Went to a small dinner tonight at the Nixon Center featuring the former president of Lebanon Amine Gemayel, whose son Pierre was assassinated in Beirut in November. Former president Gemayel had met with Bush earlier in the day. The status of the conversation shifted from on the record to on background at the end, and he declined to answer my question in any case. (What did the White House tell him about its policy, especially in the context of the reports of the US working with Sunni allies such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Israel to counter Iran in places such as Lebanon and Iraq). In any case, I guess I can share my thought walking away from the event: proxy war, meet your proxy. One suspects, the military support is flowing, the money is flowing, to forces to counter Hezbollah, some of it in coordination with Saudi Arabia. Back in early December I had met with a former Lebanese intelligence official who formerly worked for Gemayel, who was in town meeting contacts and in total despair that the US was going to let the Lebanese government fall to Hezbollah-led actions. Things seem to have changed quite fast, and perhaps one should not underestimate how much President Bush's party having lost the November elections might have figured in the calculations of the leadership of Saudi Arabia and a constellation of related actors to shift into a more activist gear to shore up their interests in the region, including countering Hezbollah's efforts to take down the Lebanese government.

Posted by Laura at February 9, 2007 01:07 AM