"..The Saudis, being the Saudis, do not commit to get involved in any fighting themselves .."

"...Unfortunately, the issues underlying the Saudi foreign minister’s request and the US ambassador’s brush-off have not disappeared. The same mechanisms are at work today in Lebanon, underlying and dominating events and continuing to benefit Iran and its allies.
On one level, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal’s request for the assembling of a force capable of resisting Hizbullah sounds like obvious common sense. It was made at a time that Hizbullah was engaged in the culmination of an 18- month period of revolt against the Saudi and US-backed elected government of Lebanon. Hizbullah and allied fighters had launched something resembling a coup against the authorities, brushing aside feeble resistance and seizing control of West Beirut.
Lebanon was on the verge of civil war. It had become obvious that the entire project of the “Cedar Revolution” and the attempt to build an independent and sovereign Lebanon was faced with an armed attempt by Iran and Syria to destroy it through the use of a proxy military force. The Lebanese Armed Forces, themselves divided along sectarian lines and with a large Shi’ite element, were useless as an instrument for the defense of the state’s sovereignty. They would have split and ceased to exist if ordered to fight Hizbullah, and would have been defeated in the unlikely event that they had attempted to do so.
In such circumstances, the two stark options for the international guarantors of the March 14 government were to fight or to surrender.
BUT ON closer inspection, Faisal al- Saud was not exactly proposing the former in this meeting. The Saudis, being the Saudis, do not commit to get involved in any fighting themselves...."