Days after President Trump’s visit and hours after the annual Bilderberg meeting let out, the Qatar stock exchange plunged over 8 percent in trading after news broke that Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt cut off diplomatic ties over accusations of Qatar ‘spreading chaos,’ by ‘funding terrorism and supporting Iran.’
The countries cutting ties have shut down all land, sea, and air crossings with the tiny energy-rich nation that has the highest per capita income in the world, and Qatari visitors and residents have two weeks to leave – while diplomats have just 48 hours.
With $335 billion in its sovereign wealth fund and it’s extensive port facilities, it looks like Qatar can avoid immediate economic crisis.
Does this hinge on fake news?
This massive shunning is the result of a broadcast which Qatar claims was a hack of their state-run news agency in order to misrepresent the Emir as a backer of radical Islam – whereby a tape was played of Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani speaking with no audio, while ‘hacked’ captions containing for his support of terrorism and Iran scrolled across the ticker at the bottom of the screen.
After the broadcast, Saudi Arabia and the UAE blocked Qatari news organization Al-Jazeera last week.
Amid Qatar’s denials, Saudi-owned satellite television networks immediately began airing repeated stories about the disputed comments. By early Wednesday morning, those living in the UAE and subscribers to local cable providers couldn’t access the channels of Al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite broadcaster based in the Qatari capital, Doha.
Attempts to reach its websites brought up a warning from the UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority saying the site “contains content that is prohibited.”
In Saudi Arabia, internet users also found Al-Jazeera websites blocked with a warning from the kingdom’s Culture and Information Ministry.
–WaPo
Why this, why now? One thought is that Saudi Arabia has had a PR problem ever since the 2016 US election. In addition to egregious human rights abuses and massive donations to the Clinton Foundation paraded under the spotlight, the house of Saud was exposed by Wikileaks in an email sent from Hillary Clinton to John Podesta – along with Qatar – for providing ‘clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.’ Remember, in another timeline Hillary was supposed to have won, those WikiLeaks were never meant to see the light of day, and that Saudi / Qatar pipeline was supposed to be built.
And now Israel has assembled a coalition to go fight ISIS / Terrorism / Iran – which includes Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. Fine – but even with an acquiescent Donald Trump as US President, it still leaves a huge PR problem for Saudi Arabia considering what we know about them.
So, Qatar goes down
Since Saudi Arabia is all good with the West – human rights abuses and all, it looks like the plan is to isolate Qatar as the lone supporter of terrorism in the region and an ally to Iran.
I wonder what this means for the relationship between the United States and Qatar? We have forces stationed at Al Udeid Air Base in West Doha – which is home to the forward headquarters of US Central Command (USCC) and the USAF Central Command (USAFCC).
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Don’t be surprised if the next thing we find out is that Qatar made a back-room deal with Russia/Syria/Iraq/Iran to access their pipeline instead of Saudi pipeline.