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Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, & Bahrain Cut Diplomatic Ties, Shut All Borders With Qatar

Just days after president Trump left the region, a geopolitical earthquake is taking place in the Middle East tonight as the rift between Qatar and other members of the (likely extinct) Gulf Cooperation Council explodes with Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt cutting all diplomatic ties with Qatar accusing it of "speading chaos," by funding terrorism and supporting Iran.

The dispute between Qatar and the Gulf's Arab countries started over a purported hack of Qatar's state-run news agency. It has spiraled since, and appears to be climaxing now... just days after President Trump left the region.

As Al Arabiya reports, Bahrain has announced it is cutting diplomatic ties with Qatar, according to a statement carried on Bahrain News Agency.

The statement on Monday morning said Bahrain decided to sever ties with its neighbor “on the insistence of the State of Qatar to continue destabilizing the security and stability of the Kingdom of Bahrain and to intervene in its affairs”.

The statement also said Qatar’s incitement of the media and supporting of terrorist activities and financing groups linked to Iran were reasons behind the decision.

“(Qatar has) spread chaos in Bahrain in flagrant violation of all agreements and covenants and principles of international law Without regard to values, law or morals or consideration of the principles of good neighborliness or commitment to the constants of Gulf relations and the denial of all previous commitments,” the statement read.

Qatari citizens have 14 days to leave Bahraini territories while Qatari diplomats were given 48 hours to leave the country after being expelled. Meanwhile, Bahrain has also banned all of its citizens from visiting or residing in Qatar after the severance of ties.

Additionally, Bahrain has has closed both air and sea borders with Qatar.

Saudi Arabia then confirmed the same - cutting ties and shutting down all sea, airspace, and land crossings with Qatar as well as dissolving Qatar's role in the Saudi-led coalition fighting against Yemen. Emirates, Etihad, Saudia, Gulf Air, and Egypt Air are no longer allowed to fly to Qatar and Saudi Arabia is providinhg facilities, services to Qatari pilgrims

Egypt then followed, confirming it was cutting diplomatic ties with

Then UAE confirmed it would cut ties, shut down all sky, water, and land crossings, and expel all Qataris within 48 hours.

The Maldives also just cut diplomatic ties with Qatar.

All of this happens within 24 hours of Iran calling out 'The West' for ignoring the real sponsors of terrorism around the world and UK's Labor party leader outright name-shaming Sauid Arabia's funding of terrorism.

Qatari officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As a reminder, documents obtained by Middle East Eye show strategic alliance includes pledge by Ankara to protect Gulf state from external threats...

In December 2015, Turkey announced, to the surprise of many, that it planned to establish a military base in Qatar. Behind the scenes, the agreement was about forming a major strategic alliance.

After a 100-year hiatus, Turkey is militarily back in the Gulf and ramping up its presence overseas. In January, Ankara announced that it would also establish a military base in Somalia.

Specific details about the Qatar agreement, which Turkey described as an alliance in the face of "common enemies", remain scant, but Middle East Eye has acquired copies of the agreements, as well as further details, which include a secret pledge by Ankara to protect Qatar from external threats.

Did Qatar just get scapegoated in the 'war on terror'? One thing seems clear, support for a Syrian gas pipeline will be dwindling and with it the need for a Syrian war.

Notably, this raises further doubts about OPEC's stability. As Bloomberg notes, while Middle East ructions have historically added risk premia to oil prices, discord here could theoretically put downward pressure on prices as OPEC members struggle to maintain unity and compliance on production cuts.

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Saudi Arabia, which has played a greater role than Qatar in spreading the extremist ideology that terrorism feeds upon, is accusing Doha of harboring terrorism: that is the result of double standards we live with, political analysts told RT.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, the UAE, and Yemen have severed diplomatic ties with Qatar while Saudi Arabia and Bahrain also closed their borders with the country. The five Arab nations accuse Doha of supporting terrorism and interfering in the internal affairs of Arab states.

RT asked Middle East analyst, Marwa Osman what is behind these accusations and why are they surfacing now.

“They started surfacing, to begin with, in 2011… But I think people who are harboring terrorism are now accusing other people who are also harboring terrorism of harboring terrorism. That should be a punch line of a very serious joke, but it is not. It is very risky, challenging for the entire region. We started feeling the heat between Qatar and Saudi Arabia three month ago when the affiliates that are being funded by both states started bickering and fighting each other in Syria.

