Saudia, Bahrain, UAE & Egypt cut diplomatic ties with Qatar

[T-Rex]

This is to show USA try to give Qatar a hard lesson by Saud and UAE, and poor relationship between USA and newly elected Tehran government. If Qatar insists going against USA interets in the Middle East, it's emir will step down.

Qatar has the option to bring in her allies but she has to act fast.

 

[ashok321]

Figure out Qatar imbroglio in one minute:

 

[Gothic]

if a war breaks out it probably will be between the indian guest workers .

 

[Banglar Bir]

CONFIRMED: Arab countries break ties with Qatar
ADAM GARRIE

The Arab League, which is generally known for siding with the US against secular Arab states like Syria and formerly Libya, now has some of its key members turning against a high ranking member of the club.

Qatar, like Saudi Arabia practices Salafi Islam, an extreme version of Islam, one that many Islamic scholars consider aberrant or an apostasy. Similarly, Qatar like Saudi Arabia generally follows the same pro-US foreign policy in the region and has been deeply desirous to overthrow the secular government of the Syrian Arab Republic in order to more easily construct a pipeline running through Syria.

Generally Saudi and Qatar are more or less on the same page in terms of both foreign policy and indeed in terms of domestic policy, but now a spat between the two countries has erupted and its reverberations are shaking the wider Arab world.

The proximate cause of the dispute is a not so private attempt on the part of the Qatari leadership to make amends with Iran.

Recently, the official state Qatar News Agency ran a story on Twitter carrying a statement by Qatar’s supreme ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani which called for a wider rapprochement between the Sunni Arab world and Iran. In the statement, the Qatari leader was also reported as praising the Lebanese party Hezbollah which is allied with both secular Syria and Shi’a Iran.

The comments were quickly deleted and hackers were blamed for the post, but a great deal of damage was done and few in the Gulf believed the ‘hacker’ story. Qatari media outlet Al Jazeera has also been accused in the wider Arab world of supporting US backed Islamist extremists throughout the region, a claim which happens to be objectively true.

It has emerged that since the infamous deleted Tweets from the Qatar News Agency, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held a positive phone conversation with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, something which infuriated the leaders of Saudi and the UAE.

As a result, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and also Egypt and the Yemeni factional government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, have severed all relations with Qatar.

Iranian deputy chief of staff Hamid Aboutalebi has condemned the move saying,

“The era of cutting diplomatic ties and closing borders… is not a way to resolve crisis… as I said before, aggression and occupation will have no result but instability”.

Iran understands the real reason behind the Saudi led moves to isolate Qatar, but in a move of sheer hypocrisy. The public excuse for the cutting of ties is that Qatar supports terrorism.

Making things even more ironic, many in the Gulf are citing the following report from Wikileaks as the proximate cause of the severing of relations with Qatar,

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WikiLeaks

✔@wikileaks
Hillary Clinton email reveals she knew of Saudi & Qatar government funding for ISIL (ISIS) by August 2014 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/55380#efmA_RBEL …

Here, Wikileaks once again affirmed that Hillary Clinton was well aware of both Saudi and Qatar’s funding of ISIS. It beggars belief that Saudi should lead the call for Qatar’s isolation for doing what Saudi also does. But then again it would look rather odd to cut off relations with one’s self.

Behind the clear charade there are subtle differences. Qatar continues to support extremist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas while Saudi opts to limit itself to covertly supporting even more extreme groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Egypt has been the victim of terrorist groups funded by Saudi and Qatar. The fact that Egypt would also join the Gulf states severing ties with Qatar in this sense actually has a real legitimacy behind it. The sad fact that Egypt for example, would sever ties with Qatar and not Saudi, demonstrates the political influence of Saudi on the wider Middle East. Even Egypt, the largest Arab state was afraid to cut off ties with Qatar until Saudi did the same, albeit for totally disingenuous reasons.

The Egyptian government released the following statement regarding its decision to sever ties with Qatar,

“The Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt has decided to sever diplomatic relations with Qatar because of the continued hostility of the Qatari authorities towards Egypt”.

Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood led Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain to sever ties briefly in 2014, but this ultimately led to little in the long term. Today’s wider severing of ties could be more profound.

The Republic of Maldives as well as the Libyan House of Representatives in Tobruk has also now cut ties with Qatar.

According to Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Dairi,

“Qatar has been the main source of supplying weapons to the Libyan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and other armed Islamist groups since 2012 and poses a threat to the national security of the Arab world”.

In respect of Yemen, The Saudis who back the Hadi government of Yemen, also accuse Qatar of aiding Houthi fighters who are backed by Iran and support the contested Presidency of Ali Abdullah Saleh. Again, Qatar’s covert and at times not so covert aid of the Houthi backed factions in Yemen is best understood as a geo-political portfolio diversification than anything more ideological.

Saudi Arabia is well aware that its handsomely funded military remains among the most poorly trained in the wider region. The Saudi military is losing a war to poorly armed Houthi fighters in neighbouring Yemen. The idea that they could militarily take on Iran, which has one of the most professionally trained armies in the world, is simply laughable and deep down the Saudis know this. Because of this, Saudi have tried to bribe the rest of the Sunni Arab world into its anti-Iranian jihad, something which the United States has supported.

The problem with Qatar is that it cannot be bought. Although far smaller than Saudi, Qatar is a rich, extremist, Sunni state, but it apparently does not like competition and in that respect and consequently it is diversifying its geo-political portfolio.

