MBS takes on Qatar. But can he win?
Since May 24, Qatar has been locked in a dangerous and unprecedented showdown with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE. This is a fight that was picked by Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince and Defence Minister, Prince Muhammad Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (MBS) – egged on, it would seem, by Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince and de facto ruler, Sheikh Muhammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Even as other countries – Egypt, Turkey, Iran and, however reluctantly, the United States – are dragged into the crisis, it is beginning to look as though it will be one fight that Muhammad Bin Salman cannot win.
From the outset Qatar has protested that Saudi Arabia’s casus belli – a Qatar News Agency report quoting Emir Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani as recommending friendly relations with Iran, praising the Palestinian islamist movement Hamas and Lebanon’s Hizbollah, and speaking of his own good relations with Israel – was nothing but ‘fake news’ planted on QNA’s website in a midnight hack on May 23. This account of events is increasingly widely credited: according to the New York Times, the FBI and British law enforcement have pointed the finger at ‘freelance’ Russian hackers working for parties unknown.
Not such very fake news, mind you: in effect the remarks attributed to Emir Tamim merely summarise, in barely caricatured form, Qatar’s longstanding policy of cultivating relationships with a very broad spectrum of players – both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, sundry Sunni islamist movements, Shiite Iran, the United States, etc. – so that it is able to punch diplomatically well above its puny demographic weight. Even if one were to assume that the incriminated report was in fact genuine, the question remains as to why the Saudis and Emiratis chose to react in such a disproportionate manner, breaking off diplomatic relations with Qatar and expelling its nationals, subjecting their neighbour to a near total embargo and pushing the sub-region to the brink of armed conflict.
The answer is threefold. To begin with there is the matter of MBS’ character. A bold decision-maker who thinks big according to his admirers, an impetuous gambler for his detractors (in effect two different ways of saying the same thing), MBS appears to have taken, shall we say, the bold gamble of attempting to deal with the perennial irritant that is Qatar once and for all.
Secondly, there is the matter of opportunity. MBS struck hard against Qatar because he could, notably in the wake of Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh on May 20. In his widely publicised speech to Arab and Muslim heads of state gathered in the Saudi capital, the US President sided clearly and unambiguously with the Saudis in their confrontations with the Muslim Brotherhood and, especially, Iran, and highlighted the issue of terrorist financing – all of them convenient rods for Qatar’s back.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is the geopolitical moment. Even though the economic fruits of the 2015 nuclear deal have been slower to come than Tehran had hoped, Iran’s star is very much on the rise. With the Islamic State facing defeat in Mosul, Iran’s Iraqi Shiite allies are reported to be actively working to change the demographics of reconquered areas of northern Iraq, and Tehran will soon be able to consolidate its ‘land-bridge’ through Iraq and Syria to Hizbollah’s heartlands in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Iran (together with Russia) appears to have saved Assad’s rump regime in Syria, and is blamed, rightly or wrongly, by Riyadh for turning what was supposed to be a cakewalk for Saudi and allied forces in Yemen into a quagmire. MBS, the architect of the Yemen war, is particularly belligerent about curtailing Iran’s regional power, going as far as to proclaim in a rare interview with Saudi state TV on May 2 that Riyadh was gearing up to “take the war into Iran itself”. From MBS’ point of view, there can be no room for waverers and conciliators – such as the present regime in Qatar – in the Sunni Arab camp he aspires to lead.
Some seasoned commentators have argued that, judging by recent history, Emir Tamim will probably protest and then fold, making a tactical retreat in the hope of appeasing the Saudis. But the demands Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain are making – expelling anyone Riyadh disapproves of, breaking off all ties to Iran, shutting down or neutering Al-Jazeera, etc. – go so far that to accede to them would be tantamount to submitting to satellitisation. And satellitisation is precisely what Qatar’s longstanding strategy of cultivating diverse friendships, whether they please the Saudis or not, was designed to forestall. At the same time, while the Saudi-Emirati embargo is undoubtedly hurting Qatar economically, the tiny emirate is proving surprisingly resilient. Above all, the embargo is not total. Qatar has a maritime border with Iran, and the Iranians are not only happy to let through goods from other countries – Turkey, notably, has stepped up to the plate – but have sent foodstuffs and other essential goods themselves to their embattled southern neighbour. Turkey, meanwhile, has fast-tracked parliamentary approval of pre-existing plans for the construction of a Turkish military base in Qatar, and has said it will send a military contingent to Doha very soon.