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That was the first mark that started a war of words between them which concluded in what happened today. But they surfaced at the beginning of the so-called Arab uprisings, and Arab Spring in 2011, that had a historical background. It did show that they challenged one another since the 2011 uprisings to take control of the MENA region – who funds which group in which state starting from Tunisia ending up in Syria passing through Libya, obviously.

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But it all started in the 1950’s. The main bickering of Saudi Arabia and Qatar started with the Saudi support for the Muslim Brotherhood and started from the Gulf War being enemies,” she said.

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly been accused of sponsoring terrorism alongside Qatar. WikiLeaks leaked Clinton's 2014 email where she says both Qatar and Saudi Arabia support ISIS.

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RT asked Osman whether this current dispute is a bid to shift the focus to Doha.

“Yes, but to back this with more evidence, you could look at the terrorism report that was banned from being released in the UK just yesterday because it spoke directly against Saudi Arabia and pinpointed Saudi Arabia to be a funding and supporting force for terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere. That is one piece of the evidence. Yes, they are trying to pinpoint Qatar for being the sole terrorist harboring nation in the Middle East, but that is not true,” she said.

Ali Rizk, Middle East affairs expert, described the current dispute as an example of double standards.

“Saudi Arabia, way more than Qatar, has played in propagating and spreading the extremist ideology which terrorism feeds upon,” he told RT. “It’s been documented time and again that it’s Saudi Arabia which is the one behind the Wahhabi ideology.”

He said Qatar is not very supportive of the anti-Iran agenda voiced during the Trump-led Islamic summit in Saudi Arabia as, among other reasons, it doesn’t want a rise of sectarian tensions.

“Qatar wasn’t very enthusiastic for what took place during Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia. We saw Trump going heavily into the Saudi camp, and we saw the unprecedented hostility in language which is used by Saudi King Salman toward Iran,” he told RT.

There are many reasons behind that lack of enthusiasm over that “outright hostile anti-Iran agenda” with “one of them being a natural gas field which is shared by Iran and Qatar.”

Also, “maybe Qatar is more calculated when it comes to regional tensions, it doesn’t want a spike in sectarian tensions.”

“And hence, we have this result which indeed is unprecedented. Not just cutting off diplomatic ties, closing the land and sea border. It is something which we haven’t seen especially when it comes to ties between GCC countries,” Rizk said.

In his opinion, the Trump administration might be “somewhat satisfied with what happened.”

“If you recall Donald Trump placed Hamas within the same framework of terrorist organizations in that speech he made in Riyadh. And Qatar has close ties with Hamas, indeed. The head of the Hamas political bureau, Khaled Mashal resides in Qatar. So, even the Trump administration, I believe, has its own fair share of differences with Qatar,” Rizk said.

Meanwhile, the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged the GCC countries to sort their differences.

"I think what we're witnessing is a growing list of disbelief in the countries for some time, and they've bubbled up to take action in order to have those differences addressed," Tillerson said Monday in Sydney. "We certainly would encourage the parties to sit down together and address these differences."

Washington has strong ties with both Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which hosts a US military base. The Al Udeid Air Base southwest of Doha is home to about 11,000 US military personnel.

According to Dr. Said Sadiq, American University professor, the current situation is “for sure” quite tough for Washington to be in the middle of.

“But at the same, they know that any change in the real policy in Qatar will not affect their military base by any means. This is beyond the current dispute. The American ties to the Gulf States, especially Saudi Arabia, are more important. And Qatar had a function that was serving America, the CIA, the military base. And I don’t think it is going to change with any new leadership in Doha,” he told RT.

Political analyst Maria Sultan suggest that “at this moment what we are looking at is actually the US role in the region and how the regional priorities have been contextualized and re-contextualized on this basis.”

“There is an apprehension within the Islamic world, perhaps. Where one idea is that the new US strategy is based toward implosion which looks at the Shia-Sunni divide within the Islamic world and particularly within the Middle East, where the battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia is polarized to the degree we see at the moment,” she told RT.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
OK SIG since you're to dimwitted to see it, Trump just took sides in a holy war between the Sunni and Shia. Guess what side SIG.

You spent a year suggesting Clinton would start WW111 when Clinton was the candidate who knew how to avoid it. You're such a loser, and once again clueless.

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Nothing to say SIG? Your guy just picked sides in a holy war. That's what happened during his trip to Saudi Arabia and what prompted what's happening in the Middle East now. Trump placed us on the Sunni side of the Sunni Shia war. Your subjective posts in this thread show you have no idea what is going on. All you can do is cut and paste comments that dance around what an asinine move this is.

