Cutting Through: The Blockade of Qatar
December 1, 2020 Newsletter
Jared Kushner is traveling to the Middle East again. This time, his goal is to shore up the rift in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that was torn open in 2017 when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt initiated a blockade against Qatar.
Don’t stay up too late waiting to see if Kushner can pull off a diplomatic coup.
That’s not to say the situation won’t be resolved fairly soon. Saudi Arabia has been talking with Qatar, with Kuwait mediating the discussions, and there has been progress, based on reports out of the Gulf. But Kushner won’t have anything to do with any success they may have.
In fact, this rift needs to be healed without the involvement of the Trump administration. There are several reasons for this.
It was Trump, and Kushner, that caused the GCC split in the first place
One reason the Trump administration has stepped up its efforts to mend the relationship between the Gulf monarchies is because they don’t want to leave it behind as a mess the new administration can take credit for cleaning up. If the Biden team did end the Saudi blockade of Qatar, they would be right in claiming they cleaned up Trump’s mess.
The strong distaste the Saudi and Qatari royal families feel for each other goes back many years, of course, long before Donald Trump was in the White House.
Qatar, a much smaller and less influential country than Saudi Arabia nonetheless wields considerable influence in regional and global politics. Part of this is due to their enormous wealth, far greater per capita than the Saudis’. But Qatar has also been clever in leveraging the tools it has at its disposal.
Qatari support for the Muslim Brotherhood has been used against them in propaganda in the West, but it identifies them as supporters of causes that are connected to the masses in the Arab world, a perception that extends even to those who do not necessarily support the Brotherhood themselves. It is similarly connected to Qatari support for the Palestinians, which has, in contrast to Iran, been much more material than rhetorical.
Qatar also uses the Doha-based Al-Jazeera news network to its advantage. AJ is often quite critical of the dictatorial governments in the Arab world, infuriating many Arab rulers. The Qatari government, which is far from pure when it comes to human rights violations and authoritarianism, is treated with a much lighter touch, and that’s not accidental. The clever part is that Al Jazeera generally does real journalism and is an excellent source of news. Qatar doesn’t interfere very much with its operations, but AJ knows better than to criticize the Qatari government too much, so active censorship isn’t necessary.
Regardless, all of this makes Qatar a real thorn in the Saudis’ side, a role the Qataris relish.
When Trump went to Riyadh in 2017, while Jared was sucking up to Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi family flattered him endlessly and explained the regional situation from their point of view. More directly put, they manipulated him like the simpleton he is, and it worked like a charm.
Trump bought into the fiction that Qatar supported terrorism against America’s Gulf allies. He sent a clear message, reflecting what he had been taught in Riyadh: “During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!” He added that it was “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding… extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!”
Soon after, the Saudis initiated the blockade.
We’ll probably never know what sort of support the Saudis expected from the United States, but whatever it was never materialized, as Trump’s advisers immediately set about trying to control the damage the president had done and, slowly, convinced their boss—who had not the slightest inkling of the Saudi-Qatari dynamics he was playing with nor how much of a complication he had thrown into what would become his own administration’s plans for the Gulf—that his action needed to be walked back.
They’ve been trying to fix it ever since. While it does seem like significant progress has finally been made, this isn’t an area Trump can help with.
The Trump administration has nothing to work with
When the Trump foreign policy team engaged with the United Arab Emirates to convince them to normalize relations with Israel, they had a powerful bargaining chip to work with: the sale of advanced fighter jets and weaponized drones that, until now, had been off-limits to the UAE. While Congress still might have something to say about it, the weapons were a powerful incentive to convince the UAE to risk the backlash and abandon the Arab Peace Initiative.
But arms sales can’t help resolve the Gulf blockade. The Saudis recognized a long time ago that Qatar was weathering the blockade quite well. There have been some inconveniences and some material impact, but not nearly enough for Qatar to give in to the Saudi demands, which chiefly call for Qatar to stop supporting various groups, cut off ties to Iran, and close down Al Jazeera, none of which Qatar has any reason to do.
The Saudis know they’ve lost, but simply shutting down the blockade and admitting defeat to a much smaller rival is too much for the Saudis to swallow, and so the blockade goes on. With some halting progress in evidence recently, Trump administration officials like Kushner and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have put in appearances, but there is no indication that their involvement has been anything more than window dressing.
The anti-Iran bloc
The split in the GCC is problematic for the Trump administration’s efforts to unite as many Arab states as possible with Israel to form a powerful military bloc against Iran. This, it should be noted is not the only reason Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been so passionate in their pursuit of more and more Arab states to normalize relations with. It’s not even the only important reason. But it is the most important reason.
Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait are all complicated countries in terms of enmity with Iran. All three want friendly relations with all their neighbors and have worked hard to maintain a stance that is not so much neutral as bridging, to varying degrees.
But Qatar is a particularly complicated issue for the U.S.-Israeli-Saudi ambitions because it is home to the largest single American military base in the region, the Al Udeid Air Base, where some 15,000 American troops are stationed.
Qatar is also the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas. It shares ownership of the world’s largest natural gas field with Iran, so not only does Qatar have a vested interest in a good working relationship with the Islamic Republic, so does the rest of the world.
What happens, then, if the GCC is patched back together, with its leading members on a war footing with Iran? It is hard to say, as Qatari, Omani, and Kuwaiti interests will be divided.
On the other hand, a U.S. administration that is seeking to diminish the tensions in the region could make very good use of the Qatari, Omani, and Kuwaiti ties to Iran in pursuit of dialogue, in back-channel diplomacy, and in conveying conciliatory messages should matters deteriorate.
I made the case not long ago that having Trump resolve the Gulf crisis might not be in the best interests of peace in the region. But if Joe Biden is, as he seems to be, determined to lower tensions and push back against Netanyahu and MBS to bring the region away from war, his help in resolving the crisis, or even just the crisis being resolved on Biden’s watch, could be a big help.
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Biden has not yet chosen a Secretary of Defense and many, including myself, believe that is because his likely first choice, Michele Flournoy, has generated a particularly strong amount of progressive backlash. I examine that backlash and look at the question of Flournoy’s candidacy and how progressives should be reacting to it in this piece at ReThinking Foreign Policy.
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In the latest episode of the ReThinking Foreign Policy Podcast, I spend some time discussing the murder of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and some of the responses to it. The main story is a look at Joe Biden's initial picks for his cabinet and lead administrative staff. Some of my views on that may surprise some of my listeners. Finally, I look at Mike Pompeo's efforts to eliminate any possibility of a Palestinian state and examine how, with the worst of intentions, Pompeo may actually have done us a favor.
You can hear the episode here or you can always find the podcast on your listening platform of choice just by searching for ReThinking Foreign Policy.
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