Gulf States Cut Ties with Qatar

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen and the Maldives cut off relations with Qatar overnight in a significant escalation of the tensions in the region. As the BBC reports:

A number of Arab countries including Saudi Arabia and Egypt have cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing it of destabilising the region.

They say Qatar backs militant groups including so-called Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda, which Qatar denies.

The Saudi state news agency SPA said Riyadh had closed its borders, severing land, sea and air contact with the tiny peninsula of oil-rich Qatar.

Qatar called the decision “unjustified” and with “no basis in fact”.

This latest crisis has been brewing since the apparent hacking of the Qatar News Agency’s twitter feed last week, when a pro-Iran statement was attributed to Qatar’s Emir Tamim. In their official announcement, the Saudis cited Qatari support for the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, and Iranian-backed militants in Saudi’s Eastern Province.

While Saudi and the UAE have cut ties with Qatar before, the newly imposed measures are harsher and more clearly designed to bring Qatar to heel. The suspension of flights will threaten Qatar’s role as a major regional transportation hub—some 30 flights, now canceled, operate between Dubai and Doha daily. The closure of the land border has prompted a run on supermarkets. Oil prices have fallen as speculators fear that the moves could undo the OPEC deal on production cuts.

The claims made against Qatar are a mix of long-standing grievances, facts, and likely fiction. While Qatar stands alone among the GCC states in its degree of support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, the claim that the Qataris are supporting Yemen’s Houthis seems implausible given Qatar’s troop deployment as part of the Saudi-led anti-Houthi coalition.

Emails leaked to the Huffington Post last week show the efforts of the UAE’s ambassador to influence U.S. thinking on the Qatari question. It would be unsurprising if the UAE and Saudi were not privately offering inducements to close the U.S. base at Al Udeid.

The Trump administration has so far been circumspect in its comments, with Secretaries Mattis and Tillerson saying only that they don’t think it will impact operations against ISIS. While true in a military sense, it’s difficult to see how the crisis won’t undermine the call President Trump made in Riyadh for a unified front against terrorism and Iran.

Qatar’s regional role is complicated. While hosting CENTCOM, Qatar is also home to the sole foreign diplomatic facility of the Taliban. They offer safe haven to Hamas and a platform for their leadership on Al Jazeera. While putting on a friendly face as host of the 2022 World Cup, they fund violent Islamists across the region. Saudi, the UAE and Egypt have clearly had enough. Whether this will be enough pressure to get Qatar to change course remains to be seen.