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A ransom payment of up to $1 billion to Iranian and Al Qaeda-linked forces in Syria may have been the tipping point for Qatari-Gulf Arab relations, Financial Times reported Monday.

Qatar paid out the hefty ransom to secure the release of 26 members of a falconry party, some of whom were members of Qatar's royal family who had been hunting in southern Iraq, "commanders of militant groups and government officials in the region" told Financial Times.

The news of Qatar's ransom comes after Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen, and a powerful military leader in Libya all severed ties with Doha on Monday.

SPA, a Saudi state news agency, said the kingdom cut ties because Qatar "embraces multiple terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at disturbing stability in the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, and Al Qaeda, and promotes the message and schemes of these groups through their media [ al Jazeera?] constantly," according to Reuters.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain represent the most prominent of the Gulf Arab states and premier powers in the Sunni world, which rivals Iran and its Shia influence in the Middle East.

Qatar and the other Gulf Arab states have in the past sparred over Qatar's softer stance on Iran and support for the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational Islamist organization founded in Egypt, but a source told Financial Times that "the ransom payments are the straw that broke the camel's back."

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The Shocking Trigger Behind Today's Gulf Scandal: Qatar Paid Al-Qaeda, Iran $1BN In Hostage Deal

The FT has unveiled what its believes is the key trigger behind the shocking overnight collapse in diplomatic relations between Qatar and its Gulf neighbors. According to the FT, the catalyst that forced the Saudis and their allies to unveil the cut in diplomatic and economic ties, is that Qatar allegedly paid up to $1 billion to Iran and al-Qaeda affiliates "to release members of the Gulf state’s royal family who were kidnapped in Iraq while on a hunting trip, according to people involved in the hostage deal"; the secret deal was allegedly one of the triggers behind Gulf states’ dramatic decision to cut ties with Doha.

The details of the payoff: "around $700m was paid both to Iranian figures and the regional Shia militias they support, according to regional government officials. They added that $200m to $300m went to Islamist groups in Syria, most of that to Tahrir al-Sham, a group with links to al-Qaeda."

A regional Arab official said the total paid to jihadi groups was closer to $300m. “So, if you add that up to the other $700m they paid to Iran and its proxies, that means Qatar actually spent about a billion dollars on this crazy deal,” he said.

* * *

The Iraqi Shia militia commanders in Iraq, all from hardline Iranian-backed groups, said that, to their knowledge, Iran had obtained around $400m after giving them a payment they would not disclose. They agreed to share some details because they were unhappy about their share of the payment.

“They [the Iranians] took the lion’s share,” said a member of one of the Iranian-backed Shia militias in Iraq. “That’s caused some of us to be frustrated, because that was not the deal.”

The "ransom payments are the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said one Gulf observer.

Not to be confused with the Obama administration secretly airlifting crates full of $1.7 billion in cash to Tehran to release five US hostages held by Iran, the FT writes that commanders of militant groups and government officials in the region told the Financial Times that "Doha spent the money in a transaction that secured the release of 26 members of a Qatari hunting party in southern Iraq and about 50 militants captured by jihadis in Syria."

By their telling, Qatar paid off two of the most frequently blacklisted forces of the Middle East in one fell swoop: an al-Qaeda affiliate fighting in Syria and Iranian security officials.

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If nothing else, at least Qatar got a better bang for the physical buck, at $38 million per hostage, compared to the $340 million the Obama administration paid for the five US hostages released by Tehran.

While there is no official evidence, the FT adds that the deal, which was concluded in April, heightened concerns among Qatar’s neighbours about the small gas-rich state’s role in a region plagued by conflict and bitter rivalries, which however is at least somewhat confusing: after all it was well-known since the Podesta emails that even the US state department had confirmed that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar were the two primary funders of the Islamic State and various Jihidaist groups in the region. Recall from our October 2016 post:

In a leaked email sent on August 17, 2014 by Hillary Clinton to her current campaign manager, John Podesta, who back then was counselor to Barack Obama, she admitted that Qatar and Saudi Arabia "are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region."

The email, which was sent just days after the US launched it "temporary" air campaign in Syria, which has now extended over two years, represents an eight-point plan laying out ideas how to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Clinton’s email said that the United States should engage in "military operations against these very irregular but determined forces" by "making proper use of clandestine/special operations resources, in coordination with airpower, and established local allies" such as Kurdish forces.

