Though the details are not yet a matter of public record, US officials are confirming that Saudi Arabia and its allies have prepared a “list of demands” for Qatar related to ending the blockade of the tiny Persian Gulf nation. It is not clear if the Qataris have been given the demands yet, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson saying he hopes they will be presented with them “soon.”
While we don’t know the content of this list of demands, we do still have the huge list of demands given to Qatar by Saudi Arabia two weeks ago, which may well form the basis for this latest list. This included severing all diplomatic ties with Iran, the permanent shut down of al-Jazeera, and a pledge never publicly contradict any GCC member nations, among other things.
Qatari officials had already ruled out that set of demands, insisting they wouldn’t sacrifice their national sovereignty over the blockade. Tillerson today said he wanted the list of demands to be “reasonable,” which may point to them trying to dial back some of the most extreme aspects of it.
The split between Qatar and the other nations has its origins in the Arab Spring, and resentment among the other GCC nations that al-Jazeera was generally favorable in coverage of pro-democracy protesters in the region. This has made the demand to permanently shut down the popular news network a key focus, and likely one that will find its way, in some form, into this latest list.
The US interest, according to State Department officials, is primarily to just get this resolved one way or another, as they’ve expressed annoyance at the situation having seemingly stagnated with both sides refusing to budge, and US officials are expressing concern that the blockade may ultimately start inconveniencing some of America’s many regional wars, as Qatar hosts the main US military base in the Middle East.
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Andrew Korybko on Sputnik news “Saudi Shakeup is Good for Russia and China” (June 21, 2017) details Saudi Arabia’s military, energy and economic dealings with Russia and China. Seems they want to be the apple in the Eurasian eye over Doha.
Its doubtful that list will go down any better than the warrior prince’s other spoiled temper tantrums, if its designed to compromise Qatar’s Eurasian competitiveness. That includes cooperation with Iran over shared LNG fields and its television station.
Salman is a spoiled brat, and a violent psychopath to boot… it would require a fellow ignorant egotist like the Trumpian to agree with this Barmy Bedouin Bozo…
Sorry, but as in Yemen we’ve been going along with this Barmy Bozo for years. It isn’t Trump, it is deeper than that. Worse.
Yup. Deep State worse.
Says a lot that even a brazen blowhard like Trump would rather eat Saudi crow than bluff through, or that only someone like Trump could get elected openly opposing elements of the system for that matter.
I don’t know much about Qatar, but I read Al Jazeera occasionally, and despite being state owned, it seems the closest thing to a free press supporting democratic reform in the middle east outside of Israel. Monarchies and military dictatorships demand political censorship in another state (albeit itself a monarchy), and the U.S. is remotely sympathetic? States that produced 9/11 hijackers shout “terrorist” at a state that didn’t and demand its hostility toward another state that didn’t, and the U.S. only bans immigration from the latter? Trump is dancing to the Saudi fiddler, and the United State dances with him. Why? Petrodollars? Hundred billion dollar deals with the military-industrial complex? No other explanation makes sense to me. I really hate what the U.S. has become.