The last paragraph of Thomas Lippman's book, Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia, ends with a word of advice, "We should take in the wisdom of Abu Othman, a character in Munif's Cities of Salt who says at the novel's end, "God only knows.  Hope for the best.  No one can read the future."

Those words are appropriate for anyone analyzing the current Lebanon crisis, not only with regard to resolution of the central issues, but to the third and fourth order consequences for the rest of the region and the international community.  While it is difficult to discern the long term implications for the United States and Saudi Arabia we are fortunate to have Thomas Lippman's insights to share on what has transpired so far. 

Mr. Lippman, a career writer and journalist, is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington.  As a reporter he served as the Washington Post's Middle East bureau chief, the oil and energy beat reporter and the national security and diplomatic correspondent.  He has written numerous books on the Middle East including Inside the Mirage.

SUSRIS talked with Mr. Lippman by phone from his office in Washington on Friday, July 28, 2006.  [Several significant events in the Lebanon crisis occurred after our interview, including the bombing of an apartment in Qana and the expansion of the ground war.]

SUSRIS: Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts on developments in the Middle East, especially the Lebanon crisis and the impact on US-Saudi relations. What�s the lead if you were writing the week in review?

Thomas W. Lippman: There are two ways of looking at what is happening in Lebanon. The first is that the Israelis with the consent of the Americans have decided that they have had enough, no more temporizing. They are going to put an end to this once and for all and destroy Hezbollah. In a way history is on their side, because in the modern history of the Middle East things have changed only when somebody broke the mold and made a breakthrough, the way Sadat did when he went to Jerusalem. So from the Israeli point of view, there will be no more fooling around, they�re going for it. And you can see on one side the crude logic of their position. 

On the other side is the argument that what the Israelis are doing is ultimately counterproductive, because it is stirring huge anger and resentment around the Arab world even among people who don�t agree with Hizbollah and what they did in the first place. It is making heroes out of Hizbollah fighters because they are the only ones drawing Israeli blood. It will deepen anti-American and anti-Israeli resentment throughout the Arab world for a long to come. It is hugely counterproductive in Lebanon. That is how I would summarize the two arguments. The problem is they are both true. 

SUSRIS: The resentment isn�t confined to the Arab world. 

Lippman: Exactly, but if the Portuguese are disaffected they are not going to attack Israel because of it, or abandon NATO.

SUSRIS:  Then there are people who would otherwise support Israel crushing Hizbollah who object to the level of destruction taking place in Lebanon. 

Lippman: Absolutely. Unfortunately George Bush doesn�t seem to be among them, or Condi Rice. 

However, I think both propositions are true. I mean the Israeli perspective is historically correct and from their point of view the Arabs all hate them anyway, so what the heck. Nothing to lose. 

But in the long run they do have something to lose, including the fact that it is now politically impossible for any Arab state or any Arab group to move closer to peace with Israel than it was in the past. So that being said, what should one do? How should one think about this? 

The Saudis in their usual fashion are trying to devise a tenable position that will maintain their prestige and respectability without alienating others, without alienating Washington. They are in a very tough position. 

So that�s what I�ve been thinking about. I had a long talk with a group of Saudis last night about that statement that came out on Tuesday. [July 25, Royal Court Statement] They said it should not be read as an implied threat to take the Abdullah Peace Plan off the table. It is simply a statement of fact -- if the conflict continues all kinds of dire and unforeseeable consequences can happen. 

SUSRIS: The intent was not a threat?

Lippman: It should not be read as an implied threat to take the Abdullah Peace Plan off the table. Which is the way some people read it. They said it was simply a statement of fact that if this continues dire and unpredictable consequences could flow. And no good can come of it. That�s their position. But I don�t see that anybody -- Saudis, Egyptians, Hamas, Ehud Olmert -- has a clear idea of what�s going to happen over the next, let�s say, two weeks. 

SUSRIS:  It�s interesting that the Royal Court statement was in effect analysis not policy, at least according to your contacts.

Lippman: Correct.

SUSRIS: Were you surprised by the Saudi position in the initial statement, the charges of "miscalculated adventures carried out by elements inside the state and those behind them" an apparent reference to Hizbollah, Syria and Iran?

Lippman: : Yes. I think my sense is that over the past two weeks, such a short time, a kind of conventional wisdom has emerged about that original Saudi statement. I don�t know enough about Riyadh�s motivation to know whether the conventional wisdom is correct or not but it seems to make sense. It is that the Saudis initially saw what Hizbollah did as another Shiite power grab in the region, and that�s what bothered them.

