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News ID: 44170
Publish Date : 15 September 2017 - 21:59
Reports:

Saudi Arabia Came Close to Conquering Qatar in 2015





DOHA (Dispatches) – Leaked communications involving the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the U.S. reportedly reveals Saudi Arabia came close to "conquering” Qatar in 2015, and that the Emirates favored the overall notion.
"An unknown party” leaked the emails, the Middle East Eye news portal reported.
In a May 2017 email thread with former Elliot Abrams, a deputy assistant to former U.S. President George W. Bush, the Emirati envoy Yousef Otaiba reportedly wrote that Saudi Arabia’s Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud "came pretty close” to "conquering” Qatar "a few months before he passed” in January 2015.
"Conquering Qatar” would "solve everyone’s problems. Literally,” he added.
On June 5, Saudi Arabia, along with three other Arab states, including the UAE, severed ties with Doha and laid a partial siege on Qatar over what they call its "support for terrorism.” Doha rejects the claim.
The quartet has also provided Qatar with a 13-point list of excessive demands to meet before they could restore the ties. Qatar has said it would not submit to coercion.
Abrams responded to Otaiba’s suggestion in the communication by saying, "How hard could it be?” suggesting that the emirate’s small size and population would make it an easy target. "Foreigners won’t interfere. Promise the Indians a raise, promise the police a raise and who is going to fight to the death?” he wrote, referring to Qatar-based foreign workers.
Otaiba replied, "That was the conclusion. It would be an easy lift.”
"[Former U.S. President Barack] Obama would have hated it,” Abrams replied, "but the new guy…” he added, apparently suggesting that his successor Donald Trump would approve of the takeover.
"Exactly,” Otaiba replied.
A furious war of words erupts between diplomats from Qatar and the Saudi-led quartet of its boycotters at an Arab League meeting, months into the worst diplomatic crisis to hit the Persian Gulf region in decades.
Qatar’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Soltan bin Saad al-Muraikhi took the podium at the event in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, to denounce what he called a "vicious media campaign” against his country "waged by rabid dogs backed by some regimes.”
"Even the animals were not spared [from the blockade], you sent them out savagely,” he said, referring to the camels stranded on the Qatar-Saudi border after the imposition of the siege.
Muraikhi also hailed Iran as an "honorable country,” adding that the Tehran-Doha relations had warmed since the blockade.
The Riyadh regime, he said, was looking to depose Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.