Paris

By Pepe Escobar

November 19, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - 

It’s not that Saad Hariri was itching for a shopping spree at Avenue Montaigne.

French MSM is spicing up the steak tartare to oblivion trying to spin a foreign policy “victory”. Nonsense.

The true story starts in Abu Dhabi when Sun King Macron was having dinner with all-powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) during the inauguration of the Louvre in the Sands (doesn’t it sound like a casino?)

What happened is that MBZ grabbed his mobile and secured a meeting between Macron and MBS for the day after. Easy; after all MBZ is MBS’s mentor – and de facto chief strategist.

Macron’s people had been trying FOR WEEKS to get a meeting with MBS. Zayed did it with one single phone call.

Afterwards, MBS threw a breadcrumb to the begging Macron; OK, you can meet Hariri and even take him away. But under certain conditions; French Minister Le Drian had to publicly scold Iran – which he did; and on top of it Le Drian cancelled his trip to Tehran next week to prepare the terrain for Macron’s own visit.

Talk about “French power”.

Additionally, Hariri WAS indeed kidnapped and under house arrest in Riyadh – as many of us reported.

He even begged for asylum in Amman, Jordan. Denied – because the Jordanians are essentially Saudi vassals.

The New York Times BURIED the info at the end of this piece:

“Mr. Hariri reached out to Jordan with a request to go to Amman as a safe haven, a Western official said. The request was denied, the official said, because the Saudis had pressured Jordan not to accept him. A spokeswoman at the Embassy of Jordan in Washington denied that such a request had been made.”

Who the hell wants exile in the land of King Playstation? Hariri at least is drinking good Margaux.

And the MBS Lebanon power play is an absolute, resounding fiasco.

Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. https://www.facebook.com/pepe.escobar.77377?

Discussion of Saudi Arabia and Lebanon

The Debate - 'Saudi Interventionism'

Press TV

‘We did NOT want this resignation to happen.’ Those were the words of Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah, as he addressed the shock resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri from Saudi Arabia. While calling for calm, Seyyed Nasrallah raised questions that many have been asking: Why was this announcement made from Saudi Arabia? What are Saudi ambitions by forcing Hariri to resign? And how is this going to affect Lebanon as it tries to move past a period of political chaos?

What Is Happening In Saudi Arabia? - Marwa Osman on The Corbett Report

the Corbett Report

The Lebanese Prime Minister has “resigned” on Saudi tv. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has rounded up a dozen other princes in the House of Saud in a startling move that threatens to upset the kingdom. Reports that King Salman will step aside for the crown prince abound. What on earth is happening? Joining us to help sort through the rubble of this incredible week is Marwa Osman, a political analyst and commentator in Beirut.

Marwa Osman’s Twitter

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Robert Fisk breaks MSM silence on Saad Hariri's resignation

This is what I wrote yesterday. This remains largely true today. The story was comletely missing from the Times of Israel while buried in the RNZ site is a bland article about the “fight against corruption” in Saudi Arabia.

While many of us are anxious about what is happening in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon and the dangers of a new war in the Middle East THIS STORY IS COMPLETELY FROM WESTERN MEDIA ( I have checked Reuters and the UK independent).

You would think Robert Fisk might have something to say (and I'm sure he does) - he was a friend of the murdered Rafiq Hariri).

Mainstream media is increasingly looking like a fucking charicature of the news. You would have gleaned more from Pravda and Izvestiya.

The more significant the news the less likely it is to be covered.

 If it doesn't accord with the narrative they don't publish it.

The Syrians and the IRAQIS have just liberated the last ISIS 

stronghold in Syria. I challenge you to find a mention in western MSM.

We truly live in Orwellian times!!

I was wondering if Robert Fisk would break his silence and he has with this article today. He gets closer to the truth than anyone in mainstream media.

Saad Hariri’s resignation as Prime Minister of Lebanon is not all it seems

He certainly did not anticipate what happened to him. Indeed, Hariri had scheduled meetings in Beirut on the following Monday – with the IMF, the World Bank and a series of discussions on water quality improvement; not exactly the action of a man who planned to resign his premiership

Robert Fisk

the Independent,

9 November, 2017

When Saad Hariri’s jet touched down at Riyadh on the evening of 3 November, the first thing he saw was a group of Saudi policemen surrounding the plane. When they came aboard, they confiscated his mobile phone and those of his bodyguards. Thus was Lebanon’s prime minister silenced.

