Report: U.S., France Advised Hariri to Stay Abroad on Fear of Assassination Plot
U.S. sources have informed caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri about a plan to assassinate him in Beirut, “which was supposed to be carried out in May,” Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai reported.
In a report published Monday, the newspaper said the U.S. warnings to Hariri “coincided with similar warnings from the Saudi and French authorities.”
Al-Rai noted that Washington, Paris and several capitals in the region have been following up on surveillance operations conducted by parties in Lebanon since August 2010 to track Hariri’s movements, adding that these capitals have urged the Lebanese leader to be extremely careful while traveling in Lebanon.
“Surveillance operations were carried out to track Hariri’s convoy as it passed along the (Beirut) airport road, and sometimes at the airport itself,” the newspaper quoted the U.S. sources as saying.
The U.S. sources advised Hariri “to stay outside Lebanon during this period to avoid political and security traps,” according to Al-Rai.
“The U.S. administration always expects the worse, especially during periods of domestic and regional tensions,” the sources added, noting that “when the events in Syria had started to deteriorate day after day, … the indications pointing out that an assassination operation against Hariri was being plotted increased in an unprecedented manner.”
In this regard, the newspaper quoted a U.S. official as saying that “after the U.S. intelligence agencies unveiled the assassination attempt previously scheduled for May, and after the intelligence agencies of the friendly countries confirmed the presence of such a plan,” officials in Washington started to “try to figure out the possible political motivations behind the plot to murder Hariri.”
According to the same official, Washington believes that the liquidation of Saad Hariri is apt to “turn the tables in Lebanon, as well as in the region, and turning the tables at the moment is in the interest of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which is struggling for survival in the face of the popular uprising.”
As to how Assad could benefit from assassinating a non-Syrian figure behind Syria’s borders, the newspaper quoted U.S. sources involved in the aforementioned political evaluations as saying that murdering Hariri is apt to “lead to full-blown sectarian chaos and tensions in Lebanon, and consequently a Sunni-Shiite confrontation which Assad would use as an excuse in his bid to militarily quell the popular revolt in Syria.”
The same sources told the newspaper that “Assad has asked Hizbullah to ignite the south Lebanon front and launch a war against Israel, but Hizbullah does not feel that it is in trouble like its ally Assad, and hence does not see the need to engage in a vicious war with Israel that would not guarantee the survival of the Syrian president’s regime.”
But, according to the U.S. sources, Hizbullah is “willing to engage in a Lebanese civil war, as it knows in advance that it will emerge as the strongest party in it.”
Such a war “is apt to deviate the world’s attention from what’s happening in Syria,” the sources added.
Al-Rai quotes another U.S. official as saying that “Assad needs another operation similar to the May 7, 2008 operation, during which Hizbullah conquered its rivals in Lebanon, and murdering Saad Hariri is the only available means at the moment for the Syrian regime to ignite a major inferno, which it believes the international community will beg it to douse.”
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