There's a Mint Cast podcast on this subject also with some additional
theories.
Miriam
LEBANONAugust 13, 2020
How the US helped push Lebanon to the brink of collapse, and now threatens
more sanctions
While the media blames the crisis in Lebanon solely on corruption, the US
government unleashed a maximum pressure campaign to push regime change and
crush Lebanese resistance with sanctions and aggressive hybrid warfare.
By Ben Norton
As the people of Lebanon suffer through one of the worst economic crises in
their nations conflict-ridden history, the Donald Trump administration is
exploiting the disaster to force regime change and weaken Lebanese
resistance groups.
A massive explosion on August 4 devastated Lebanons capital Beirut, killing
more than 150 people, wounding thousands, leaving hundreds of thousands
homeless, and ravaging a sizable chunk of the city.
The massive blast also destroyed Lebanons most important port, where 80
percent of food was imported into the country.
Even before the apocalyptic incident, Lebanon was enduring an economic
calamity that had caused hyperinflation and wiped out of the wealth of much
of the country, fueling widespread food shortages and 20-hour blackouts.
Lebanons economy is now in a state of total collapse. The value of its
national currency has plummeted by 80 percent, and more than half of the
population is languishing in poverty.
Political kingpins, activists, Western government-funded NGOs, and
international corporate media have blamed Lebanons problems solely on
corruption. And there is no question that widespread financial impropriety
and outright theft was a key factor in bringing the country to such a dismal
point.
But an even more important element that has been conveniently left out of
this picture is the role of the United States, and its allies in Israel and
Saudi Arabia, which have pursued a concerted policy of destabilization, or
what they call maximum pressure.
Washington has suffocated Lebanon and its neighbors with aggressive economic
warfare, explicitly aimed at paralyzing the country and weakening Hezbollah,
one of the most powerful and popular resistance forces in the region, which
has successfully resisted US and Israeli interventionist designs, helped
defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda, and even expelled the Israeli military after two
decades of brutal military occupation of south Lebanon.
Hezbollah has a political arm that is democratically elected, holding 12
seats in Lebanons parliament, and which has been a member of the countrys
governing coalition for a decade. Because of the resistance movements
presence in government, Washington and Tel Aviv have refused to recognize
the legitimacy of Lebanese democracy, and have desperately pursued regime
change.
The crushing sanctions Washington has imposed on Syria and Iran have not
only devastated the economies in the area; they have produced a ricochet
effect back in Lebanon, severing the country from regional trading partners.
Then there is the nine-year Western-backed proxy war on the government in
Damascus, which has destabilized Lebanons neighbor and unleashed a historic
refugee crisis, putting enormous pressure on Beirut.
All of these factors have led to a catastrophe in Lebanon.
Trump administration pushes maximum pressure campaign on Lebanon
The response of the Trump administration to the fateful Beirut blast was
more sanctions.
The Wall Street Journal reported on August 12 that the US government was
preparing to impose new sanctions against prominent Lebanese politicians
and businessmen in an effort to weaken Hezbollahs influence.
The newspaper noted that the blast has accelerated efforts in Washington to
blacklist Lebanese leaders aligned with Hezbollah. It added that US
officials see the post-explosion chaos as an opportunity to drive a wedge
between Hezbollah and its allies as part of a broader effort to contain the
Shiite force backed by Tehran.
Top US officials want to turn the screws in Lebanon, the Journal reported.
It quoted an unnamed official who remarked, I dont see how you can react
to this kind of event with anything other than maximum pressure a
reference to the Trump administrations maximum pressure campaign to bring
about regime change in Iran.
Senior US officials remarked bluntly that they want Lebanons current
government to be replaced with a technocratic regime that shuns Hezbollah.
This demand confirmed a 2019 report in The Grayzone by journalist Rania
Khalek, which detailed how Western-backed NGOs in Lebanon were exploiting
anti-corruption protests to advance a strategy to remove Hezbollah from the
countrys governing coalition and install US-aligned, IMF-friendly
technocrats.
The Wall Street Journal also acknowledged that the Trump administrations
existing sanction programs against Hezbollah have already taken an
economic toll on Lebanon.
Washington has therefore made it clear that it has no problem pushing
Lebanon deeper into the economic abyss, to the edge of state collapse, in
hopes of neutralizing Hezbollah.
Washingtons all-out war on the Resistance Axis
The crisis in Lebanon cannot be understood outside of the wider context of
the overarching, obsessive US strategy aimed at crushing what is known as
the Resistance Axis, in which Hezbollah serves as a key actor.
The ongoing, nearly decade-long war on Syria looms large in this situation.