It was a dramatic moment in tune with the soap-box drama played out across Saudi Arabia this past week: the house arrest of 11 princes – including the immensely wealthy Alwaleed bin Talal – and four ministers and scores of other former government lackeys, not to mention the freezing of up to 1,700 bank accounts. Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman’s “Night of the Long Knives” did indeed begin at night, only hours after Hariri’s arrival in Riyadh. So what on earth is the crown prince up to?

Put bluntly, he is clawing down all his rivals and – so the Lebanese fear – trying to destroy the government in Beirut, force the Shia Hezbollah out of the cabinet and restart a civil war in Lebanon. It won’t work, for the Lebanese – while not as rich – are a lot smarter than the Saudis. Every political group in the country, including Hezbollah, are demanding one thing only: Hariri must come back. As for Saudi Arabia, those who said that the Arab revolution will one day reach Riyadh – not with a minority Shia rising, but with a war inside the Sunni Wahhabi royal family – are watching the events of the past week with both shock and awe.

But back to Hariri. On Friday 3 November, he was in a cabinet meeting in Beirut. Then he received a call, asking him to see King Salman of Saudi Arabia. Hariri, who like his assassinated father Rafiq, holds Saudi as well as Lebanese citizenship, set off at once. You do not turn down a king, even if you saw him a few days’ earlier, as Hariri had. And especially when the kingdom owes Hariri’s “Oger” company as much as $9bn, for such is the commonly rumoured state of affairs in what we now call “cash-strapped Saudi Arabia”.

But more extraordinary matters were to come. Out of the blue and to the total shock of Lebanese ministers, Hariri, reading from a written text, announced on Saturday on the Arabia television channel – readers can guess which Gulf kingdom owns it – that he was resigning as prime minister of Lebanon. There were threats against his life, he said – though this was news to the security services in Beirut – and Hezbollah should be disarmed and wherever Iran interfered in the Middle East, there was chaos. Quite apart from the fact that Hezbollah cannot be disarmed without another civil war – is the Lebanese army supposed to attack them when Shia are the largest minority in the country (many of them in the army)? These were not words that Hariri had ever used before. They were not, in other words, written by him. As one who knows him well said this week, “this was not him speaking”. In other words, the Saudis had ordered the prime minister of Lebanon to resign and to read his own departure out loud from Riyadh.

I should add, of course, that Hariri’s wife and family are in Riyadh, so even if he did return to Beirut, there would be hostages left behind. Thus after a week of this outrageous political farce, there is even talk in Beirut of asking Saad Hariri’s elder brother Bahaa to take his seat in the cabinet. But what of Saad himself? Callers have reached him at his Riyadh home, but he speaks only a few words. “He says ‘I will come back’ or ‘I’m fine’, that’s all, only those words, which is very unlike him,” says one who must know. And what if Hariri did come back? Would he claim that his resignation had been forced upon him? Dare the Saudis risk this?

He certainly did not anticipate what happened to him. Indeed, Hariri had scheduled meetings in Beirut on the following Monday – with the IMF, the World Bank and a series of discussions on water quality improvement; not exactly the action of a man who planned to resign his premiership. However, the words he read out – scripted for him – are entirely in line with the speeches of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and with the insane President of the United States who speaks of Iran with the same anger, as does the American Defence Secretary.

Of course, the real story is just what is going on in Saudi Arabia itself, for the crown prince has broken forever the great compromise that exists in the kingdom: between the royal family and the clergy, and between the tribes. This was always the bedrock upon which the country stood or fell. And Mohamed bin Salman has now broken this apart. He is liquidating his enemies – the arrests, needless to say, are supposedly part of an “anti-corruption drive”, a device which Arab dictators have always used when destroying their political opponents.

There will be no complaints from Washington or London, whose desire to share in the divvying up of Saudi Aramco (another of the crown prince’s projects) will smother any thoughts of protest or warning. And given the smarmy reporting of the Crown Prince’s recent speeches in the New York Times, I have my suspicions that even this elderly journalistic organ will be comparatively unworried by the Saudi coup d’etat. For that is what it is. He unseated the interior minister earlier this year and now Mohamed bin Salman is getting rid of his opponents’ financial power.

But ruthless men can also be humble. Hariri was allowed to see the King – the original reason for which he believed he was travelling to Riyadh – and even paid a visit to the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates this week, an ally-nation of the Saudis who would prevent him jumping on a flight to Beirut. But why on earth would Hariri want to go to the Emirates? To prove that he was still free to travel when he cannot even return to the country which he is supposed to be ruling?

Lebanon is always going through the greatest crisis since its last greatest crisis. But this time, it’s for real.