Saudi-Led Alliance Moves to Isolate Qatar Over Iran Tensions (JMD quoted on Bloomberg)

Saudi-Led Alliance Moves

to Isolate Qatar Over Iran

Tensions

by 
Alaa Shahine
 and 
Zaid Sabah
 
  • Saudi, U.A.E., Egypt and Bahrain sever ties with Qatar
  • Countries suspend air, sea travel; Saudis shut land border
Four Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and moved to close off access to the Gulf country, escalating a crisis that started over its relationship with Iran and its support of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The governments of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt said in statements they will suspend air and sea travel to and from Qatar. Saudi Arabia will shut land crossings with its neighbor, according to the official Saudi Press Agency, potentially depriving the emirate of imports.



Nomura's Fadlallah Says Qatari Market Will Be Hit Hard
Tarek Fadlallah, Nomura Asset Management’s Middle East CEO, says Qatar’s market will be hit hard.
Source: Bloomberg

The move by the energy-rich Gulf Arab countries comes after U.S. President Donald Trump recently visited Saudi Arabia. The kingdom and the U.A.E. want to stamp out potential threats to a united front against Iranian influence in the Middle East. The two countries are prodding Qatar to end its support for Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
“The Saudi-U.A.E. campaign kicked into high gear on Monday with the kingdom, the Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt breaking off diplomatic relations with Qatar, ” said James M. Dorsey, a Gulf specialist and senior fellow in international studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “It’s reminiscent of a similar failed effort by Gulf states in 2014, but this time round sets the bar far higher.”


Brent crude rose as much as 1.6 percent to $50.74 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange, before paring gains to 1.1 percent by 11:58 a.m. Singapore time. Heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, and Iran typically draw market attention to the Strait of Hormuz, through which the U.S. Department of Energy estimates about 30 percent of seaborne oil trade passes. 
After Trump’s visit to Riyadh, the state-run Qatar News Agency carried comments by Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani criticizing mounting anti-Iran sentiment, with the U.S. president and King Salman singling out Iran as the world’s main sponsor of terrorism. Qatari officials quickly deleted the comments, blamed them on hackers and appealed for calm. Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. accused Qatar of trying to undermine efforts to isolate the Islamic republic.
Saudi Arabia cited Qatar’s support of “terrorist groups aiming to destabilize the region,” including the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State and al-Qaeda. It accused Qatar of supporting “Iranian-backed terrorist groups” operating in the kingdom’s eastern province as well as Bahrain.
Saudi Arabia, along with Bahrain and the U.A.E., gave Qatari diplomats 48 hours to leave.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Intellectual honesty in Israel & Palestine produces radically different outcomes

Image
  Just published! By James M. Dorsey To watch a video version of this story or listen to an audio podcast click here . Thank you for your support and loyalty. Intellectual honesty is a rare commodity in the divide between Israelis and Palestinians. It is even rarer with the rise of Jewish ultra-nationalism and a generation of Israelis and Palestinians nurtured on prejudiced, biased, and often supremacist perceptions of the other. The irony is that historically, it was far-right militants, and currently, it is fringe left-wing intellectuals who displayed intellectual honesty, even if their conclusions differ radically. With few exceptions, intellectual honesty has long been lost on the Israeli right and left. What intellectual honesty survives is posited in fringe pockets of the left that propagate a paradigm cultural change on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide that goes against the grain of mainstream Israeli and Palestinian thinking and, in today’s fog of war,...
Read more

Pakistan caught in the middle as China’s OBOR becomes Saudi-Iranian-Indian battleground

Image
By James M. Dorsey Pakistani General Raheel Sharif walked into a hornet’s nest when he stepped off a private jet in Riyadh two weeks ago to take command of a Saudi-led, 41-nation military alliance. Things have gone from bad to worse since. General Shareef had barely landed when Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman dashed the Pakistani’s hopes to include Iran in the alliance that nominally was created to fight terrorism rather than confront Iran. The general’s hopes were designed to balance Pakistan’s close alliance with Saudia Arabia with the fact that it shares a volatile border with Iran and is home to the world’s second largest Shiite Muslim community. General Sharif’s ambition had already been rendered Mission Impossible before he landed with Saudi Arabia charging that Iran constitutes the world’s foremost terrorist threat . In a recent interview with the Saudi-owned Middle East Broadcasting television network, Prince Mohammed, who also serves a...
Read more

Israeli & Palestinian war crimes? Yes. Genocide? Maybe. A talk with Omer Bartov

Image
  To watch a video version of this story on YouTube please click  here. An audio podcast is available on Soundcloud. Hi, and welcome to the Turbulent World with me James M. Dorsey, as your host. Words matter. No more so than in legal settings. Genocide is the word most associated with Israel's more than one-month-long assault on Gaza. In response to the October 7 Hamas attack against Israel, in which at least 1,200, mostly civilian, Israelis were killed. Genocide and Holocaust scholars, including those who believe that Israel has and is committing war crimes in its assault are divided about whether Israeli actions amount to genocide. Even so, they warn that Israeli actions could lead to genocide, if it not already has. What is certain is that optics streaming out of Gaza of the destruction and the plight of innocent Palestinian civilians, including large numbers of children and babies, explain the popular use of the term genocide when discussing the Israeli assa...
Read more