The Guardian: Qatar attendance at Saudi summit raises prospect of detente

King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia invited Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, to attend the emergency Gulf Cooperation Council summit on Iran’s alleged role in attacking Gulf shipping and oil installations. [...]

Qatar – unlike Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – has so far retained support for the Iran nuclear deal. Although determined to follow an independent foreign policy, it will not be seeking to alienate Donald Trump by spurning Washington’s pressure to curtail Iranian aggression in the region. Qatar has an economic interest in ensuring gas and oil installations are not the subject of attacks by Iranian proxy forces. It also acts as the host to the largest US military base in the Gulf. [...]

Washington has blown hot and cold in its demands on Iran, with Trump saying he was not seeking regime change in Tehran, merely a renegotiation of the nuclear deal. He said the deal was full of loopholes that allowed Tehran to achieve nuclear breakout too rapidly.

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Bloomberg: Qatar May Be About to Annoy Saudi Arabia Even More

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, Qatar’s former prime minister, has tweeted that OPEC “is only being used for purposes aimed at harming our national interest.” That goes double for the GCC, where two of its six members — Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — are prime movers in the economic blockade of Qatar. (The blockade has been going on for 18 months and counting, and it stems from Saudi accusations that Qatar is destabilizing the region by cozying up to Iran, charges Doha contests.) [...]

But here’s the twist: Exiting OPEC, a powerful cartel with a real impact on world affairs, will cost Qatar little, being a minor-league oil producer with little influence on the group's decisions; leaving the GCC, an ineffectual grouping that has little impact on regional affairs, could cost it a lot. If Qatar were to pull out, it would reinforce the Saudi-Emirati claim that the ruling family in Doha is undermining the Arab consensus. Staying in the alliance allows Qatar to signal that it is committed to regional cooperation, putting the onus for ending the blockade on the Saudis and Emiratis.

It is always possible that the Saudis and Emiratis will try to beat Qatar to the punch and kick it out of the GCC. But that would require them to convince Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain, the three other members, to go along. While Bahrain tends to follow Saudi Arabia in most matters, Kuwait and Oman have chafed at what they regard as Saudi bullying, and they have remained steadfastly neutral on the blockade. (The Kuwaitis have said they’d like to see efforts to resolve the “long-standing Gulf dispute” at the summit next week.)

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The Atlantic: America Wins the Gulf Crisis

In those eight months, Qatar relied on exactly the kind of diplomacy its neighbors loathe: It drew closer to Iran and Turkey, deepened its economic and defense relations with Russia, and embarked on a robust campaign of public diplomacy with the Trump administration. The U.S. had sent mixed signals about whom it supported in the Gulf crisis. Even as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis urged all sides to work out their differences, President Trump tweeted that Qatar was supporting terrorism. [...]

“I don’t think this administration really had the intention of using chaotic nature of their response as an opportunity to push Doha to do more things,” he said. “It’s more symptomatic of the fact that the complete interagency incongruence has created an environment where Doha has had to take more proactive steps to address the various competing elements of how various actors in the U.S. government view Qatar.” [...]

Ultimately, though, while Qatar’s relations with the U.S. are improving, there are few public signs its dispute with its neighbors is close to being resolved. Abu Dhabi and the Saudis had hoped to cause Qatar the kind of economic pain and diplomatic isolation that would force it to make concessions. That didn’t happen—and those countries don’t appear to have a Plan B. One way out of it, Henderson said, is if Trump convened a GCC summit and put pressure on all sides. “A deal could be reached.”

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Jacobin Magazine: The Jerusalem Gambit

Since then, 280,000 settlers have illegally moved in, and Israel has stripped 14,500 Palestinians of their residency rights, made it prohibitively difficult for the Palestinians who remain to get building permits, enacted discriminatory budgets, and provided municipal services unequally. [...]

In fact, Democrats have been pushing for this move for more than twenty-five years. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both came into office saying they supported the decision, and, in 1995, Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which mandated that the United States move its embassy to Jerusalem. Thirty-two Democrats, including Joe Biden and John Kerry, cosponsored the bill. [...]

Israel has also become a lucrative arms market for US firms, and the ruling classes of both nations are so deeply enmeshed in sectors such as technology and security that it’s difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. Put simply, Israel could not have committed its innumerable crimes against the Palestinians and others in the region at any approaching the scale that it has without the United States underwriting it financially, military, and politically. [...]

In the years after Oslo, the number of Israelis illegally settled in the West Bank — including East Jerusalem — has more than doubled. Gaza has been largely reduced to a prison camp where Israel has slaughters thousands, and Palestinian citizens of Israel face systemic discrimination. The violence inherent in all these relationships underlines the fact that “peace” is a misnomer: better to think of the process as one more phase of colonization. [...]

