A new mideast dynamic

SYRIA'S PRESIDENT Bashar Assad suffered a crucial setback in his efforts to hold on to Syria's lucrative domination of Lebanon when the Saudi monarchy told Assad Thursday that he had to withdraw from Lebanon completely. This is a promising turn of events, especially because the Saudi rulers had originally godfathered the 1989 Taif Accord, lending Arab legitimacy to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. It suggests that Bashar has lost the blackmailing clout that his father, the late dictator Hafez Assad, wielded to make the world support his domination of Lebanon. The Saudi warning, seconded by Egypt, also suggests that longstanding power arrangements and received ideas in the Middle East are being reconfigured.

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These signs of change are welcome for many reasons. In the short run, they may help fulfill Lebanese desires for independence -- so evident in the crowds of Muslims, Christians, and Druze that took to the streets after the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri to demand Syria's departure. Lebanese opposition to Syrian domination is not merely a matter of romantic nationalism. The Syrian Ba'athist elites have been skimming and stealing from nearly every economic enterprise in Lebanon. They take their cut from pirated telephone traffic, the licensing of petroleum products, construction, electricity, the national airline, stone quarries, and Lebanon's popular casino, where Syrian secret service agents come each night to empty slot machines.

If the Saudi royals and the autocratic regime of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak are aligning themselves with the common folk of Lebanon, it is because they can hear the rumblings of discontent in the Arab world with governments that represent their people in name only.

The thuggishness of the Assad regime has become an embarrassment. . For Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and Mubarak, telling Assad to get out of Lebanon has become the popular thing to do. It comes easier, and cheaper, than permitting the citizens of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to choose -- and change -- the governments that rule over them.

There is also a geopolitical motive to the Saudi and Egyptian rebuff of Assad. Syria's alliance with Iran makes Bashar a collaborator with non-Arab Shi'ites at a time when Jordan's King Abdullah has warned against the creation of a Shi'ite crescent stretching from Tehran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon, threatening the Sunni ascendancy in the Arab world.

The next step for the Arab regimes should be to make sure Assad does not try to stir up another Lebanese civil war to justify a resumed occupation.