The long-suffering people of Lebanon might finally have some good news on the horizon. A new government finally has been formed and, critically, the International Monetary Fund will replenish Lebanon’s nearly empty foreign reserves on Thursday, depositing $1.13 billion in IMF Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, in Lebanon’s Central Bank. Unfortunately, chances are slim for a wholesale reform of the kleptocracy that has driven the country into economic collapse and political paralysis.
In addition to the cash infusion, the new government will be empowered to negotiate an IMF aid package. That represents the best near-term opportunity for a country whose population has experienced a cascade of avoidable misery over the past two years due to a fiscal crisis caused in large part by the narrow circle of political bosses who dominate the country’s politics. Medicine, fuel and many food staples are scarcely available in Lebanon, which has experienced one of the world’s largest economic contractions in modern history; the World Bank says Lebanon’s crash is among the three most severe documented in the world since the mid-1800s.*
According to a recent study, 82 percent of Lebanese households live in severe poverty. Services have deteriorated so severely that the United Nations allocated $10 million in humanitarian funds to buy fuel for hospitals and water stations, while Hezbollah is reportedly trying to import fuel directly from Iran without permission from the Lebanese government.
The new government offers only modest reason for optimism. The new prime minister, Najib Mikati, is not only among the wealthiest men in Lebanon. He is a card-carrying member of the political establishment who has twice before headed the country’s government. A Sunni magnate from the northern city of Tripoli, Mikati is Saad Hariri’s main rival for leadership of Lebanon’s Sunni community. But Mikati has the support of Hezbollah and its coalition partners as well, meaning he would likely stand a better chance of governing than his predecessor, Hassan Diab, who was a technocrat without an independent political base of his own.
Mikati’s government will nonetheless operate under the same conditions that have driven Lebanon into its current crisis: The government is comprised of the same group of warlords and corrupt bosses who have misruled the country since the end of the civil war in 1990, while managing to escape any form of accountability for the current crisis. Lebanon even managed to negotiate the new IMF package without any serious concessions in terms of commitments for reforms.
Mikati’s government will operate under the same conditions that have driven Lebanon into its current crisis.
The Iran nuclear agreement is still in limbo. Tehran reached an agreement Sunday with the International Atomic Energy Association to preserve the IAEA’s ability to monitor Iran’s nuclear program, after months of friction between the agency and the Islamic Republic. Without the IAEA’s inspection infrastructure, the resumption of the Iran nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, would be impossible. The United States has said it won’t wait forever to seal a deal to revive the agreement, and U.S. officials reportedly discussed alternatives to the JCPOA in a recent meeting with Israeli officials. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week told reporters in Germany that the United States was “getting closer” to giving up on talks with Iran in Vienna. But according to some analysts, the IAEA agreement could provide the momentum needed to jumpstart the nuclear negotiations.
Regional fence-mending continues—without the United States. Governments in the Middle East have accelerated the wave of regional diplomatic engagement that is taking place independently of a U.S. mediating role. Turkey and the United Arab Emirates continued their rapprochement, mentioned in my Aug. 23 newsletter, with a phone call between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the UAE’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.
Meanwhile, Iraq hosted a regional summit at the end of August intended to cement Baghdad’s role as a diplomatic conduit between Iran and the Persian Gulf monarchies. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi also met with the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, at the Baghdad summit, representing an important thaw between two states that have been at odds in recent years. Most countries sent their foreign ministers rather than their heads of state, and there were no major breakthroughs. But the summit represented a new phase in regional diplomacy, both in terms of the governments taking the initiative to negotiate with their rivals and adversaries, as well as in terms of the foreign powers playing the role of broker; in this case, French President Emmanuel Macron attended the summit. Iraqi organizers said the summit marked a significant move to deescalate regional tensions.
Election campaigning begins in Iraq. The parliamentary election campaign is underway in Iraq ahead of the Oct. 10 vote. Observers expect widespread fraud, although the United Nations has prepared an unusually large contingent of international observers for the polls. Populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who decided at the last minute to contest the elections after a threatened boycott, is expected to win the largest number of seats, as he did in the last parliamentary ballot in 2018. Most protest groups, known collectively as the “October Movement,” have decided to sit out the polls, arguing that the political system is too heavily stacked in favor of the status quo political parties to make a difference.
A fragile cease-fire holds for now in southern Syria. Russia struggled to implement a cease-fire agreement it midwifed between the Syrian government and the last hold-out rebels in the besieged city of Deraa. Under the agreement, rebels who surrender would be bused to areas outside of government control, while the government would take control of the city. But the government has continued to add new demands in the ongoing negotiations.
U.S. pulls missile defense from Saudi Arabia. The U.S. military has pulled its Patriot missile batteries from bases in Saudi Arabia in recent weeks, leading former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal to claim the country was now “vulnerable” to attacks from Yemen and Iran. “I think we need to be reassured about American commitment,” Prince Turki said. The Pentagon pointed to the tens of thousands of troops it continues to maintain in the region as a “broad and deep” commitment to defending U.S. interests and regional partners.
The coup watch continues in Tunisia. President Kais Saied indefinitely extended his suspension of parliament in late August. Foreign officials, including from the United States, European Union and G-7, have urged Tunisia’s president to restore democratic governance. “We urge a swift return to a constitutional order, in which an elected parliament plays a significant role,” G-7 ambassadors said in a recent statement.
Impunity continues for Egypt’s security state. According to a Human Rights Watch report released last week, Egyptian security forces have been conducting extrajudicial executions and then disguising them as shootouts with suspected terrorists. Egypt’s government says at least 755 “militants” were killed in 143 shootouts between 2015 and 2020, but Human Rights Watch says that in many cases there is no evidence linking those killed with militant activity.
*Editor’s note: The original version of this article stated that Lebanon’s economic contraction was the largest in modern history. WPR regrets the error.
Thanassis Cambanis is a senior fellow and director of the international policy program at The Century Foundation in New York. He teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. His books include “Once Upon a Revolution: An Egyptian Story,” “A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions,” and four edited volumes about politics and security in the Middle East. He is currently writing a book about the Iraq war’s global impact. His Twitter handle is @tcambanis.