Now Israel seems to be cultivating its own special relationship with Saudi Arabia. After Hariri’s resignation, Israel ordered its diplomats to echo Saudi talking points that claimed he quit because of Iranian meddling in Lebanon. In November, a senior Israeli military official told Saudi media that Israel will share intelligence on Iran with the Saudi state.

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Al Jazeera: The energy factor in the GCC crisis

As several experts have previously noted, the tension arose briefly after the Riyadh Summit, when US President Donald Trump assured Saudi Arabia of his commitment to the region in the face of the "Iranian threat". The US' hope of forging an impenetrable GCC shield against Iran fails to appreciate the centrality of the energy question and exhibits a narrow sightedness based on the pursuit of self-interest. It is, therefore, predestined to fail.

Similarly, the ensuing Saudi-led blockade against Qatar is destined to eventually subside and give way to normalised relations in spite of the current tension. As a sign, perhaps, that energy trumps political antagonism, it is noteworthy that shortly after the rift, Qatar announced it would not disrupt liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which runs through the Dolphin pipeline. [...]

On the Qatari side of the field, its discovery in 1971, which coincided with the state's year of independence, has been crucial for state building and sovereignty recognition. It is no wonder, then, that in addition to being the single most important contributor to the country's GDP, natural gas has also indirectly driven many foreign policy choices for the small state even where monetary returns are not directly involved. This includes foreign aid, mediation and education initiatives, to name but a few. [...]

In 1996, Qatar sought to export its natural gas to neighbouring GCC countries. However, the project faced numerous obstacles pertaining to pricing, transit rights and border disputes. This cemented the view that Qatar should look beyond its neighbourhood for export markets, especially as prices were more lucrative on the international market. As a result, the sale of natural gas to key international players such as the UK, China, India and Japan has inexorably linked customers' energy security to the stability of Qatar.

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Al Jazeera: The crisis of regional order in the Gulf

At a time when the Middle East is in dire need of a positive agenda and a plan to overcome division, ominous new developments are dominating the scene and the forces of disintegration appear to have been unleashed.

The current "Gulf" crisis is just the latest manifestation of this trend. Before considering the way out of this crisis, it is important to accurately depict it, its root causes, and its regional implications. [...]

This crisis is neither a bilateral crisis between Qatar and its Gulf Arab neighbours, nor a geographically isolated dispute confined to the Gulf region.

Instead it is a regional crisis - the direct outcome of the lack of a sustainable regional order in the Middle East. [...]

Such a crisis of legitimacy at the level of political elites and the stark contrast between the aspirations of the people and the projections of the political class forms the backbone of all major crises in the region. This in return inhibits any fruitful engagement among states and societies at regional level. [...]

The fact that the region lacks institutions or frameworks that can govern these grievances or serve to channel feuds into diplomatic and political processes should also be an issue of major concern.

But this deficiency is not surprising. As discussed above, institutions are the product of intentions, and intentions are mostly shaped by actors' perceptions, and hence their political psychologies, which are in turn formed mainly by their level of socio-political legitimacy.

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Al Jazeera: How will Qatar-Gulf crisis shape the region's economy?

The ongoing crisis between Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states has seemingly posed a new version of the same question: whether wealthy states with major economic disincentives could nevertheless engage in a debilitating conflict with each other. In looking at the Saudi-led group's isolation of Qatar, a reinvigorated Friedman may even suggest that no two countries with a Four Seasons have ever gone to war. [...]

After sponsoring the 2013 military coup that toppled the presidency of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, the Saudi, Emirati and Kuwaiti governments offered a staggering $23bn to keep the regime of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi afloat during its turbulent first 18 months. The $1.7bn in aid that the United States provides Egypt each year, which is so often invoked as a lever of influence on Egypt's rulers, pales in comparison to the unprecedented level of assistance provided by Sisi's Gulf sponsors. Predictably, Egypt was the first non-GCC country to join the boycott of Qatar. [...]

But this is not the first time that these governments have placed their political agenda above their economic interests. In responding to the global collapse in the price of oil in 2014, Saudi Arabia made the calculated decision not to cut its production levels, though that would mean diminished revenues. [...]

Perhaps these regimes simply look upon these policies as sunk costs in a battle to impose a singular vision for the future of the Arab region. Or maybe they are part of a long-term investment strategy expected to reap future rewards when neighbouring states come into the fold of Saudi hegemony. In either case, the longer that this crisis drags on, the less likely it is that the economic arrangements that have long defined relations within the GCC can be restored.

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Al Jazeera: Did Saudi Arabia miscalculate with Qatar feud?

In this web extra, we discuss the new leadership of Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and look at how the current Gulf crisis may shape future diplomatic relations.