The first rule of diplomatic analysis is not to listen to what Saudi Arabia says. Instead one ought to observe what Saudi Arabia does. In this case, they are afraid that Qatar is using the Iranian Trump card to attempt to break Saudi’s geo-political monopoly on Gulfi policy positions.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said of the row,

“We certainly would encourage the parties to sit down together and address these differences”.

He went on to say that the spat would not affect America’s role in the region.

The fact that Saudi and its allies, as well as secular Egypt and war torn Yemen have also joined in proves that as Nikolay Chernyshevsky once said “the worse, the better”.

http://theduran.com/confirmed-arab-countries-break-ties-with-qatar/

 

[Taimoor Khan]

Shahid Masood has been pointing towards this for last numbers of days that the situation in GCC is going south.

In a way its good for Pakistan. With all the mess around us and in geopolitics as well, its a ideal time for us to break free of all the corrupt political mafia that has been ruling us. With their foreign sponsors and mentors are all up in arms against each other, America going into Isolation, EU on the verge of collapse, there is no one out there who can support our corrupt political mafia. Imagine the situation the Shareef clan will find themselves in now. With their long ties with house of Saud on one hand, and their business dealings with Qatar, LNG dirty dealings, and yes, that infamous "Qatari letter"!!

I am actually enjoying this, it seems all the obstacles towards making Pakistan clean and in the hands of true patriots and nationalists are getting removed.

 

[Banglar Bir]

Qatar crisis: It’s the oil stupid!
ADAM GARRIE

Saudi Arabia which has faced something close to an economic recession after years of plummeting oil prices, appears to be willing to do anything to retain its only major source of revenue.

Oil prices immediately increased as Saudi Arabia led the charge of Arab nations severing all diplomatic ties with Qatar.

The price of Brent Crude has jumped 32 cents and has achieved the crucial +$50 a barrel mark.

Qatar which like Saudi Arabia is a key OPEC member produces an average of 1.48 million barrels of oil per day. Qatar is also a key exporter of liquefied natural gas and a refined natural gas called condensate.

However, oil is still down globally since the 25th of May 2017 when OPEC along with Russia agreed to cut energy production in an attempt to stabilise prices. The move was supposed to help Saudi Arabia but experts say that ironically it was better for Iran and Russia than for the Gulf states.

Since Donald Trump entered the White House, US production of oil has gone up, further cutting the market share of Saudi oil.

One is therefore witnessing an attempt by Saudi Arabia to isolate a regional competitor in the energy market using political and security issues as the excuse.

Even the stated Saudi justification of Qatar being a sponsor of terrorism is duplicitous as Saudi Arabia if anything, sponsors even more terrorism than Qatar.

Saudi Arabia is trying to isolate Iran which the leadership of Qatar had recently reached out to and moreover is trying to destabilize its smaller energy producing neighbour.

The immediate results of a slightly higher oil price will play into Saudi’s favour, but the over all trends of global energy markets are not looking good for Saudi Arabia in the long term.

Saudi will almost certainly pull of more desperate moves as their share of the global energy market decreases and as prices continue to fall.
http://theduran.com/qatar-crisis-oil-stupid/

 

[ashok321]

Modi on Qatar:

 

[NoOne'sBoy]

I don't know why people here talk about Pakistan? It's like something happens in South Asia and we talk about how it affects Iceland.

 

[Max]

when God want to destroy someone he deprive them from wisdom and logic..

 

[TopCat]

Although I don't wan to say it, but no one has enough power to dick with USA in the Middle East yet.

Al Saud is still leading the GCC with Egypt support.

Its only the fat kings who are protected by USA.
Rest are on their own.

 

[AbuzarIlyas]

Once upon a time... the British Crown and the "planners" cut the Muslims lands like cake to design these wahabi states to neutralize the core power of Muslim World. They have created these GCC states to achieve their mission. Any uprising, conflict, proxy will only become a success in Sunni dominated populations. This move by Salman the King is his personal as far as the matter of sanctions is concerned.

US, UK and other power players will give a message to KSA, UAE and the "children" subordinates of these states. The war was started to suppress the countries that were threat to Israel i.e. Syria, Libya, Iraq and other Sunni populations. Wahabis are already serving well to the cause. No need to fire bullets here unless a change in the plan is on the board. For example, starting a new video game between few wahabi armies to sell more weapons and bringing down the rogue elements within this GCC world. Anyways.... Lets see.....

 

[ashok321]

Egyptian banks to stop dealing with Qatari banks

 

[Realtalk108]

I don't know why people here talk about Pakistan? It's like something happens in South Asia and we talk about how it affects Iceland.

It very much affects Pakistan.

In fact it affects all South Asian countries. We are all broke and literally millions of Desis work in GCC because they can't find work here. This is yet another mess. Many workers will face trouble particularly because transport network's been cut off.

Yet again India (and Pakistan, Nepal, BD) will have to arrange for this workers.

 

[ashok321]

probably nothing

Diplomatic relations are cut already without any disclaimer...

Agha chethori?
Hale shuma khub?

 

[macnurv]

Saudi Arabia said it took the decision to cut diplomatic ties due to Qatar's "embrace of various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilizing the region" including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, the Islamic State group and groups supported by Iran in the kingdom's restive Eastern Province. Egypt's Foreign Ministry accused Qatar of taking an "antagonist approach" toward Egypt and said "all attempts to stop it from supporting terrorist groups failed."

How ironic, the biggest exporter of salfist terrorist ideology is calling Qatar supporter of terrorism. It would have been laughable but KSA is really pushing its luck very very hard now. Such actions might push Qatar closer to Iran.