Plan B Forum

of fomenting terrorism.

This happened a few minutes ago and is complete news to me. We just had 45's 'very successful' trip to the region and the Gulf Cooperation Council is key to the US and European efforts to maintain some sort of reins on Shia Iran. The GCC countries are overwhelmingly Sunni.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing it of destabilising the region.
The countries say Qatar is supporting terrorist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Saudi state news agency SPA said Riyadh had closed its borders, severing land, sea and air contact.
It cited officials as saying it was to "protect its national security from the dangers of terrorism and extremism".

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-40155829

wow.

Saudi Arabia condemns another country for fomenting terrorism?!

Pot meet kettle!!

Trump of course is taking credit for this:

Per the NYT:

Trump Takes Credit for Saudi Move Against Qatar, a U.S. Military Partner

Next move I assume will be Qatar's. Let's see - how can they make problems for the US? Maybe they could boot the USAF and the RAF out of the Al Udeid base.

I think this will end in tears. NYT is reporting (well, they would, wouldn't they) that this move appears to have taken the Pentagon and the US Ambassador to Qatar by surprise, so this is clearly yet another example of our astute, close-to-the-chest CiC and his ability to keep the opponents guessing.

Complicated. It will take some time to understand what is going on here.


yrs,
rubato

My God, Trump is an idiot.

The Saudi feud with Qatar has nothing to do with "funding terrorism" and everything to do with Qatar refusing to toe the Saudi line in both its foreign and domestic policies -- particularly its perceived "softness" on Iran and Israel, its openness to a more progressive social order, its support for Al Jazeera, and its position in long-running border disputes and competing territorial claims among most of the Gulf nations. Having seen him up close and personal last week, the Saudis have sized up Trump and are now taking advantage of his ignorance and stupidity to pressure Qatar.

It's all about the World Cup

MajGenl.Meade wrote:It's all about the World Cup

(Shhh -- you'll draw attention to the slave labor and kickbacks.)

From Jim Wright on Facebook:

• Now Qatar.
  
  This morning, the Idiot in Chief attacked one of our most important (and touchy, and unpredictable) allies in the Middle East.
  
  The US base in Qatar is not just any base. It's THE base. It's CENTCOM, our command HQ for the entire region. More than that, it's THE strategic runway, 12,000 feet, the linchpin of every OPLAN and CONOP for US strategy in the Middle East. You're going into Syria, Iran, Iraq? You need Qatar. 11,000 US service personnel are stationed there.
  
  And Qatar is goddamned sensitive about that base.
  
  US forces use that base to attack other Muslim countries in the region.
  
  Think about that.
  
  US forces use that base to attack Muslim countries.
  
  You'd better damned well BELIEVE the people of Qatar are sensitive to that base. Because they've made themselves a target of every extremist Islamic force in the region. For us, for America. That's right.
  
  And Trump just shit all over them on social media.
  
  If we pull out of Qatar, if we are thrown out of Qatar, US strategy in the Middle East collapses.
  
  Every strategic plan, every operational plan, every contingency plan will have to be rewritten. That will cost millions and take years. We'll either lose or have to move BILLIONS in assets -- and a lot of that stuff can't be moved anywhere else in the region, that's why it's in Qatar in the first place.
  
  Trumps social media attack on Qatar this morning is INSANE.
  
  It jeopardizes decades of work, years of planning, billions upon billions of dollars, and our entire military and political strategy in the Middle East.
  
  It's not the press that wants him to shut up, it's his own staff.
  
  It's not America's enemies that want Trump to shut up, IT'S OUR ALLIES.

This gets more beautiful by the minute. CNN are now reporting that the original Qatari postings which so upset the Saudis and which the Quataris said were hacks, in fact originated in Russia. So says (I assume leaked) info from FBI and UK National Crime Agency who were called in by Qatar to find the source. So Trump is now taking credit for actions based on fake news emanating from his BFFs in Moscow.

It really does not get any better than this, but tomorrow is another day. And roll on Thursday when Comey will testify.

ETA 'insane' is probably a better word than 'beautiful' in that first sentence.

Unintended consequence? Let's hope so. Watch for Lord Dampnut to walk back his Qatar position on twitter real soon.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... di-arabia/

Our president is a fucking idiot.

