On March 8, Mayssam Rizk wrote the following report in Al-Akhbar daily: “…[Former] PM Sa’d al-Hariri no longer has [the role that] he used to have in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The head of the Future movement has nearly turned from a main ally of Al-Riyadh into a “burden” according to some members of the Saudi Palace. The Saud family members have lost the “wisdom” that their supporters had always praised and they started shooting randomly at Lebanon in every directions including their “political agent” Sa’d al-Hariri for many reasons: All the Saudi “investments” in Lebanon over the past ten years did not yield any worthy “profits:” Al-Hariri failed to obtain any compromises from Hezbollah…

“The Kingdom is used to punishing anyone who disobeys. And because nature has the upper hand over nurture, the Kingdom failed to “digest” the confused and hesitant position of the Future movement’s head – because of his objective circumstances – regarding the Kingdom’s and the Gulf States’ blacklisting of Hezbollah as being a terrorist organization. Thus, the Kingdom decided to beseige the man and pressure him using his weakest point: his financial “lung,” the Saudi Oger.

“The Saudi Okaz newspaper indicated yesterday that “the Kingdom has taken measures to hold the Sa’d al-Hariri owned Saudi Oger accountable for the delay in paying the salaries of thousands of employees.” The newspaper quoted a ministry of labor official who said that “a committee has been established to solve the problem of the delay in paying the employees’ salaries as many of them have been complaining about the delay that has been going on for more than four months,” which pushed the ministry to “block a number of services that the company had been receiving such as the social insurance services and the services of the general passports’ directorate.”

“…Because every actin in Saudi Arabia is “stirred by somebody,” prominent Future officials close to PM Al-Hariri are wondering about the Kingdom’s measures and whether these have anything to do with the Saudi escalation against Lebanon. The one certain thing for these officials is that “the Saudi measures against the company are primarily directed against PM Al-Hariri himself.” They reveal that “the 24 hours visit that Al-Hariri recently made to Al-Riyadh was related to financial issues…”

“They believe that the new Saudi “blow” was because “the new princes are not pleased with the politics that Al-Hariri has been adopting since he returned to Lebanon, his inability to keep up with Al-Riyadh’s campaign against Hezbollah, and his unwillingness to translate the Saudi decision in the internal arena.” For this reason, the Kingdom decided to “pressure him financially…” Observers see this scene as being a “systematic retaliation against PM Al-Hariri for having disobeyed the Saudi order of being a spearhead in the confrontation with Hezbollah and for working on amending the situation by relying on a French and American intervention to force the Kingdom into retreating…””