Monday, June 5, 2017

GETTING HOT Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE sever ties with Qatar

Via The Financial Times:
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have cut ties with Qatar, accusing the Gulf state of undermining the security of its neighbours and financing terrorism.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry tweeted that in an effort to protect “national security from threats of terrorism and extremism, Saudi Arabia has decided to sever diplomatic and consular relations with the State of Qatar”.

In a series of follow-up tweets, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said it had decided to close land, sea and air links with Qatar.​

Here's a Washignton Post report that was written on June 1 before the official cut in ties was announced  (my highlights):
Tensions have resurfaced in a sustained media onslaught that has again cast Qatar as a threat to stability and security in the Persian Gulf. At the heart of the latest argument among members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are incendiary comments attributed to Qatar’s Emir Tamim at a military graduation ceremony May 23.

A report published on the Qatar News Agency (QNA) website later that day alleged

that the emir stated that Qatar had a tense relationship with President Trump’s administration, described Hamas as “the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” and called Iran “a big power in the stabilization of the region.” Qatar TV later reported the emir’s alleged speech on its evening news program before the government communications office claimed — belatedly, on May 24 — that the QNA website had been hacked and false statements posted on it.

Regardless of whether they were made or fabricated — and people present at the military graduation insist that the emir made no speech whatsoever — Tamim’s remarks caused immediate uproar in regional media, much of it based in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Both countries blocked Al Jazeera and other Qatar-based media outlets in the aftermath of the allegations, and new articles have been published daily in the week since. Almost without exception, each article has taken the emir’s speech as fact and proceeded, on that basis, to accuse Qatar of being the weak link in the threat to regional stability from Iran and terrorism — and to demand that Qatar choose sides between the GCC and Iran.

The ferocity and the sheer scale of the “Qatar-bashing” articles suggest that an orchestrated campaign is underway to discredit Doha regionally but also — crucially — in the eyes of the Trump administration.

This comes three years after a nine-month standoff between Qatar and three of its neighbors — Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain — rocked the six-member GCC. In the time since, Tamim and Abu Dhabi’s influential crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, exchanged frequent visits, and Qatar’s decision to deploy 1,000 soldiers to Yemen in September 2015 seemed to indicate that the 2014 upheaval was a thing of the past. What, then, has changed, and why has a seemingly dormant dispute suddenly flared up again and in such a visceral manner?

The Trump factor

A convergence of factors appears to have shifted the geopolitical landscape in the Persian Gulf. The Trump administration signaled that it intends to follow a set of regional policies that are aligned far closer to those of Abu Dhabi and Riyadh than Doha. Both Mohammed bin Zayed and Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman were high-profile visitors to Washington in the run-up to the Riyadh summit with Arab and Islamic leaders.

Further, the policy inexperience of many within Trump’s inner circle has presented an opportunity for both the Saudis and the Emiratis to shape the administration’s thinking on critical regional issues such as Iran and Islamism, both of which were evident during the Riyadh visit.

Whereas the Obama administration sought to enhance U.S. engagement with the GCC as a bloc, Trump focused instead on Saudi Arabia and the UAE as the twin pillars of its regional approach. Strong bonds reportedly have formed between Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia as well as Yusuf al-Otaiba, the influential UAE ambassador in Washington.

Key principals within the Trump administration, such as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, hold views on Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood that are virtually indistinguishable from those in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are emerging as the two spearheads around which U.S. regional policies are realigning, including a set of hawkish defense and security interests; the joint raid conducted by U.S. and UAE Special Forces in Yemen in January may well be only the first of numerous joint initiatives across regional conflict zones in the months and years ahead.

Whatever signals may (or may not) have been passed in private, there has been a noticeable increase in domestic and regional assertiveness in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s Saudi trip. In Bahrain, the deadliest raid by security forces on opposition forces since 2011 resulted in five deaths just two days after Trump assured the Bahraini king of a new era in bilateral relations.
The U.S. positionning here is very bad. This is not going to turn out well. The United States should stay out of foreign entanglemnents.

-RW 

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