When the US government and its allies in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and
Turkey initiated a regime-change war against Syria in 2011 and 2012,
Hezbollah immediately recognized the proxy conflict as an attack on all
resistance forces in the region, which would inevitably swallow Lebanon as
well.
So while Washington and the Wahhabi Gulf monarchies poured billions of
dollars into arming and training Salafi-jihadist rebels groups in Syria,
giving birth to ISIS and fueling the spread of al-Qaeda, Lebanese Hezbollah
helped to prevent state collapse in Damascus, battling Western proxies that
threatened to turn the country into a failed state, as they did in Libya
after the 2011 NATO regime-change war.
Some US lawmakers openly argued in Congress that it was a good thing that
ISIS and other Sunni extremists were attacking Hezbollah and the Shiite
threat to us. And an Israeli think tank funded by the US government and
NATO even insisted in 2016 that ISIS should not be defeated, precisely
because it could be a useful tool in undermining Hezbollah, Syria, and
Iran.
Meanwhile, as Israel treated al-Qaeda militants in its hospitals and Israeli
officials said they preferred ISIS staying in power, Hezbollah played a key
role in the fight to defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda, both of which had crossed
from Syria into Lebanon and took over Sunni-majority border towns, which
they subsequently used as bases to launch attacks on Shia- and
Christian-majority Lebanese villages.
Hezbollah successfully expelled these extremist Salafi-jihadist groups, and
defended Lebanese sovereignty, in collaboration with Christian militias,
Sunnis and Druze, and the Lebanese national army itself.
Faced with its own failure in the military component of the war in Syria,
Washington then turned to full-scale economic warfare.
US economic warfare on Lebanon, Syria, and Iran
In June, the US government imposed a crushing unilateral coercive measures
regime on Syria known as the Caesar sanctions. The Grayzone editor Max
Blumenthal detailed how the US and European sanctions on Syria effectively
amount to a medieval-style siege of the entire country, and all of the
millions of civilians who live inside of it.
Humanitarian experts have even warned that the Western economic warfare
could unleash a famine. The United Nation Food and Agriculture
Organizations Syria representative, Mike Robson, cautioned there may soon
be bread shortages in Syria. There is already some evidence of people
cutting out meals, he stated.
The economic blockade has also damaged the economy in Lebanon, which has
been virtually unable to do business with one of its most important trading
partners. In 2017, Lebanon was by far the largest recipient of Syrian goods,
receiving nearly 32 percent of its exports. Now, the sanctions have made
that exchange nearly impossible.
The US ambassador in fact explicitly stated that Lebanon would not be
allowed to buy energy from Syria due to the Caesar sanctions. The US-imposed
severance of the two neighbors has exacerbated the electricity crisis in
Lebanon, where there are often power shortages for up to 22 hours per day.
The US economic blockade of Iran has also caused a fuel shortage in Syria,
forcing people to wait in lines for hours to get gasoline.
Moreover, Damascus had relied on the Beirut port for imports prior to the
explosion. Now that its crucial economic lifeline has been destroyed, both
Lebanon and Syria are facing extremely severe crises and the serious
possibility of famine.
A Syrian-American economist, financial analyst, and prominent online
commentator known by the pseudonym Ehsani told The Grayzone there is little
doubt that the Syria war has terribly impacted Lebanons economy.
While disastrous, fiscally unsound policies overseen by the Lebanese central
bank which is also heavily influenced by the US embassy played an
important role in pushing the nation to the economic brink, the war on Syria
has also hurt the Lebanese economy in a big way, Ehsani said.
Economic growth clearly decelerated since 2011, the start of the war in
Syria, he explained. And it ground to a halt in the past few years, leading
up to the financial crisis. Between 2016 and 2019, Lebanons economic growth
was practically zero. And it kept declining from its pre-2011 levels
steadily.
While corruption is an endemic problem in Lebanon, it has plagued the
country for decades. Yet a pivotal economic shift occurred with the
introduction of the US policy of exacerbating the crises in the region to
destabilize independent governments and weaken the Resistance Axis,
explained journalist Elijah J. Magnier, a war correspondent who has covered
the region for decades.
The US sanctions crippled the Syrian economy due to the restriction of the
flow of cash, oil, and machinery needed to re-boost the local economy,
Magnier told The Grayzone. Moreover, the US presence in north-east Syria
and their control of the oil and gas prevented the country not only from
vital energy but also from the rich agriculture resources the area is known
for.
The US sanctions on Syria stopped all Arab and Gulf countries from
rebuilding the country and pushed back all possible financial investment,
he said. This has caused the devaluation of the local currency and
prevented the Lebanese market from offering an alternative to Syria for fear
of direct sanctions on the Lebanese government.