I was going to post the info that Econo quoted from Jim Wrong (who on this occasion is actually right...Gee, I find myself agreeing with both Jim Wright and Wonkette in the same week...No doubt about it; Donald Trump truly has amazing abilities...) about the critically important nature of our military relationship with Qatar. Our presence there provides the linchpin to our whole ability to effectively project military power throughout the region in general, and to carry out military operations against ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other Jihadist groups operating there.

Maybe nobody has told Trump this; or maybe he was told and he didn't retain it because whoever told him forgot to mention his name over and over while they were explaining it to him..

A sane President, upon learning that a serious escalation of the rift between Qatar and Saudi Arabia was taking place would have immediately dispatched their Secretary of State to the region to get it settled; NOT try to take credit for it...

The depths of Trump stupidity know no limits. Crowing that this is "his doing" hurts us, and him, a great deal.

I can understand the "authoritarian" Moslem countries (to use Jeanne Kirkpatricks lying formulation, they are dictators and totalitarians) being upset with Al Jazeera's reporting which supported the Arab Spring and makes them personally nervous. I have a harder time understanding why they are angry with the Emir of Qatar, unless they believed the Russian disinformation or there was some other issue. In any case, further destabilization of the Moslem world cannot be a good thing.

... Except to US weapons manufacturers who are the preferred supplier to an awful lot of these countries. On the subject of weapons sales and reduced stability the Alfred Nobel countries were caught, repeatedly, selling explosives to both sides in the Iran-Iraq war. And Reagan was backing both sides as well.

yrs,
rubato

• Lord Jim wrote:(Gee, I find myself agreeing with both Jim Wright and Wonkette in the same week...No doubt about it; Donald Trump truly has amazing abilities...)

Just you wait and see, Jim...we'll eventually have you agreeing with Mother Jones!

There was as of yesterday a general feeling that this was a manufactured crisis: for example, the State Dept was wondering what the real motive might be, despite Trump's apparent support because after all it was his idea in the first place.

Yesterday's surprising (not really) announcement that Saudi's King Salman has now propelled his own son to Crown Prince and heir apparent may be the rationale. There will be tears before bedtime, as all the sons of Abdul Aziz who preceded Salman as king had sons who have now been bypassed for the throne. They are not going to take this lying down and although there is a (probably purcha$$$$$ed) showing of unity at the moment, every misstep by Mohammed bin (son of) Salman will be examined and it would not surprise me if the seeds of a Saudi civil war have been sown here, although it may be a few years before we see the harvest.

There was as of yesterday a general feeling that this was a manufactured crisis: for example, the State Dept was wondering what the real motive might be, despite Trump's apparent support because after all it was his idea in the first place.

Yesterday's surprising (not really) announcement that Saudi's King Salman has now propelled his own son to Crown Prince and heir apparent may be the rationale. There will be tears before bedtime, as all the sons of Abdul Aziz who preceded Salman as king had sons who have now been bypassed for the throne. They are not going to take this lying down and although there is a (probably purcha$$$$$ed) showing of unity at the moment, every misstep by Mohammed bin (son of) Salman will be examined and it would not surprise me if the seeds of a Saudi civil war have been sown here, although it may be a few years before we see the harvest.

Sorry about the double post: I don't actually know how that is possible. I went back to PlanB after looking at another site; saw that my post was still there with the Preview and Submit buttons, so I assumed that I had failed to properly press Submit, and did so again.

So delete one - and the apology. Happens to all of us

A really, really good explainer on this situation, from Vox.

• The special ingredient that helps explain Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic war on Qatar
  Natural gas lies at the heart of the Gulf’s most acute crisis in decades.
  Updated by Zeeshan Aleem | @ZeeshanAleem | zeeshan.aleem@vox.com | Jul 5, 2017, 1:03pm EDT

  ---

  Saudi Arabia says it’s waging diplomatic war against Qatar because of its support for terrorism. But if you drill below the surface, there’s actually something else that helps explain the crisis: Qatar's hugely valuable natural gas reserves.
  
  People often look at Gulf states in the Middle East and assume that the fantastic wealth in the region all emanates from oil. But oil is not evenly distributed in the area, nor is it the sole source of natural resource-driven cash in the region.
  
