Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain are asking the Gulf state to shut down its broadcaster, Al Jazeera.
They are also asking Qatar to reduce ties with Iran and close a Turkish military base - all within 10 days.
Qatar, which sought to raise its profile in recent years, denies funding terrorism and fostering instability.
It has been subjected to more than two weeks of unprecedented diplomatic and economic sanctions, in the worst political crisis among Gulf countries in decades.
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Its more complicated than that, they are all puppets of the west.
Problem is that qatar was sponsoring a terrorist group that is rival to Saudi Arabia own terrorist group.
They also sponsored the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt to overthrow Mubarak and stay in power yet the same group advocates for the same in Saudi Arabia.
They started warming up to Iran and Turkey which rival Saudi Arabia hold as regional power.
Their station shows the ruling house of Saud in bad light.
Saudi Arabia solution was to invite trump, give what the usa wants the most, unbelievable $500 billion arms deal,(weapons is the usa leading export goods) and they rubber stamp their escalation with qatar. This is crucial since the usa has a military base in qatar.
In my opinion all this gulf states are stupid. The usa is playing them against each other to keep its hold in the region and most importantly to make billions in arms sales to all of them. I only respect Iran in Middle East. Closer at home qatar did sponsor alshabab with arms and finances. It ended when President Uhuru sort out Jordanian King in his low key meeting at Doha Grand Prix in 2014. Jordanian King was the facilitator of the talks and he leveraged his neutral position in the region to have qatar stop its covert support. In 2015 qatar and Kenya were in good books, diplomacy worked and President Uhuru went on a state visit to qatar. Early this year Qatar Emir also made a state visit to Kenya. alshabab wamekauka since.
The demands given to Qatar look like they’ve been set up to make sure they fail. Thus precipitate a more serious crisis. World War I started like that, with an ultimatum given by Austria-Hungary to Serbia was set up for Serbia to fail.
I don’t agree with what Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain are doing. They all sponsor terrorists, one way or the other. Having said that, Qatar needs to be cut down to size. This tiny country bites waaaay more than it can chew. They host all manner of terrorists over there. They don’t even hide it. Apart from supporting Al shabaab, as @spear has mentioned, they were also responsible for flooding Libya with weapons when Gadaffi was being overthrown. Once Gadaffi was out, these weapons were taken to Syria and other hotbeds, further destabilizing the region. I don’t think it’s fair for them to keep destabilizing other countries while they enjoy peace. Some of these gulf countries should even go as far as sponsoring terrorist attacks and uprisings inside Qatar, just to show them there should be limits to their adventures.
The country’s biggest asset is not their gas reserves, but Al Jazeera. I have to admit, it’s quite remarkable how influential the media house is. It allows Qatar to wield unfathomable power.
As usual, no one’s talking about America’s role in all this. They sign multi-billion dollar arms deals with Arab countries. Arab countries funnel weapons to terrorists. Terrorists use these weapons to commit, ummm, terrorism. The west commits more resources to fighting terrorism. Arab countries sign more multi-billion dollar arms deals, and it goes on and on.
Everyone is happy…except for victims of terrorism. Who gives a shit about collateral damage anyways?
Remember mujahedeen, the terrorists group formed by cia, Pakistan and Saudis to start a civil war in Afghanistan during the cold war to repeal the USSR invasion there. Well the moderate fighters remained to form the Taliban after the Red Army withdrew. Their cause was strictly to expel foreign invaders. The radicles formed al qaeda to take on the great evil called usa. Their own cia operatives turned on them after years of training, experience and being armed. Same thing with Isis right now. In Syria there is a “reformed al qaeda” that works with the west as good opposition group against Syria President Assad. The worst thing is that everyone in ME knows this but internal rivalry and the infamous mistrust keeps them from changing course.