The allegations are purportedly due to Doha’s persistent backing of the Muslim Brotherhood despite agreeing in late-2014 to radically downscale its support for the organization as part of a détente with Saudi Arabia the last time the two sides butted heads over the issue. The straw that broke the camel’s back this time around, so to speak, reportedly came during the Riyadh Summit a few weeks ago when Qatari Emir al-Thani spoke pragmatically about Iran’s regional role and criticized the implied anti-Iranian nature of the Saudi-led military alliance.
None of this was made public at the time, but then recently some of the Qatari leader’s comments were reported on by one of his country’s national broadcasters, which sparked instantaneous criticism from the Saudis. Doha said that it was the victim of a hacking attack, though Riyadh and its allies didn’t believe it. After planning their response for nearly a week, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain launched what amounts to a de-facto embargo on their peninsular neighbor by shutting down all land, sea, and air connection with Qatar. They also took measures to close down the Al Jazeera offices in their countries. Moreover, GCC allies such as Egypt, the Hadi government in Yemen, General Haftar’s government in eastern Libya, and a handful of other governments united behind the Saudis in cutting all ties with Qatar too.
Qatar expressed dismay that its former coalition allies suddenly turned against it, though Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Thani said that his country “will not launch measures to escalate toward [its] brotherly nations.” He also said that Kuwait proposed mediating between both sides and is actively working to contain the crisis. In any case, the resumption of the Qatari-Saudi Cold War has already spread uncertainty all throughout the Mideast, with analysts scrambling to forecast how this could impact the wars in Syria and Libya where both sides have proxy fighters. In addition, the unexpected disunity in the so-called “Arab NATO” is thought to have generated strategic relief for Iran and given the Islamic Republic valuable breathing space from the American-backed regional pressure that was supposed to be put on it following Trump’s visit last month.
Dr Farooq Hasnat, Professor of Political Science and formerly the Chair of Political Science at Punjab University and Arif Kamal, former Pakistani diplomat who dedicated almost eleven years in his thirty four years of diplomatic profession to the Middle Eastern arena and was also Ambassador to Qatar in from 1999-2003, joined our discussion.
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