Magnier added: As far as it concerns Lebanon, the US asked a local bank to
collect over $20 billion in cash and to ship it abroad, creating a real
thirst for foreign currency in the country. Moreover, the US imposed
sanctions on wealthy Lebanese living abroad and on more than one bank,
injecting real fear among the population of being accused of supporting
terrorism or seeing their savings confiscated by the US authorities abroad.
That has starved Lebanon of several billion dollars in cash that family
members used to send back home to their relatives.
US boasts of impact of sanctions on Lebanon, and CENTCOM commander visits
While imposing de facto economic blockades on Syria and Iran, the United
States has hit Lebanon with several rounds of what it calls targeted
sanctions. These US Treasury sanctions on Lebanon have sought to punish
Hezbollah and its allies in the government and business sector.
While Washington portrays targeted sanctions as supposed humanitarian
measures that do not hurt civilians, economic experts say this is patently
false.
Ehsani, the Syrian-American economist, told The Grayzone, The effects of
the US sanctions on the region is to push most business transactions
underground. Lawless rogue elements typically fill the void as more
legitimate businesses exit the scene. Such legitimate businesses do this
because most global organizations opt to follow an over-compliance posture
to avoid any chance of getting entangled in such transactions.
US sanctions have also hurt Lebanon by the loss of potential money inflows
that had fallen under significantly more scrutiny from US Treasury, Ehsani
added. How much of the average $7-8 billion yearly inflow got affected by
these sanctions is hard to ascertain.
While Western capitals speak of smart sanctions, the fact is that even
industries exempt from sanctions tend to quickly fall under the sanctions
regime. This can be seen with importers of raw materials for medicine for
example, he explained.
What has been clear is that benign sanctions are a myth, Ehsani said.
Sanctions are akin to carpet bombing the standards of living of the average
citizen.
Before the August 4 explosion, Washington itself acknowledged that its
sanctions were stinging Lebanon.
Just two weeks before the Beirut blast, the US government-run media outlet
Voice of America (VOA) celebrated the effect its coercive measures were
having. US Sanctions on Syria Leave Hezbollah More Isolated in Lebanon, it
gloated.
The VOA report noted that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had described
the US sanctions as part of an economic war aimed at starving both Syria
and Lebanon.
The neoconservative group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) approvingly
tweeted the VOA article, insisting that the resistance network is vast, but
it can be reined in.
This VOA report came on the heels of a quiet yet important visit that the
commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM), General Frank McKenzie, took to
Beirut on July 8, to pressure the Lebanese Army to distance itself from
Hezbollah and strengthen its bonds with the US military.
The US embassy in Lebanon reported that the CENTCOM commander met with top
Lebanese political and military officials. Lebanese President Michel Aoun
tweeted a photo of a meeting with McKenzie and the US ambassador, Dorothy
Shea.
Saudi monarchy-backed media outlet Al Arabiya reported gleefully on the
CENTCOM visit, chirping, US general affirms support for Lebanon; Hezbollah
supporters burn Trump photos.
The quiet US junket demonstrated that, on the eve of the Beirut blast,
Washington was already ratcheting up its pressure on Lebanons government.
Western governments, NGOs, and media try to pin Beirut blast on Hezbollah
The August 4 explosion appears to have been the result of the explosion of
thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate that the Lebanese government
confiscated from an abandoned ship in 2013 and improperly stored at the
Beirut port, violating safety protocol.
The Lebanese government, which resigned a week after the blast, officially
attributed the incident to negligence. But President Michel Aoun
acknowledged it could have possibly been the result an attack.
Some Beirut residents told Asia Times that they saw and heard military
aircraft flying overhead moments before the explosion.
Asia Times also reported, citing unnamed Western officials, that Western
reconnaissance craft were in the skies above the Lebanese coast at the time
of the blasts, although the officials denying carrying out an attack.
A US Central Command official told Asia Times that the cause of the first
fire/explosion is still an unanswered question, adding that there is no
actual evidence to support or confirm that it was caused by ammonium
nitrate, and that other alternatives are possible.
Although the incident appears to have been an accident, some Lebanese
analysts have suggested the blast could have potentially been an attack by
Israel, which militarily occupied south Lebanon for more than 20 years and
waged a devastating war in 2006, brutally bombing Lebanon and leaving more
than 1,000 Lebanese dead and parts of the country in ruins.
Israel violates Lebanons sovereign airspace on a daily basis. In 2019, the
United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon reported an average of 96.5
violations each month. UN Secretary-General António Guterres even spoke out
against the Israeli aggression, stating, I reiterate my condemnation of all
violations of Lebanese sovereignty and my call for Israel to cease its
violations of Lebanese airspace.