  Enormous amounts of natural gas, not oil, have fueled Qatar’s rise to become one of the world’s wealthiest nations in per capita terms. It’s also the special ingredient that helps explain how it has become a renegade state in the Gulf region — and the target of an isolation campaign that marks the most acute diplomatic crisis in the Middle East in decades.
  
  The fact that Qatar’s economy isn’t as beholden to oil means that it isn’t as beholden to Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter and the leader of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a group that acts in unison to influence oil prices. Qatar generates four times more export revenue from natural gas than it does from oil, and doesn’t need to follow Saudi’s dictates the way it would if its survival were predicated on it.
  
  In addition to this, the natural gas Qatar exports is liquefied, meaning it is compressed and shipped around the world, and isn’t primarily distributed through pipelines that are vulnerable to being meddled with by angry neighbors.
  
  Then there’s the issue of the origins of Qatar’s natural gas: It gets most of it from an offshore gas field in the Persian Gulf that it shares with Iran. Which is to say Qatar has every interest in maintaining harmonious ties with Saudi Arabia’s nemesis.
  
  Qatar’s economic independence has translated into an independent-minded foreign policy. The tiny former British protectorate has evolved in recent decades into a global player that competes with and defies Riyadh on several fronts, whether through the popularity of its robust international media operation Al Jazeera; its backing of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which Saudi Arabia and its allies consider to be an existential threat to their own regimes; or its friendly relationship with Saudi’s regional rivals, Iran and Turkey.
  
  Since Saudi Arabia can’t rein in Qatar using its dominance over oil, it’s using its immense diplomatic influence in the region to hurt Qatar's economy in other ways. Saudi Arabia and its allies Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain have severed all diplomatic ties with Qatar and suspended air, land, and sea travel to and from the country. Other countries in the region have since joined. It’s a bold — and risky — attempt to make Qatar fall in line after marching to its own beat for decades.
  
  Qatar first discovered the biggest natural gas trove in the world in its backyard in 1969. But at the time it was a disappointment: Natural gas wasn’t a useful resource if a market for it couldn’t be found within pipeline reach. Most of Qatar’s neighbors had enough natural gas of their own at the time, and Europe was too far. Qatar was a mid-level oil producer, and then would much rather have discovered an oil field.
  
  But this changed in the 1990s. Qatar’s Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who came to power in a bloodless coup in 1995, promoted Qatar as an exporter of liquefied natural gas — natural gas chilled to its liquid state, which takes up far less volume and can be shipped by sea. Foreign investors poured money into Qatar’s gas liquefaction capacities, and it started shipping liquefied natural gas the world over. Today Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, distributing about a third of the world’s supply.
  
  As Qatar’s neighbors modernized their economies, their demand for natural gas grew too, and Qatar was able to capitalize on it. Qatar sends natural gas to the UAE and Oman by pipeline, and it’s a crucial supply of energy for them. “About 40 percent of the electricity that is generated in the UAE depends on that gas supply from Qatar,” Karen Young, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told me.
  
  Qatar’s natural gas reserves transformed it from a tiny former British protectorate and mid-level oil producer to a global energy giant. And Qatar has been eager to exploit its unique wealth to forge a unique geopolitical identity, much to the chagrin of Saudi Arabia.
  
  The fact that Qatar shares oil fields with Iran is a crucial component of this. Iran, the Middle East’s preeminent Shia power, is typically at odds with the Sunni Muslim monarchies of the Gulf. But the fact that Iran and Qatar draw from the same pot of gold tempers that tension. Qatar has valued a friendly relationship of engagement with Iran, which is a much larger country than it, and could try to make outsize claims to the field they share. Young sums up their relationship as “investment partners” — they aren’t necessarily pals, but they have little to gain from antagonism with one another. (They don’t co-invest in extraction but they both invest in the same shared asset.)
  
  Saudi Arabia, by contrast, prefers a confrontational posture toward Iran.
  
  Qatar has been able to get out from under the thumb of Saudi Arabia due to its natural gas-based independence. It’s a member of Saudi-dominated OPEC, but it doesn’t have to adopt the kind of follow-the-leader mindset that other more oil-dependent members of OPEC have to.
  
  And the fact that Qatar’s natural gas reaches global markets primarily through shipments and not pipelines that run through the immediate area is also a strategic advantage. The US keeps a naval fleet in the Persian Gulf and its stated mission there is to ensure the free flow of gas and oil through choke points.
  
