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Saudi-UAE campaign against Qatar: Muslim nations forced to choose sides
Global Village Space |
James M. Dorsey |
A Saudi and UAE-driven campaign to isolate Qatar and, by extension, Iran puts non-Muslim Arab states in a bind and tests the degree of Saudi soft power garnered in decades of massive spending on the propagation of anti-Iranian, anti-Shiite Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism.
The Saudi-UAE campaign, building on an increasingly vicious cyber and media war against Qatar, kicked into high gear on Monday with the kingdom, the Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt breaking off diplomatic relations and cutting air and sea traffic with Qatar and a 41-nation Saudi-led, Pakistani-commanded military alliance suspending Qatar’s participation in operations in Yemen.
The Saudi-UAE campaign is reminiscent of a similar failed effort by Gulf states in 2014, but this time round sets the bar far higher: it aims to force non-Arab states to take sides in a four-decades-old proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The suspension came a day after Qatar said that six of its soldiers had been wounded in Yemen “while conducting their duties within the Qatari contingent defending the southern borders of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
Read more: Fissures in the GCC: Qatar stranded by its Gulf neighbors
The four Arab countries announced their move in similar statements. In its statement, Bahrain blamed Qatar’s “media incitement, support for armed terrorist activities, and funding linked to Iranian groups to carry out sabotage and spreading chaos in Bahrain” for its decision.
Bahrain, a majority Shiite nation ruled by a Sunni minority, has blamed Iran for a popular uprising in 2011 that it brutally squashed with the help of Saudi troops and for subsequent intermittent protests and violence.
The Saudi-UAE campaign is reminiscent of a similar failed effort by Gulf states in 2014, but this time round sets the bar far higher: it aims to force non-Arab states to take sides in a four-decades-old proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran that has escalated in recent years and persuade the Trump administration to come down hard on Qatar because of its refusal to join the anti-Iranian Saudi bandwagon and its ties to Islamist and militant groups.
The US and Qatar
Qatar hosts the sprawling Al-Udeid Air Base, the largest US military facility in the Middle East, which is home to the U.S. military’s Central Command and some 10,000 American troops.
Robert Gates, a former US defense secretary and director of central intelligence, warned last week at a Foundation for the Defense of Democracies gathering on Qatar and the Brotherhood that Qatar risked losing its hosting of US forces if it failed to revise its policies. “The United States military doesn’t have any irreplaceable facility,” Mr. Gates said.
The rupture in diplomatic relations and military suspension like the media campaign ignored Qatar’s assertion that its websites had been hacked.
Ed Royce, the Republican chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the gathering that “if it doesn’t change, Qatar will be sanctioned under a new bill I’m introducing to punish Hamas backers,” a reference to Qatari support for the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.
Read more: Anti-Qatar media campaign in the Gulf: Cracks in the Islamic Military Alliance?
The two men were speaking to the media and cyber war erupted with Qatari claims that several of its media websites had been hacked with a fake report attributing comments to Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani that were in line with the Gulf state’s policy but that Qatar says he did make. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is helping Qatar investigate the alleged hack.
Read full article:
Saudi-UAE campaign against Qatar: Muslim nations forced to choose sides
Global Village Space |
James M. Dorsey |
A Saudi and UAE-driven campaign to isolate Qatar and, by extension, Iran puts non-Muslim Arab states in a bind and tests the degree of Saudi soft power garnered in decades of massive spending on the propagation of anti-Iranian, anti-Shiite Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism.
The Saudi-UAE campaign, building on an increasingly vicious cyber and media war against Qatar, kicked into high gear on Monday with the kingdom, the Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt breaking off diplomatic relations and cutting air and sea traffic with Qatar and a 41-nation Saudi-led, Pakistani-commanded military alliance suspending Qatar’s participation in operations in Yemen.
The Saudi-UAE campaign is reminiscent of a similar failed effort by Gulf states in 2014, but this time round sets the bar far higher: it aims to force non-Arab states to take sides in a four-decades-old proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The suspension came a day after Qatar said that six of its soldiers had been wounded in Yemen “while conducting their duties within the Qatari contingent defending the southern borders of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
Read more: Fissures in the GCC: Qatar stranded by its Gulf neighbors
The four Arab countries announced their move in similar statements. In its statement, Bahrain blamed Qatar’s “media incitement, support for armed terrorist activities, and funding linked to Iranian groups to carry out sabotage and spreading chaos in Bahrain” for its decision.
Bahrain, a majority Shiite nation ruled by a Sunni minority, has blamed Iran for a popular uprising in 2011 that it brutally squashed with the help of Saudi troops and for subsequent intermittent protests and violence.
The Saudi-UAE campaign is reminiscent of a similar failed effort by Gulf states in 2014, but this time round sets the bar far higher: it aims to force non-Arab states to take sides in a four-decades-old proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran that has escalated in recent years and persuade the Trump administration to come down hard on Qatar because of its refusal to join the anti-Iranian Saudi bandwagon and its ties to Islamist and militant groups.
The US and Qatar
Qatar hosts the sprawling Al-Udeid Air Base, the largest US military facility in the Middle East, which is home to the U.S. military’s Central Command and some 10,000 American troops.
Robert Gates, a former US defense secretary and director of central intelligence, warned last week at a Foundation for the Defense of Democracies gathering on Qatar and the Brotherhood that Qatar risked losing its hosting of US forces if it failed to revise its policies. “The United States military doesn’t have any irreplaceable facility,” Mr. Gates said.
The rupture in diplomatic relations and military suspension like the media campaign ignored Qatar’s assertion that its websites had been hacked.
Ed Royce, the Republican chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the gathering that “if it doesn’t change, Qatar will be sanctioned under a new bill I’m introducing to punish Hamas backers,” a reference to Qatari support for the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.
Read more: Anti-Qatar media campaign in the Gulf: Cracks in the Islamic Military Alliance?
The two men were speaking to the media and cyber war erupted with Qatari claims that several of its media websites had been hacked with a fake report attributing comments to Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani that were in line with the Gulf state’s policy but that Qatar says he did make. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is helping Qatar investigate the alleged hack.
Read full article:
Saudi-UAE campaign against Qatar: Muslim nations forced to choose sides