"I think [Mohammed bin Salman] has miscalculated, once again," says Barbara Slavin, Director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council. "I think he has scored an own goal."

"[Mohammed bin Salman] is not going to have quick success everywhere and his biggest challenge, actually, is not in foreign policy, it’s in domestic policy, and in reforming and diversifying his economy, and that’s a huge undertaking," says Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.

The panellists also discussed whether relations between Gulf countries will recover.

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Jacobin Magazine: The Qatar Crisis

Former American government officials and think tanks — notably the neoconservative, pro-Israel Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a prominent supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq — have taken up this anti-Qatari crusade. On May 23, the FDD convened a high-profile seminar to discuss the Gulf nation’s relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and how the Trump administration should respond. There, former secretary of defense Robert Gates called on the American government to relocate its massive airbase in Qatar unless the country cut ties with such groups. [...]

Not everyone in Washington, however, fully supports Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Other officials — notably Rex Tillerson — are calling for an easing of the blockade and a peaceful solution. The United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, also weighed in, calling for an end to the conflict while also stating that Qatar “urgently needs to do more to address support for extremist groups.” [...]

Not only do these states have rich oil and gas resources — the ultimate explanation for the United States’ interest in such an alliance — but they also share similar structures, marked by authoritarian ruling families and a labor force that primarily consists of largely rightless temporary migrant workers — a feature often forgotten in the flurry of media discussion about the Gulf over the past few weeks. The GCC’s integration project reflected these states’ collective interests, which are uniquely aligned with Western powers. [...]

The key point, often overlooked in the media commentary on the blockade, is that there are no principled political positions involved in these alliances — this is about calculated expediency and a pragmatic assessment by each state of how best to further their regional influence, always within the framework of reordering the region in a way amenable to their collective political and economic power.

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Al Jazeera: Looking beyond the siege of Doha

The Saudi camp seems to be running out of patience for the same Doha policies that triggered the 2014 diplomatic crises. In my view, the Saudis have three main demands: Ejecting Muslim Brotherhood leadership as well as other prominent figures from Doha, neutralising the Qatari media, especially Al Jazeera, towards the Gulf states and Egypt and moulding Qatar's regional policies so they do not collide with Saudi/Emirati interests. While Qatar is expected to offer concessions, it will deem some of these demands as a violation of its sovereignty. [...]

But it is also necessary to evaluate the US' position in the region. Qatar, after all, is the home of the largest US military base in the region. I think the Trump administration is implicitly pleased to see the Qataris sweat this crisis out. From Washington's point of view, this crisis may help Doha to fully understand the importance of the American presence, and to modify some of its regional policies that are not aligned with US interests. [...]

When it comes to the GCC, it is clear that the current crisis a symptom of the long-term problems between Qatar, Saudi, UAE and Bahrain and does not effect the entirety of the cooperation. Kuwait and Oman did not - and are less likely to - cut relations with Doha. Both Kuwait and Oman are the only two members who never severed diplomatic ties with any other GCC states. In fact, the Kuwaiti leadership undertook shuttle diplomacy between Doha and Riyadh to end the 2014 diplomatic crisis. [...]

Doha faces tough choices. If it does not address the concerns of the Saudi camp, it will be geographically isolated. Saudi Arabia could also push to freeze Qatar's membership in the GCC. Over time, this will place an unprecedented geopolitical pressure on the Qatari policymakers. At worst, this could slide Qatar towards Iran. This would be an unintended consequence that neither Riyadh nor Doha aspire towards. If Doha gives in to all of the demands at once, the Qatari government might not be able to survive the humiliation at home. Giving in to all Saudi demands and handing sovereignty to Riyadh would be viewed as political suicide by many in Qatar.

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Al Jazeera: Qatar-Gulf rift: The Iran factor

Deep in the Gulf waters between Qatar and Iran lies the world's largest gas field, a 9,700-sq-km expanse that holds at least 43 trillion cubic metres of gas reserves.

Qatar's southern portion is known as North Field, while Iran's slice to the north is called South Pars. The two countries share exploration rights in the area, and it is one of many ties that bind them.

But Doha's relationship with Tehran has been put to a new test on Monday, after Iran's regional rival Saudi Arabia led four other countries in cutting diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member of undermining security in the region by siding with Iran, among other actions.  [...]

Souzan Krdli, a Tehran-based Gulf analyst, said more than demanding Doha's allegiance, Saudi and the UAE want to "rein Qatar in" and make it "another Bahrain if you will" in terms of foreign policy. [...]

"However, it is clear that a rift in the GCC can be beneficial to Iran," he said. "Saudi Arabia is a lifeline for Qatar in terms of trade. We must wait and see whether Iran and Turkey can fill the void." 

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