Lebanon is not moving closer to Iran

HAARETZ--Incoming Lebanese Prime Minister Mikati has the support of Saudi Arabia, Syria and France, so the United States will have a hard time opposing him.

The incoming Lebanese Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, is not a representative of Hezbollah and certainly not of Iran. He is a close personal friend of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and even Saudi Arabia - the patron of the outgoing prime minister - hasn’t spoken out against Mikati, a 55-year-old Sunni native of Tripoli.

France also proposed Mikati for the premiership, after it became clear that the compromise prime minister suggested by Saudi Arabia and Syria had been rejected. If Mikati has the support of Saudi Arabia, Syria and France, the United States will have a hard time opposing him.

Mikati served in the government of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in which he was responsible for public service and transportation, and was asked to briefly serve as interim prime minister following Hariri’s assassination in 2005. Associates of Saad Hariri, the outgoing prime minister and Rafik Hariri’s son, can also be expected to make their own political calculations and decide - perhaps with some Syrian and Saudi pressure - to join Mikati’s government so as not to lose all their centers of power in the country.

He will have to be everyone’s prime minister, a job description Mikati should not find too difficult. With a fortune estimated at $2.5 billion, Mikati showed his ability to identify business opportunities when he invested in African countries, created (with his brother ) the massive communications company Investcom - during the height of the Lebanese civil war, when he was just 27 - and later sold it to a South African investor. Continued…