USA, Qatar and Saudi Arabia

[727Sky]

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U.S. seen trying to calm waters between Qatar and Saudi Arabia
By Arshad Mohammed and Steve Holland
REUTERS
 

A map of Qatar is seen in this picture illustration June 5, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration
 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will quietly try to calm the waters between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, current and former U.S. officials said on Monday, arguing that the small Gulf state was too important to U.S. military and diplomatic interests to be isolated.
 
U.S. officials were blindsided by Saudi Arabia's decision to sever diplomatic ties with Qatar in a coordinated move with Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, the current and former officials said.
 
In announcing the decision to cut ties, Saudi Arabia accused Qatar of providing support to Shi'ite Iran, which is in a tussle for regional supremacy with Riyadh, and to Islamist militants.
 
Washington has many reasons to want to promote comity within the region. Qatar is host to the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East at Al Udeid, a staging ground for U.S.-led strikes on the Islamic State militant group that has seized parts of Syria and Iraq. U.S. Donald Trump has made defeating Islamic State a priority of his presidency.
 
Further, Qatar's willingness to welcome organizations such as Hamas, which Washington brands a terrorist group, and the Taliban, which has fought U.S. forces in Afghanistan for more than 15 years, allows contacts with such groups when needed.
 
"There is a certain utility," one U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. "There's got to be a place for us to meet the Taliban. The Hamas (folks) have to have a place to go where they can be simultaneously isolated and talked to."
 
The current and former U.S. officials said they were unable to identify precisely what may have triggered the four countries' coordinated decision to cut ties, which was later followed by Yemen, Libya's eastern-based government and the Maldives.
 
They said the Saudis may have felt empowered by the warm embrace that Trump gave them when he visited Riyadh in May and adopted a harsh anti-Iran stance.
 
"My suspicion is (they felt) emboldened by what Trump said on his visit and ... that they feel they have got some kind of backing," said a former U.S. official. "I don’t know that they needed any more of a green light than they got in public."
 
A senior administration official told Reuters the United States got no indication from the Saudis or Emiratis in Riyadh that the action was about to happen. The White House said on Monday it was committed to working to de-escalate tensions in the Gulf.
 
In Riyadh, Trump made an impassioned appeal to Arab and Islamic leaders to "drive out" terrorists, while singling out Iran as a key source of funding and support for militant groups.
 
SEEKING RECONCILIATION
 
U.S. officials in multiple agencies stressed their desire to promote a reconciliation between the Saudi-led group and Qatar, a state of 2.5 million people with vast natural gas reserves.
 
"We don't want to see some kind of permanent rift and I suspect we won't," said the senior Trump administration official on condition of anonymity, adding the United States would send a representative if the Gulf Cooperation Council nations met to discuss the rift with Qatar.
 
The GCC includes six wealthy Arab nations: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.
 
"There’s an acknowledgement that a lot of Qatari behavior is quite worrisome not just to our Gulf neighbors but to the U.S.," said the senior administration official. "We want to bring them in the right direction."
 
Marcelle Wahba, a former U.S. ambassador to the UAE and the president of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington think tank, said the United States had leverage but would use it discreetly.
 
"The U.S. will step up to the plate. How we will do it? I think it will be very quiet and very much in the background," she said. "I doubt very much we will sit on the sidelines and let this crisis get more serious."
 
Qatar's backing of Islamists dates to a decision by the current ruling emir's father to end a tradition of automatic deference to Saudi Arabia, the dominant Gulf Arab power, and forge the widest possible array of allies.
 
Qatar has for years presented itself as a mediator and power broker for the region's many disputes. But Egypt and the Gulf Arab states resent Qatar's support for Islamists, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, which they see as a political enemy.
 
"We are engaging with all of our partners ... to find a way to reassemble some GCC unity to support regional security," said another U.S. official, saying it was critical to "maintain the fight against terrorism and extremist ideology."

[url=https://newsletter.thaivisa.com/l/jzQgFpyeyIlIp5yOz3u5GA/PAICEahbgxEFKsVR1TOm0A/NK1WgnV7qs7uonGxByO7uQ]https://newsletter.thaivisa.com/l/jzQgFpyeyIlIp5yOz3u5GA/PAICEahbgxEFKsVR1TOm0A/NK1WgnV7qs7uonGxByO7uQ

[Daitengu]

Ol scammy should tell the saudi goatshaggers to piss off .... and glass riyadh an mecca to remind the goatshaggers to stay in their proper place .....

[727Sky]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-06...frontation

Saudi Arabia Gives Qatar 24 Hour Ultimatum As Analysts Warn Of "Military Confrontation"


by Tyler Durden
Jun 6, 2017 5:35 PM
1.4K
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Twitter Facebook Reddit [/url][url=http://www.zerohedge.com/print/597469]    

Shortly after imposing a naval blockade in the immediate  aftermath of the Qatar diplomatic crisis, one which left the small Gulf nation not only politically isolated and with severed ties to its neighbors but potentially locked out of maritime trade and crippling its oil and LNG exports, on Tuesday SkyNews Arabia reported that Saudi Arabia has given Qatar a 24 hours ultimatum, starting tonight, to fulfill 10 conditions that have been conveyed to Kuwait, which is currently involved in the role of a mediator between Saudi and Qatar.