Turkey’s military contribution is not likely to amount to much more than a token deployment – a couple of hundred men at most. Symbolically, however, Ankara’s gestures of support are of the utmost importance, not least because they kill off any pretensions Riyadh may have had of standing at the head of an all-embracing Sunni alliance. Turkey is heavily dependent on investment from the Gulf states, in particular Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and at first glance it may seem surprising that it has chosen to side with one of its friends in the Gulf over the other. To stand by and affect neutrality, however, would in effect have been to side with Saudi Arabia. President Recep Tayip Erdogan appears to have gone with Qatar for a number of reasons. Most obviously, there are his unabashed sympathies for the Muslim Brotherhood, whose representatives the Saudis and Emiratis want to see expelled from their haven in Qatar. Neither does Erdogan have any intention of being dragooned into an anti-Iranian alliance, Ankara’s interest lying in maintaining at least reasonably cordial relations with its eastern neighbour, whatever their differences over Syria. Perhaps most importantly, Erdogan has pretensions of his own of emerging as the leader of Sunni Islam, which clearly clash with MBS’ dreams of regional hegemony.
If, thanks to Iranian and Turkish support, the embargo Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain have sought to impose on Qatar proves ineffective, there remains the military option. This has, it would seem, been given serious consideration, with MBS in particular said to have been characteristically gung-ho in the earliest days of the crisis. But as the days go by, it is looking increasingly unattractive. To begin with, the Qataris appear to be ready to fight – and while their armed forces are of very modest size, they are extremely well armed and, it would seem, highly motivated. The Saudi armed forces, meanwhile, are already involved in a protracted war in Yemen (in which, ironically, some 1,000 Qatari troops have acquired combat experience, helping Saudi Arabia defend its southern border against incursions by Yemen’s Houthi rebels).
Even more importantly, just outside Doha lies Al-Udeid Air Base, home to the forward HQ of the United States Central Command, HQ of the USAF Central Command and an expeditionary air group of the RAF. While there has so far been no suggestion that US or British forces would take part in Qatar’s defence against any Saudi-Emirati intervention force, the United States surely cannot countenance its own regional allies scrapping with one another on the very doorstep of its single most important facility in the Middle East. Although President Trump, according to sickeningly plausible US media reports, may have been unaware of the existence of Al-Udeid Air Base when he egged the Saudis on at the beginning of the crisis, the more experienced hands in his administration (Defence Secretary Gen. James Mattis – who actually headed USCENTCOM from 2010 to 2013 – National Security Advisor Gen. HR McMaster, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, et al) will be determined to prevent anything jeopardising its operations. The protection that affords is of course the main reason Qatar has always been more than happy to host the facility – and no doubt also why the UAE, according to leaked e-mails by its ambassador to Washington published by the Huffington Post, is so keen to see it displaced to its own territory.
Accordingly, Washington is now attempting to mediate between Qatar and its erstwhile GCC partners, as is the Emir of Kuwait. And yet it is hard to see what compromise would actually be acceptable to both sides. It is not impossible that the alleged hack, and in particular the role of non-state hackers possibly of Russian origin, are being played up by the Americans and British in order to be able to present the whole dispute as being based on a misunderstanding, in the hope that this will enable both the Qataris and the Saudis to save at least some face. If so, it is a long shot, and a lot more hard diplomatic work will be needed to talk both sides back from the brink. In the meantime, the risk of a military flare-up remains real – and the pretense of Gulf unity in the framework of the GCC lies in tatters.