Saddam Haftar is eyeing the throne in Libya

Eastern Libya spent astir 7 years denouncing the maritime memorandum Turkiye struck with its rivals based successful Tripoli. Last week, it needed a azygous sitting of the legislature to clasp it.

On October 20, the House of Representatives (HoR) successful Benghazi ratified the deal. The European Union condemned the vote, arsenic did Greece, Israel and Egypt.

Yet the ratification was little a Turkish triumph than the last enactment of a series choreographed by Saddam Haftar, the lad of Khalifa Haftar, the subject commandant who controls eastbound Libya. The eventual extremity is the Libyan presidency.

The United States is presently trying to broker a power-sharing statement betwixt Tripoli and Benghazi. Championed by Massad Boulos, US President Donald Trump’s elder advisor for Arab and African affairs, the woody could instal Saddam arsenic Libya’s president.

For that to happen, however, helium needs the backing of Ankara, whose sway implicit occidental Libya gives it a decisive dependable successful immoderate specified settlement. The ratification of the maritime deal, therefore, is meant to unafraid Turkiye’s blessing.

The opening determination successful Saddam’s pursuit of the presidency was a palace coup: a fortnight earlier the vote, the HoR unseated its speaker, Aguila Saleh, who had spent 12 years successful this position. It frankincense removed some Cairo’s main state successful the eastbound and the astir stubborn obstacle to the memorandum’s ratification.

Yet Saleh’s ouster was ne'er lone astir Egypt, and the aforesaid chromatic felled a 2nd bird. As talker and nominal ultimate commander, helium embodied the de jure authorization from which Khalifa’s ain bid flows, and with a weighty tribal constituency among the Obeidat tribe, helium was 1 of the fewer men susceptible of complicating, oregon adjacent arbitrating, immoderate transportation of power. Removing him cleared Saddam’s way to a handover already softly nether way, which the elder Haftar’s precocious property could hasten astatine immoderate moment.

Saleh’s successor, Al-Salhin Abdulnabi, a chap Obeidi, who chaired the HoR’s Libyan-Turkish relationship committee, is capable to defuse the hazard of tribal backlash portion signalling wherever the enclosure present takes its cues.

Whether the gambit pays disconnected volition beryllium decided successful Washington. Saddam is counting connected the Trump administration’s appetite for a Libyan deal, sharpened by Turkish and Emirati lobbying and by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rapport with Trump.

He hopes it tin prevail implicit the objections of Athens and Nicosia and the displeasure of Israel, which is uneasy astir Ankara’s reach. This is straight pitting Trump’s transactional instinct against a longstanding US concern with the Greek-Cypriot-Israeli axis.

The broadside against Israel whitethorn adjacent wage a home dividend, allowing Saddam to airs arsenic lasting up to Israel portion dispelling perceptions of a covert transmission to it.

Europe, meanwhile, has sidelined itself into near-irrelevance: erstwhile Benghazi expelled the EU’s migration commissioner and 3 member-state ministers connected accomplishment successful July 2025, European capitals responded with thing person to grovelling than resolve.

Less than a twelvemonth later, Athens was hosting Saddam, who duly sidestepped immoderate committedness connected an alternate maritime memorandum.

That deference flows from the EU’s navel-gazing fixation connected migration that has reduced its Libya argumentation to counting the boats leaving Libya’s eastbound seashore for Crete. A Union that implores Saddam to constabulary the precise waters present successful quality is successful nary presumption to marque him wage for redrawing them.

Abu Dhabi, for its part, has each crushed to look the different mode due to the fact that it wants Saddam to succeed. None of Khalifa’s sons has been much faithful to the Emiratis, and seeing their astir loyal lawsuit installed astatine the apex of the Libyan authorities would headdress a decennary of concern successful the Haftar project. Whatever their past flirtation with Greece and Cyprus, a maritime enactment drawn successful Ankara’s favour is simply a humble terms for that outcome, though the closeness of that clasp whitethorn yet constrain him.

Egypt remains the existent question mark: Cairo’s connection objected chiefly to the memorandum’s encroachment connected Egypt’s exclusive economical portion and was framed astir wholly successful ineligible terms, a motion possibly that it is keeping its governmental options open.

Its narration with Ankara has been transformed, with the 2 present aligned connected Sudan and the Red Sea. A shared wariness of Israel’s expansionist ambitions has lone drawn them closer.

Offering commercialized deals could spell immoderate mode towards softening Egyptian opposition. But Cairo could besides thin connected its rapport with Ankara to champion an alternate Haftar heir. It would not person to look acold for a candidate: Saddam’s member Khaled, the Libyan Arab Armed Forces’ main of staff, is considerably person to Cairo and publically criticised the US inaugural successful April.

Should that happen, Saddam would person small near to bargain with, having cashed successful his astir invaluable spot with the Turks, and the strongest paper helium inactive holds is 1 Abu Dhabi would ne'er fto him play.

Cutting disconnected enactment for Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces would triumph favour successful Ankara and Cairo alike, some backers of the Sudanese army, but that would jeopardise the 1 narration helium cannot spend to lose.

Squeezed betwixt a patron successful Abu Dhabi helium situation not transverse and a spouse successful Ankara that has already pocketed its reward, Saddam is betting that helium tin support some connected broadside agelong capable for Washington to spot the woody through. That helium is prepared to tally specified risks whitethorn accidental arsenic overmuch astir desperation arsenic acumen, for the alternate to an institutionalised succession is 1 contested, possibly violently, by his siblings oregon by the constituencies near retired of the caller order.

History, successful Libya, has a mordant consciousness of humour. The maritime memorandum was the terms Tripoli paid for the Turkish involution that helped halt Khalifa Haftar’s violative astatine the gates of the superior and sent his forces and mercenaries into headlong retreat successful 2020. Where the begetter tried and failed to tempest Tripoli, the lad present hopes to beryllium ushered successful connected a reddish carpet woven from the precise papers that sealed his father’s defeat.

Should helium succeed, the instrumentality of the Haftars’ astir humiliating setback volition person go the cornerstone of their dynasty. Should Washington baulk, it whitethorn alternatively go the epitaph of the son’s ambitions.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.