In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump's first official visit abroad to Saudi Arabia in May 2017, long-simmering tensions among America's allies in the Persian Gulf boiled over. It all started the day after Trump left Riyadh. The Qatari news agency, QNA, reported that the country’s ruler, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, had given a stunning commencement speech to a graduating class of National Guard members.
In the speech, the emir fulminated against Qatar’s neighbors, accusing them of engaging in a campaign to smear Qatar in front of Trump, in an effort to make the state appear to be a supporter of terrorism. But the emir not only rejected the accusation, he flipped it on his accusers, declaring that, “The real danger is in the course taken by ‘certain governments’ that created terrorism by adopting an extremist form of Islam”—a thinly veiled effort to paint Saudi Arabia, among others, as the cause of terrorism. The quotes, which also appeared on Qatari television as scrolled text below video of the emir, went on to say that the emir defended Qatar’s unconventional foreign policy, including its ties to Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and even Israel.
Reaction to news of the speech was immediate and predictably fiery. Within just 30 minutes of posting the report, the QNA website removed it. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry announced that the entire report was fraudulent, posted to the QNA website by hackers. But Qatar’s neighbors, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, rejected that claim and soon imposed a blockade of the peninsular nation.
The Gulf crisis pitting Qatar against Saudi Arabia and the UAE didn’t appear from out of the blue, however. Disagreements have divided Qatar from its neighbors in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for many years. Arab regimes have long resented Qatar’s Al Jazeera television network, whose arrival sent shockwaves across a region that is used to placid, acquiescent state-owned media. Qatar’s support for the short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt became another point of contention, and its support for other rebel groups in Libya and Syria made matters worse.
To learn more about the origins of the Gulf Crisis pitting Qatar against its GCC neighbors, read After Trump’s Visit, a Feud Breaks Out Among the Gulf States for FREE with your subscription to World Politics Review.
The Qatar Blockade Explained
A ransom payment for a kidnapped royal hunting party. Hacking claims and “fake news.” The rift between Qatar, the tiny Gulf state with a big foreign policy agenda, and its neighbors, led by Saudi Arabia, began with all the makings of a geopolitical soap opera, and the plot kept thickening. The Qatar blockade, imposed by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United Arab Emirates, has deep roots in disagreements over approaches to the region's many challenges. Much of the coverage of the dispute has focused on Saudi and Emirati interests that Qatar has pointedly bucked for years, with its support for Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and its softer line on Iran. But lost in this circus is what Qatar wants, and how tensions with its much larger neighbor, Saudi Arabia, escalated to this point. Qatar’s outsized ambition in the region has more to do with the desire to break out of Saudi Arabia’s shadow—and needle the Saudis a bit—through an independent foreign policy designed to make it everyone’s friend.
To learn more about the tensions that led to the Qatar blockade and Gulf crisis, read The Policies Fueling the Qatar-Saudi Rift Have Long Guided Qatari Diplomacy for FREE with your subscription to World Politics Review.
To the surprise of many observers, the GCC-Qatar crisis in the Persian Gulf has grown into a stalemate, with increasing costs for the region. The Qatar blockade, explained by the GCC as a response to Qatar’s supporting terrorism, engaging Iran, and undermining stability in the region through its sponsorship of Al Jazeera, is an aggressive political and economic attack on Qatar. None of the possible outcomes for the crisis—continued stalemate; acceptance of general principles to restore, in part, the status quo ante; or military action to achieve change in Doha—will erase the harm already done to the region. And this feud only plays into the hands of the GCC’s enemies, whether across the Gulf waters or closer to home.
To learn more about the damage being done by the GCC-Qatar standoff in the Persian Gulf region, read As Stalemate in the Gulf Crisis Continues, the Costs for the Region Grow for FREE with your subscription to World Politics Review.
Is the Gulf Crisis Between Qatar and Its GCC Neighbors the End of Regional Cooperation?
The blockade of Qatar puts into question the viability of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), as the split within the GCC that pits regional powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against Qatar has proven surprisingly durable. Kuwaiti efforts to mediate the dispute have failed, and the intra-Gulf rupture has spilled over to the region’s external relations, making it harder for security partners to insist on maintaining even and equal relations with all GCC members. Even so, in all its disparate levels of activity and dysfunction, the GCC may be severely impaired but it is not yet ready to be dispatched to the dustbin of history
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