In a bizarre series of events that has puzzled many inside and outside Lebanon, Lebanese prime minister Saad Al-Hariri, who announced his resignation on television from the Saudi capital Riyadh on 4 November, arrived in Paris last weekend to be met by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée Palace. According to reports in the French media, Al-Hariri's arrival in Paris from Riyadh on 18 November, following a period in which according to rumours he had been kept a virtual prisoner in the Saudi capital, came in the wake of a meeting between Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman in Riyadh on 9 November. The meeting had apparently been arranged the previous day by Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, crown prince and minister of defence of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, which Macron had been visiting in order to attend the opening of the new Louvre Abu Dhabi designed by French architect Jean Nouvel on 8 November. According to an article in the French newspaper Le Monde at the weekend, Macron had agreed with Mohamed bin Salman in a three-hour meeting held at Riyadh Airport on 9 November that Al-Hariri should return to Lebanon via Paris, extracting him “from a delicate situation [in Saudi Arabia], while at the same time offering a way out to the Saudi authorities who also found themselves in an untenable situation.” The outcome would have pleased the French authorities, the newspaper said, since Paris had been worried about rising tensions in Lebanon and the Middle East region as a result of the competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran. In his televised speech from Riyadh, Al-Hariri had explained his resignation as having been due to Iranian interference in Lebanon particularly through the Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah which is supported by Tehran. Macron has been wanting to carve out a role for himself as an international mediator, Le Monde said, perhaps particularly in the Middle East where France has historically aimed to preserve relations with actors that have included Hizbullah and Iran as well as Saudi Arabia and the Sunni movements in Lebanon. French efforts to broker peace deals in Libya and Syria have not been crowned with any notable successes, the newspaper said, but its efforts to find a solution to the latest crisis to hit Lebanon have been more promising. On 13 November, the French presidency had suggested that Al-Hariri's fate could be discussed at the UN Security Council, a way of putting pressure on Riyadh, according to Le Monde. Two days later, Macron announced that Al-Hariri would be visiting Paris on his way back to Lebanon. “In exchange for the Saudi gesture” of apparently authorising Al-Hariri's return trip to Beirut via Paris, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a meeting with Mohamed bin Salman in Riyadh last Thursday that he would be postponing a planned visit to Tehran, distancing France from Iran. Up to now, Lebanese President Michel Aoun has refused to accept Al-Hariri's resignation, saying that this cannot be delivered by television. Macron said at the weekend that Al-Hariri would not be staying in Paris and that he was expected to depart for Beirut by Wednesday 22 November for the country's Independence Day celebrations. Al-Hariri may withdraw his resignation, the French media said, though this will depend on his receiving some equivalent gesture from Hizbullah, with Al-Hariri's Sunni Muslim Future Current a partner in the Lebanese government. While Paris will have been pleased by the weekend's events, Le Monde said in its Sunday edition, this may not be the case for the authorities in Riyadh, now suspected of deeper interference in Lebanon. “Whether the authorities in Riyadh forced Al-Hariri to resign before holding him against his will in the country, as numerous sources have suggested, or whether they simply persuaded him to give up office in order to ratchet up the situation, as their supporters wanted, the effect of their gesture is the same,” the newspaper commented. “Engaged in a competition for regional influence with Iran,” Saudi Arabia hoped that Al-Hariri's resignation would “remodel the Lebanese political equation in a way more favourable to its interests.” However, “what has happened in the country over the last couple of weeks has headed in the opposite direction… with the majority of Lebanese left scandalised by Saudi actions that have been perceived as a foreign diktat followed by a kidnapping.”
