UAE Warns of ‘Parting of Ways’ If Qatar Doesn’t Accept Demands

The United Arab Emirates is adding its voice to the warnings from Saudi Arabia that Qatar must accept a list of 13 demands within 10 days, saying that there will be a “parting of ways” between Qatar and the rest of the region if they don’t capitulate.

The demands include the closure of all of Qatar’s media outlets, including the regionally influential al-Jazeera, expelling Turkey from a military base in Qatar, closing diplomatic facilities abroad, and agreeing to pay an unspecified amount of “reparations” for daring to disagree with the other states, among other things. Qatari officials have already spurned the proposal as “unreasonable.”

The more or less complete blockade of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt doesn’t seem to leave open much room to do more, but UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash suggested that they would be “isolated” more, and that the GCC could no longer maintain a “collective grouping,” suggesting Qatar might be expelled from it outright.

On the other hand, Gargash insisted that there weren’t realistically ways to move toward further escalation, and that the four states blockading Qatar don’t intend to try to impose regime change on the emirate. That Qatar hosts a large US military base and has the backing of NATO member Turkey likely makes any sort of attempt to oust the Emir by force virtually impossible.