  Shielded from Saudi Arabia’s regional hegemony, Qatar has maneuvered with exceptional agility to make a name for itself. When Saudi Arabia in 2003 asked US forces to leave the country due to domestic anti-American pressure in the wake of 9/11, Qatar successfully proposed that the US make a new home in their own country.
  
  “Sheikh Hamad’s key strategic security achievement was to convince the Pentagon to move into the bases he built — Al Udeid air base and the Camp As Sayliyah,” Jim Krane, energy and geopolitics fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute, told me.
  
  Qatar bought itself an insurance policy by allying itself closely to the US and making itself important to American military operations in a strategically crucial area — Al Udeid airbase is home to some 11,000 US troops and is the nerve center of operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. So on top of economic independence, Qatar quickly bought itself a security buffer as well.
  
  As Qatar has risen in stature, it has undertaken a number of initiatives that have been a source of aggravation for its neighbors. It’s poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Al Jazeera, the explosively popular media service that has taken aim at governments throughout the Middle East with harsh coverage.
  
  During the Arab Spring, Qatar diverged from Saudi Arabia and much of the old order it represents. It took a gamble and put its money on the wave of rising grassroots insurgencies against autocracies in the Middle East, whether by sending its tiny air fleet to join NATO operations backing rebels against Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi or by actively supporting the Muslim Brotherhood’s political aspirations in Egypt after the fall of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
  
  “Qatar decided to back the Muslim Brotherhood because it saw the group, and political Islam — perhaps mistakenly — as the way of the future,” Krane explains. “And when your neighbors are all absolute monarchs who use Islam for their own legitimacy, they see the Muslim Brotherhood as a major threat.”
  
  In 2014, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain pulled a much milder version of the move that we’re seeing today, withdrawing their ambassadors from Qatar over its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, among other wrongs. That time, Qatar made some concessions, including curbing some of its ties to the group and cooperating more closely with Gulf states on security, and diplomatic ties were restored.
  
  This time, Saudi and its allies are acting far more aggressively. Saudi has closed its land border with Qatar, through which Qatar imports most of its food; residents of the country are worried about the possibility of long-term shortages. And the list of demands Saudi wants Qatar to submit to in order to end the punishment effectively calls for it to discard everything that makes Qatar independent. Among other things, it calls for the country to nearly sever ties with Iran and Turkey and shut down Al Jazeera completely.
  
  There are also questions about what will happen to Qatar’s recently announced agenda to expand its liquefied natural gas production by 30 percent over the next five to seven years. The countries boycotting Qatar could discourage companies like Exxon Mobil — which has important relationships throughout the region — from investing in Qatar’s expanded liquefaction operations. Without that corporate investment, Qatar would have to spend a great deal more money to pull off its initiative.
  
  The US’s interest is in having this regional dispute sorted out as swiftly and as smoothly as possible. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has called for “a lowering of rhetoric” and hinted that all parties should be willing to compromise in order to find a resolution. President Trump, however, has complicated Tillerson’s pleas for calm by siding openly with Saudi against Qatar, labeling Qatar “a funder of terrorism at a very high level.” That in turn is likely to make Saudi less compromise-friendly.
  
  There’s a lot at stake, as strife in the Gulf creates a vacuum that can empower rival powers. “The more divided and weak these powers in the Gulf are, the less able they are to stamp down on extremist activities, let alone extremist financing,” Allen Fromherz, the director of the Middle East Studies Center at Georgia State University and the author of Qatar: A Modern History, told me. “And the US definitely doesn’t want a scenario where it’s having to concede the status quo to Iran even further, which is where it might end up if the Gulf states don’t find a peaceful solution soon.”

A good summary. Of course if Qatar's strength is lessened, Iran could take more gas from the field. These things (how to share an oilfield) are governed by international treaties based on geology and politics as much as or more than geography. Remember how the Kuwait/Iraq shared oilfield was one of the sparks for the 1990 invasion. (Iraq accused Kuwait of slant-drilling and basically stealing their oil.) If the other GCC countries insist on weakening Qatar it will only be a bonus for the Iranians. Madness all around; and as usual our child-like president is not helping.