The nation of Qatar
has historically been a funder of terrorism.
The United States and Qatar
will do more to keep the region and our homeland safe
And it is our hope that
Qatar will change its
policies
to stop terrorism,
terror financing, harboring of terrorists.
Enough is enough.
Our interests with Qatar converge somewhat more often
than they actually diverge.
Qatar must cut ties with terrorists.
Iran and Turkey today are helping Qatar
as part of the blockade that Qatar faces.
They are taking advantage of the
disunity that is now found in the Gulf Cooperation
Council. The Qataris are not
calling the shots. They are not telling the Iranians or
Turks what to do. It's the other way around.
I mean I would describe
the Qatari-Iranian relationship as
an uneasy relationship. The Qatari's I think
have asked for the United States
to put a base in their country primarily
because they're concerned about an
aggressive Iran. On the other hand we've
heard rumors that the Qataris have
worked with Iranian proxies whether it
be Hezbollah or even the Houthis or the
Saleh forces in Yemen that may have led
to the death of both Emirati and Saudi forces.
If this is the case then this
would certainly be I think the precipitating event for this
boiling over of tensions.
We're three months into
this conflict that Qatar has with the
likes of Saudi Arabia & United Arab
Emirates. One of the key concerns that
those neighbors of Qatar have had and
continue to have is Qatar's relations with
Iran, and now the Qataris are returning
their ambassador to Tehran three months
after the dispute began. It kind of
signifies that Doha is saying "You know
what I'm doubling down. I'm not going
anywhere and I'm gonna pursue my own
foreign policy the way I see fit."
It might be something to to be concerned about.
How close are the Iranians and the
Qataris getting?
They're looking at Qatar's isolation
and trying to see if
they can score points as part of the
competition for power that is occurring
across the Middle East
Of course we do also have to keep in mind that
Qatar and Iran share an enormous
natural gas field - the south pars field,
so of course Qatar is going to have to
have relations with Iran in one way or
another.
One of the things that has always puzzled me is
here is Iran and
Qatar basically engaged in a proxy
conflict in Syria because they happen to
  support different sides in that conflict,
and yet the Iranians never really say
anything bad about Qatar. There are
never really you know threats made by
Iran against Qatar the way the Iranians
oftentimes make threats against some of
the other GCC states. It's a difficult
one to explain away, so I'm pretty sure
much is happening behind the curtain.
The Qatar-Irani relationship is also
rather strange. On the one hand Qatar argues that
we would rather be a channel
for peace with Iran and after all Iran
is a neighbor of ours in the sense that
it's very close to us, but on the other
hand they make it very difficult to
isolate Iran which is what the other
Arab countries would like to do.
Qatar is going on its own freelancing dabbling at
times in what its Arab neighbors
considered to be dangerous foreign policy pursuits,
because fundamentally
the likes of Saudi Arabia & United Arab Emirates
do not trust Iranian intentions and they feel that
Qatar might just be the weak
link in this and enable Iranian influence on the Arabian
Peninsula where they all collectively sit.
By maintaining that relationship
Qatar becomes an enabler of Iran's extremist policies.
At a time when the rest of the
world is trying to isolate Iran, any
effort to try and hold out a lifeline to
Iran from the region is dangerous.
Iran, should not be forgotten
is also right now in a close tactical relationship
with the Russians. So it's not just
Turkey and Iran but it's also Russian
intentions because Russia has never had
much of a military presence certainly in
the Persian Gulf region. Could this be a
moment for the Russians to move south?
It's really difficult to see. Logically I
would say that's impossible. The Qataris
would never go that far,
but emotions are running high and this
is in the end of the day a family feud,
and family feud's as we all know can be
some of the nastiest out there,
so and that makes it very unpredictable.
The international
community has tried to pressure Iran is
by making sure that it does not have
access to hard currency.
Qatar becomes the enabler there by providing them
the large amounts of money that Iran needs,
which then are used in Syria
for destabilizing Syria in Lebanon for
continuing a virtual civil war by having
a militia defy the government and it's also available
for destabilizing the
peace process in Palestine.
They share the largest natural gas field in the world.
Half of it sits in Iranian territory,
the other half sets in Qatari
territory - fifteen percent the world's gas right there.
That makes them partners
whether they like it or not. They have to
figure out how to exploit all that gas
because they're just said trillions of dollars
sitting down there. But it's
always going to be a difficult
relationship. The Qataris don't want to
see what happened to Kuwait in 1990 when Saddam
invaded that country to happen to
them by having the Iranians invade Qatar.
So they have to walk a very fine line and they do
but the criticism from Qatar's neighbors
is you're doing more than just walking a
fine line here, you're actually
accommodating your ride at times.
