A decision to cut relations with a close neighbour can never be an easy one. The magnitude of such a decision will have been understood at the highest levels, in the UAE and in Saudi Arabia. This is not, as Anwar Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, has said on Twitter, an attempt to interfere in the sovereignty of Qatar. But when so many countries choose to side with the Gulf states – Yemen also broke off relations with Doha yesterday – they cannot all be wrong.
Certainly the crisis has escalated rapidly. The trigger was the failure by Doha to abide by decisions taken at the most recent summit between the Gulf states and the United States. That was then compounded by the debacle over comments that Qatar’s emir made to a military graduation ceremony days later – and which were compounded yet again, in the most extraordinary and naive decision of this whole saga, by the emir accepting a phone call from Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president.
Those were the proximate causes of the current crisis. Yet it is the result of years of problems with Qatar’s political positions, in particular its bafflingly close relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. That relationship is especially troubling given how both have tried to sow division within Gulf countries. How can Qatar seek to maintain close relations with its neighbours, while at the same time keeping close relations with the very groups and regimes that are seeking to undermine those neighbours?
This is an essential, indeed existential, question, and Doha has not yet answered it. Those who say that it is simply good politics have misunderstood the nature of the threat and its effect on Gulf countries. This is an issue that the Gulf states genuinely feel affects their security and stability. In that situation, there is no such thing as mere politics. The continued prosperity of the Gulf countries – and that includes the prosperity of Qatar, because, as the severing of air, sea and land routes shows, the country is intimately connected to its neighbours – requires that Qatar come back into the fold.
There is still a way out of this crisis, but it will require some movement from Doha. Not mere words, though, the time for that is long past. So serious has this crisis become that only concrete actions and political changes will finally mend relations. It is the actions of Qatar that have brought about this crisis. Only action from Qatar can end it.