SUSRIS: Who was the intended audience for the first statement � the �miscalculated adventures� statement?

Lippman: I think the Lebanese Shiites were the intended audience of that statement. And the Syrians. 

SUSRIS: When we talked with Gregory Gause the other day he said he believed there was a wide audience for the message that included the Lebanese and the Syrians, but that the principal target of the statement was Washington. He said, 

What�s your view on that approach, the proposition that Saudis were opening the door to action against Hizbollah but that the goal was to have the international community lined up for a diplomatic resolution like implementation of UNSC Resolution 1559?

Lippman: Well I don�t necessarily agree. Riyadh could have done that without directly criticizing Hizbollah. They could have put out a statement calling for moderation, calling for urgent diplomatic action, calling for American intervention to prevent further loss of human life. They could have done all that, but they went much farther. And the reason this got everybody�s attention was this was a position where Hizbollah was attacking Israel and killing Jews and Saudi Arabia criticized them for that. That was beyond where they had to go to make an appeal to the Americans in my opinion. That was why it caught so much attention in the first place. 

SUSRIS:  The US administration lost no time in letting everybody know that the moderates in the region -- Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan -- were with them, against Hizbollah.

Lippman: That�s correct, and that position became uncomfortable for the Saudis. If there is such a thing as the �Arab street� clearly this is one of those few times when it really seems to have mattered. 

Over the weekend, on Sunday [July 23], Saud al Faisal and Bandar came here and met with the President. I have no idea what the outcome of that gathering was. So then on Tuesday [July 25], at a delegation meeting, I asked Prince Turki �What�s up?� He said, there�s nothing to do but wait and see what happens in Rome [July 26]. Well we know what happened in Rome, or what didn�t happen. Then Condi Rice took off for Malaysia. 

My sense from news reports and from talking to the Saudis in the delegation that was here in town that the news stories about the United States expediting weapons shipments to the Israelis really put them in a difficult situation. And you can see why. Those stories made it look as if the Israelis have carte blanche in Washington.

SUSRIS: So it was difficult for Saudi Arabia to balance its position on Hizbollah and friends and the American relationship with Israel in a time of war?

Lippman: Well, yes. And now Riyadh is in a position where, having criticized Hezbollah and given the Americans the opportunity to say even the Saudis agree, now they have to put some distance between themselves and the United States. They have done that before, but that is also an uncomfortable position.

SUSRIS: So where are we today?

Lippman: There are giant imponderables here that make it difficult to deal with from an analytical standpoint. Let�s just take for example the question of the Syrian perspective. Where does Bashar Assad want to emerge from this? What�s he thinking? What is the game Syria is playing here, and who are they playing it with? It�s difficult to discern. In my opinion this is about the tenth time since he became president that Assad has had an opportunity to do something for or with the US, to step up to the plate from Washington�s perspective, and this is the tenth time he�s failed. What is motivating Bashar here? I don�t know. What leverage does the United States have on him? If there is any, is Washington trying to exercise it?

SUSRIS:  Can you talk about the view from Riyadh to Damascus?

Lippman: The Saudis could put pressure on Syria, but Syria�s leverage is only over Lebanon and Hezbollah. They have no leverage over the Israelis and the Israelis are the problem here, from the Saudi perspective. 

What�s in it for the Saudis? You�ve got 500 martyr heroes dug into the hills in South Lebanon who have, rightly of wrongly, earned the admiration of the Arab man in the street all the way from Morocco to Djibouti. What�s in it for the Saudis to be seen trying to put the squeeze on them? Let the Americans do it -- when the Americans won�t lift a finger. 

When discussing this last night with a visiting Saudi group I said, �Suppose Washington did try to either through cajoling or pressure get the Syrians to do something, what is it that the Syrians could deliver?� I said aside from the weapons transit [Iran to Hizbollah], what the Syrians could do is let the Lebanese, stop preventing the Lebanese army from going into South Lebanon. Get the Lebanese army to go into south Lebanon. All the Saudis said, �No, no, no. Syria can�t do that without going back into South Lebanon and nobody wants that.�

So that�s another concern. The Saudis have a lot invested in the new Lebanon, economically and politically and they don�t want Syria back in there. So there are a lot of balls in the air here and no one seems to know where they are going to come down. Everybody is miserable. The Jordanians are in a very uncomfortable position, the Syrians are hunkered down, the Saudis are trying to maneuver, the Egyptians have their own problems. Meanwhile the Israelis are back in Gaza.

