The Real Story Behind the Diplomatic Crisis With Qatar

The intra-Arab rift that has set Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt against Qatar is now in its second week. A feud that seemed to begin as a principled stand against Doha's support for terrorism—one flash point was Qatar's recent payment of nearly $1 billion to Iran and to Sunni extremists to liberate a hunting party held captive in Iraq— now appears to be something else.

The diplomatic crisis splitting the Gulf Cooperation Council isn't really about Sunni extremism, or Qatar's easy flirtation with Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. Thus it has nothing to do with the larger issues shaping American foreign policy and the role of our GCC allies in implementing it. No, it's just Abu Dhabi waging political warfare against Doha with a specific goal in mind—to get the United States to move its military base from Qatar to the UAE.

The feud looks bigger than it actually is because the Emiratis have Saudi Arabia on their side. The Qataris are indeed a big problem, and Riyadh has plenty of reasons to dislike and fear Doha. Among others, as Saudi analyst Mohamed al-Yahya explains in this helpful article, the Qataris keep trying to undermine the Saudi government. Indeed, perhaps the best way to understand Qatari foreign policy is as a many-pronged effort to thwart their larger, richer, and more influential Saudi neighbors.

President Trump in turn has sided with the Saudis. After eight years of an Obama White House that downgraded traditional American alliances in favor of realignment with Iran, the Trump administration has wisely reaffirmed the strength of the longstanding American relationship with Riyadh. Thus, Trump has singled out Qatar for censure in both tweets and statements—even though Doha hosts a major American military base at Al Udeid, which serves as regional headquarters of CENTCOM and a staging point for American operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere in the region. And that's the crux of the matter—the Emiratis want the base.

The campaign's point man is the UAE's ambassador to the United States Yusef al-Otaiba, a diplomat well-known around Washington for his talent representing the interests of his country. Tuesday, he told reporters that the Trump administration should move the base.