Having confirmed the role of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Hillary then states that "we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia" and recommends to step up US commitment to the Kurdish Regional Government or KRG. "The Qataris and Saudis will be put in a position of balancing policy between their ongoing competition to dominate the Sunni world and the consequences of serious U.S. pressure. By the same token, the threat of similar, realistic U.S. operations will serve to assist moderate forces in Libya, Lebanon, and even Jordan, where insurgents are increasingly fascinated by the ISIL success in Iraq."

In any case, last year's revalation appears to have been "news" to Saudi Arabia - the other named source of funding to ISIS, and on Monday, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain took the extraordinary step of cutting off diplomatic ties and transport links to Qatar, alleging the country fuels extremism and terrorism.“

The FT further notes that "Doha denies it backs terrorist groups and dismissed the blockade by its neighbours as “founded on allegations that have no basis in fact”. It said it could not immediately respond to a request for comment on the hostage deal. But a person close to the Qatari government acknowledged that “payments” were made. The person was unaware of the amounts or where the money went."

Doha has a history of reaching out to all kinds of controversial groups, from rebels in Sudan’s Darfur region to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hamas in Gaza. Qatar touts itself as a neutral player that can act as an intermediary in regional conflicts. But its critics, notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE, allege it also uses such interventions to play both sides and fund radical Islamist groups, most recently in Libya and Syria. And to Doha’s critics, the hostage deal was further evidence of that role.

In an amusing twist, one FT source - a Syrian opposition figure who has worked with an al-Qaeda mediator on hostage swaps in Syria. - adds that "if you want to know how Qatar funds jihadis, look no further than the hostage deal.... And this isn’t the first — it is one of a series since the beginning of the war."

Those who spoke to the FT said the deal highlighted how Qatar has allegedly used hostage payments to bankroll jihadis in Syria. But to its Gulf neighbours, the biggest issue is likely to be the fact that Doha could have paid off their main regional rival, Iran, which they accuse of fuelling conflicts in the Arab world.

This particular saga began when an Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militia, known as Kata’eb Hizbollah, kidnapped the Qataris in December 2015. Three Iraqi militia leaders say the hostages were held in Iran.

Kata’eb Hizbollah is an Iraqi group but it is seen as having links with Iran’s main regional proxy, Hizbollah, the Lebanese militant group. The latter is helping Iran back Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, in his country’s six-year conflict.

It gets better: the hostage transaction was also linked to a separate agreement, signed in March 2017, to facilitate the evacuation of four mutually besieged towns in Syria — two surrounded by jihadi forces and two besieged by Shia militias — according to the FT's sources: "Syrian rebels and diplomats." One western diplomat said the arrangement provided Qatar the “cover” to finance the hostage deal.

“Iran and Qatar had long been looking for a cover to do this [hostage] deal, and they finally found it,” he said.

According to two opposition figures with close contact with the groups paid, Qatar used the evacuation arrangement to pay $120-$140m to Tahrir al-Sham. Another $80m, they said, went to the Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham. “The Qataris pay anyone and everyone, to what end? They have only brought about our ruin,” said a Syrian rebel commander, who gave details about the payments but asked not to be identified.

* * *

Going back to our analogy of Obama dumping crates of cash - anywhere between $400 million and $1.7 billion - in Iran, it appears this time was not that different:

Another confusing chapter of the deal is that Haidar al-Abadi, Iraqi prime minister, said in April his government had seized hundreds of millions of dollars, which Iraqi officials said arrived on Qatari planes “illegally”. It is not clear if this is money is part of the sums mentioned above, or an additional amount.

The punchline: “The money all came in suitcases, can you imagine this?” said one senior official.

And while Qatar has now been scapegoated for funding Al-Qaeda and ISIS, something most have known for years, a question emerges: does this mean that Saudi Arabia - another chronic supporter of terrorism in the region and around the globe - is now off the hook? That would be problematic in light of Saudi Arabia's own on the record admission that it itself created Daesh, or ISIS, which however it allegedly did only in response to Obama's disastrous policy in the region. From the Financial Times:

After the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to a lightning Isis offensive in 2014, even the late Prince Saud al-Faisal, the respected Saudi foreign minister, remonstrated with John Kerry, US secretary of state, that “Daesh [Isis] is our [Sunni] response to your support for the Da’wa” — the Tehran-aligned Shia Islamist ruling party of Iraq.


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During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017

As some sarcastically pointed out in response to Trump's tweet, "Saudi-led GCC effectively blockaded Qatar and isolated a country hosting US bases, as per the US President?"