Despite the presence of Western aircraft during the explosion, the history
of Israeli attacks, and the constant Israeli violations of Lebanese
airspace, there has been a concerted campaign to try to pin the blast on
Hezbollah, waged by the US and Israeli governments, a coterie of hawkish
think tanks, and a sizable portion of the corporate media.
There is not even a scintilla of evidence linking Hezbollah to the
explosion. In fact, the Lebanese resistance group would have everything to
lose if it were involved.
But this didnt stop the Atlantic Council, NATOs de facto think tank, which
is funded handsomely by the governments of the United States, Britain, and
United Arab Emirates, along with top weapons and oil corporations. The
Atlantic Councils Gulf monarchy-backed Rafik Hariri Center tried to link
Hezbollah to the blast with nothing more than insinuations.
Then there was the hawkish executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth
Roth. Never one to let something like a death of evidence get in the way of
his mindless speculation about Washingtons foreign adversaries, Roth
immediately implied after the blast that Hezbollah was responsible. He did
not provide a shred of evidence; it was just his gut instinct.
Pro-Western protesters in Lebanon have also seized on the chaos to call for
the dissolution of the Lebanese armed resistance.
Following the explosion, anti-Hezbollah groups took over Lebanese government
buildings and unfurled banners calling for Beirut to demilitarize an
obvious demand for Hezbollah to put down its weapons and end its fight
against Israel.
The US embassy in Beirut openly welcomed these demonstrations, tweeting
openly, We support them.
US pledges aid while intentionally exacerbating Lebanons economic crisis
Even as the Trump administration threatens to impose more aggressive
sanctions on Lebanon, seeking to punish forces that support the Resistance
Axis, the US government has pledged humanitarian aid to the country.
Moments after the explosion, Washington put its public relations operations
into hyperdrive, seeking to portray itself as a noble protector of Lebanon.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo the former CIA director who quipped, We
lied, we cheated, we stole; we had entire training courses promised
support following the blast.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a soft-power
arm that Washington uses to destabilize foreign governments it has targeted
for regime change, announced it would be providing Lebanon with humanitarian
aid.
John Barsa, the hardline neoconservative Trump loyalist recently installed
as head of the USAID, who has explicitly used the ostensible aid agency as a
weapon to overthrow the progressive governments in Latin America, announced
support for Lebanon the next day.
US Central Command revealed that they were working with USAID to distribute
medical supplies to Lebanon.
Ironically, in the weeks before the explosion, as Lebanons government
begged for an economic lifeline, Washington was dragging its feet.
As millions Lebanese citizens struggled to put food on the table, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) also refused to play ball. This baffled
many international observers. Left unmentioned in coverage of the IMFs
behavior was the de facto veto the US holds in the organization, which it
wields as a neoliberal instrument of Washingtons economic power.
The IMF conditions include privatization and taxes the Lebanese society
cant afford, the journalist Elijah Magnier explained to The Grayzone.
Moreover, the IMF is controlled by the US administration, which is asking
for a new government without Hezbollah. That is not feasible because
Hezbollah represents 13 MPs and enjoys the support of the majority of the
parliament.
Magnier also emphasized that when Lebanon had assembled a new government in
the middle of the crisis, under Prime Minister Hassan Diab, Washington waged
a destabilization campaign.
With the formation of a new government, the US boycotted it and pressured
Europe and the Gulf countries to cease any support, defining it as
Hezbollahs government,' Magnier said. These measures contributed in the
hectic financial situation in the country, which was also triggered by
decades of corruption and mismanagement by the US friends who ruled Lebanon
for all these years.
The pro-Israel lobby group the American Jewish Committee (AJC) let the cat
out of the bag when it tweeted on August 9 that international assistance to
Lebanon following the explosion must be conditioned on the long-promised,
long-avoided disarmament of Hezbollah.
AJC made it clear that Western aid will be hung over Lebanon like a sword of
Damocles, adding, Unless the malignant role of Irans terror proxy is
addressed there will never be meaningful change for the people of Lebanon.
Magnier also pointed out that the amount in international aid being offered
to Lebanon is relatively little. 35 countries gathered all to offer to the
UN and NGOs in Lebanon $300 million, the equivalent of what Hezbollah spend
in less than five months in the country, only on salaries, he said.
Meanwhile, as millions of Lebanese civilians suffer, financial analysts
expect the US campaign of economic warfare and maximum pressure to only
continue going forward.
The sanctions policy are likely to stay, Ehsani told The Grayzone. This
policy is more acceptable to the average Western electorate than direct
military involvement. Policy makers are therefore likely to make more use of
them post the Iraq debacle. Regional governments and average citizens will
bear the brunt of this silent evisceration of their economic well being.