According to media report, among the key demands by Saudi Arabia is that Qatar end all ties Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
While there was little additional information on the Ultimatum and more importantly what happens should Qatar not comply, Al Jazeera reported that Kuwait's emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, left Saudi Arabia on Tuesday after holding mediation talks with the Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz to try to defuse an escalating crisis between Arab countries and Qatar. No details were given on the talks.
In addition to Saudi Arabia's aggressive approach, Egypt's Foreign Ministry accused Qatar of taking an "antagonist approach" towards Cairo and said "all attempts to stop it from supporting terrorist groups failed". Qatar denied the allegations, with a Foreign Ministry statement describing them as "baseless" on Monday.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, analyst Giorgio Cafiero of Gulf State Analytics, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Washington, DC, said: "I think the Kuwaitis as well as Omanis ... fear the prospects of these tensions escalating in ways which could undermine the interest of all six members of the GCC.


"There are many analysts who believe that a potential break-up of the GCC has to be considered right now."
"If these countries fail to resolve their issues and such tensions reaches new heights, we have to be very open to the possibility of these six Arab countries no longer being able to unite under the banner of one council," said Cafiero.
He added that if tension escalates, some have warned of a "military confrontation".

You have to wonder sometimes..
Qatar was obviously not radical enough for the Saudi regime...and since we just sold them (Saudi Arabia) a couple of billion worth of weapons I guess they are feeling frisky.  IMO we are on the wrong side with our support of the Saudi regime and their Wahhabis B.S.

[727Sky]

http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/06/05/gu...-cold-war/

Andrew Korybko
21st Century Wire
The Gulf Cooperation Community was shocked shortly after Trump’s trip to Riyadh to read reports in Qatar media that Emir al-Thani supposedly spoke very favorably about Iran’s regional role and against the US’ anti-Iranian policies during his time in Saudi Arabia. It turns out, if the Qatari authorities are to be believed, that their leader didn’t actually say these things and that the media website was hacked by unknown perpetrators, though it looks like Saudi Arabia isn’t buying it because there’s a chance that he did in fact say what was reported but everyone thought that it wouldn’t be made public.
Therefore, the Kingdom’s media still promoted the story even after Doha said that it was debunked, and the influential descendants of al-Wahhab, whom the ultra-conservative strand of Wahhabi Islam is named after, called on Qatar to rename a mosque which was dedicated to its religious leader.
In case some observers thought of writing this all off as a series of harmless coincidences, UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash chimed in by saying:
“The Gulf Cooperation Council countries are passing through a new sharp crisis that carries within it a great danger. Fending off sedition lies in changing behavior, building trust and regaining credibility”
So, apparently hinting at the reemerging rift between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The two sides were engaged in a tense Cold War of sorts in 2014 over Doha’s patronage of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and even Russia as a terrorist organization, though they were eventually able to bury the hatchet after Qatar promised not to let the Brotherhood operate in the country.
We don’t know for certain exactly what’s going on right now because these countries are very opaque and it’s difficult to get a clear understanding of things, but if the Qatari-Saudi rift widens, then it’s expected to have several interrelated consequences. The first is that the falling out between both sides might be most visible in Syria, where they might order their respective proxies to fight one another or cut deals with Damascus to their rival’s disadvantage.
Another thing is that Qatar, by virtue of its geography and shared offshore gas resources with Iran, might actually side more closely with Tehran than Riyadh in general, which could instantly spark an intra-GCC security dilemma that might cause the Saudis to militarily overreact.
And finally, the last forecasted consequence of any prolonged distrust between Qatar and Saudi Arabia is that Doha might team up with Tehran and Moscow to form an OPEC-like gas cartel in bringing together three of the top four countries with the largest reserves in the world.
Qatar has thus far shirked this idea but might be compelled to reconsider it as a way to institutionalize any forthcoming pivot away from the GCC and closer to Iran. In any case, this wouldn’t happen overnight, but if it did eventually transpire, then it would pair nicely with Russia’s OPEC partnership in giving Moscow leverage over both global energy markets and the potential to position itself as a neutral mediator between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, thereby promoting its vision in becoming the supreme balancing force in Eurasia.

[727Sky]

I would never have dreamed of this angle... maybe an indirect way of dealing with MR. Big pants in Turkey is the best way ?
http://www.activistpost.com/2017/06/saud...qatar.html

By Brandon Turbeville
Only days after the falling out between Saudi Arabia and Qatar that resulted in a virtual blockade of Qatar by Gulf countries and Egypt, overtures are apparently being made between Saudi Arabia and Kurdish political and military units. While many may not understand the connection between the two events, rest assured there is a direct cause and effect between the Qatari row and the newfound interest in Kurds by Saudi Arabia.
Shortly after the Qatari isolation, Turkey announced that not only was it not taking part in the isolation, but that it was moving troops to a base in Qatar. Turkey did not take part in the movement against Qatar likely because of Qatari support for the Muslim Brotherhood, a powerful force in Turkey to which Erdogan is close to, to say the least. Thus, with both Turkey and Qatar engaged in supporting the Brotherhood and terrorists in Syria, it was logical that the two would retain ties.
Saudi Arabia, however, having long worried about Muslim Brotherhood activity in KSA (and for other reasons) and the country leading the charge against Qatar is thus now sending overtures toward Kurdish forces in all four countries – Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. These overtures, some analysts suspect, may very well turn into direct financial payments at some point in the future.


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