SUSRIS:  And Hezbollah is looking like a million bucks in the Arab world.

Lippman: Exactly. 

SUSRIS:   Focus for a moment on Washington-Riyadh ties and where this is taking us. What�s the result of the crisis in Lebanon for the US-Saudi relationship? In the rearview mirror will this be just another blip?

Lippman: It might be a little early to say that. I don�t know what the reaction of Abdullah was to, in effect, being rebuffed so strongly over the weekend [Prince Saud al Faisal, Prince Bandar meeting with President Bush; call for ceasefire]. 

You know the historical record shows that when the dust settles after any of these events, going back to the �73 war, or even to 1948 when Truman recognized Israel, at the end of the day what has always happened, with a lot of Maalox and a lot of sleepless nights, the two countries recognize their mutual interests in keeping a stable political and economic relationship. 

It is my sense that is what�s going to happen now. Which is why just this week, for example, one of the five [Strategic Dialogue] working groups was in Washington going about its business without regard to what is happening in Lebanon. Saudi officials, Al Naimi and Prince Turki are giving speeches, bemoaning the absence of American business from the new opportunities in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis still want to see Americans in there doing business. 

SUSRIS:  Let�s look at the perspective from the other side of the peninsula for a second -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, and where the US fits in. Where are we after the Lebanon crisis, with the Saudis knowing that the ball has moved further down the line towards a direct confrontation with Iran. 

Lippman: You know and the Saudis have made clear, and Prince Turki recently expressed it forthrightly in a public forum, that the Saudis are strongly opposed to the possibility of military action against Iran. And they�re opposed to it because they think it would cause grief to them. 

The Saudis spent a lot of time in the late 1990s and the early 2000s building bridges to the Iranians -- having exchanges of visits, putting the Hajj grief of the previous decade behind them, trying to work cooperatively in OPEC and the OIC, and all that. They don�t want to jeopardize all that because to do so creates instability and a threatening environment where they don�t want instability and a threatening environment. 

Against that background is their concern about the Shiites in the region and in the Kingdom. I should say, to his credit, Abdullah has done more outreach to the Saudi Shiites than any other Saudi monarch. They haven�t wanted to poke the Iranian hornet�s nest, but what�s happening now may require them to take a little bit of a different view.

The situation in Iraq seems to be pretty close to out of control. Couple that with what�s going on elsewhere -- in Lebanon and maybe even Bahrain -- can only strengthen the collective political and strategic power of the Shiites in the region, which is never going to make the Saudis comfortable. It�s an issue they are trying to manage, so far I think with some skill, but it�s very difficult. If you have a full scale blow up in Iraq then who knows.

SUSRIS:  So the bottom line vis a vis Iran is opposition to a military confrontation over the nuclear issue but they are increasingly alarmed with Tehran�s strength in the region.

Lippman: That�s the way it looks to me. 

SUSRIS: And the increased alarm will not result in a change of policy in Riyadh?

Lippman: Well, the Saudi preference is to negotiate, or buy off or postpone, it�s never pick a fight, especially one they can�t win. So I don�t see a major change at the moment. So many things could go wrong, but none of them has gone decisively wrong yet. They could but they haven�t yet. 

SUSRIS: What are those things?

Lippman: In terms of a complete breakdown that creates a power vacuum in Iraq that�s filled by Tehran. In terms of a confrontation in Lebanon that drags in Syria and requires the Saudis to chose between Arab loyalties or sectarian sentiment. That hasn�t happened yet. Or the dilemma of having to chose between Arab loyalties and American ties. That hasn�t happened yet either. That could happen on the Iranian front, it could happen in Syria and it could happen in Lebanon. That hasn�t happened yet. But this could be one of those Augusts when nobody�s going to be sacking out on the coast of Spain for a month.

About Thomas Lippman

Thomas W. Lippman is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington. In four years as the Washington Post's Middle East bureau chief, three years as the Post's oil and energy reporter and a decade as the newspaper's national security and diplomatic correspondent, he traveled extensively to Saudi Arabia. He is the author of Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia, Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy, Understanding Islam, and Egypt After Nasser. A writer and journalist specializing in U.S. foreign policy and Middle Eastern affairs, he lives in Washington, DC. 

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