President Trump’s simplistic siding with Saudi Arabia and Israel – and his callous reaction to a terror attack on Iran – are fueling new tensions in the Middle East, including the Qatar crisis, as ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke explains.
By Alastair Crooke
Have “MbS” and “MbZ” overreached themselves? It is still early in the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar, but yes, it seems so. And in so doing, the hubris of Mohammad bin Salman (MbS), the Saudi defense minister and the powerful son of Saudi King Salman, and Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ), the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and supreme commander of the UAE Armed Forces, will change the region’s geopolitical architecture.
President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump join King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, May 21, 2017, to participate in the inaugural opening of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
President’s Trump’s (flawed) base strategic premises (and narratives) that Iran is the ultimate source of all instability in the region, and that the smacking down of Qatar, a major patron of Palestinian Hamas, per se, was a good thing, and should be applauded, bear direct responsibility for the direction in which regional geopolitics will now flow.
President Trump returned from his first overseas trip convinced that he had unified the United States’ historic Arab allies, and dealt a strong blow against terrorism. He did neither. He has been badly informed.
The fissure between Qatar and Saudi Arabia is an old, storied affair, which harks back to longstanding al-Saud angst at the original British decision to empower the al-Thani family in their Qatar foothold in an otherwise all-Saudi fiefdom. But if we lay aside, for a moment, the airing of the long list of Saudi and UAE contemporary complaints against Qatar, which for most part, simply serve as justification for recent action, we should return to the two principles that fundamentally shape the al-Saud mindset and strategy – and which lie at the heart of this current spat with Qatar.
The Reactionary Saudis
Firstly, the…