Others echoed this sentiment, pointing out that "the President, w/o any diplomatic preparation, just supported a sort of a blockade on a country that hosts 1 of US largest military bases."

Don't get me wrong, Qatar deserves much of this criticism, but the President tweet w/o any coordination w State & DOD is reckless — Nadav Pollak (@NadavPollak) June 6, 2017

....

Trump on Twitter endorsing diplo/econ attack on Qatar. But our biggest mil base in region is in Qatar. Thought this through? — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 6, 2017

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"Forget Terrorism": The Real Reason Behind The Qatar Crisis Is Natural Gas

Jun 6, 2017 7:47 PM

According to the official narrative, the reason for the latest Gulf crisis in which a coalition of Saudi-led states cut off diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar, is because - to everyone's "stunned amazement" - Qatar was funding terrorists, and after Trump's recent visit to Saudi Arabia in which he urged a crackdown on financial support of terrorism, and also following the FT's report that Qatar has directly provided $1 billion in funding to Iran and al-Qaeda spinoffs, Saudi Arabia finally had had enough of its "rogue" neighbor, which in recent years had made ideologically unacceptable overtures toward both Shia Iran and Russia.

However, as often happens, the official narrative is traditionally a convenient smokescreen from the real underlying tensions.

The real reason behind the diplomatic fallout may be far simpler, and once again has to do with a long-running and controversial topic, namely Qatar's regional natural gas dominance.

Recall that many have speculated (with evidence going back as far back as 2012) that one of the reasons for the long-running Syria proxy war was nothing more complex than competing gas pipelines, with Qatar eager to pass its own pipeline, connecting Europe to its vast natural gas deposits, however as that would put Gazprom's monopoly of European LNG supply in jeopardy, Russia had been firmly, and violently, against this strategy from the beginning and explains Putin's firm support of the Assad regime and the Kremlin's desire to prevent the replacement of the Syrian government with a puppet regime.



Note the purple line which traces the proposed Qatar-Turkey natural gas pipeline and note that all of the countries highlighted in red are part of a new coalition hastily put together after Turkey finally (in exchange for NATO’s acquiescence on Erdogan’s politically-motivated war with the PKK) agreed to allow the US to fly combat missions against ISIS targets from Incirlik. Now note which country along the purple line is not highlighted in red. That’s because Bashar al-Assad didn’t support the pipeline and now we’re seeing what happens when you’re a Mid-East strongman and you decide not to support something the US and Saudi Arabia want to get done.

Now, in a separate analysis, Bloomberg also debunks the "official narrative" behind the Gulf crisis and suggests that Saudi Arabia’s isolation of Qatar, "and the dispute’s long past and likely lingering future are best explained by natural gas."

The reasons for nat gas as the source of discord are numerous and start in 1995 "when the tiny desert peninsula was about to make its first shipment of liquid natural gas from the world’s largest reservoir. The offshore North Field, which provides virtually all of Qatar’s gas, is shared with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s hated rival."



The result to Qatar's finances was similar to the windfall that Saudi Arabia reaped from its vast crude oil wealth.

The wealth that followed turned Qatar into not just the world’s richest nation, with an annual per-capita income of $130,000, but also the world’s largest LNG exporter. The focus on gas set it apart from its oil producing neighbors in the Gulf Cooperation Council and allowed it to break from domination by Saudi Arabia, which in Monday’s statement of complaint described Qataris as an “extension of their brethren in the Kingdom” as it cut off diplomatic relations and closed the border.

In short, over the past two decades, Qatar become the single biggest natural gas powerhouse in the region, with only Russia's Gazprom able to challenge Qatar's influence in LNG exports.



To be sure, Qatar has shown a remarkable ability to shift its ideological allegiance, with the FT reporting as recently as 2013, that initially Qatar was a staunch supporter, backer and financier of the Syrian rebels, tasked to topple the Assad regime, a process which could culminate with the creation of the much maligned trans-Syrian pipeline.

The tiny gas-rich state of Qatar has spent as much as $3bn over the past two years supporting the rebellion in Syria, far exceeding any other government, but is now being nudged aside by Saudi Arabia as the prime source of arms to rebels.

The cost of Qatar’s intervention, its latest push to back an Arab revolt, amounts to a fraction of its international investment portfolio. But its financial support for the revolution that has turned into a vicious civil war dramatically overshadows western backing for the opposition.

As the years passed, Qatar grew to comprehend that Russia would not allow its pipeline to traverse Syria, and as a result it strategically pivoted in a pro-Russia direction, and as we showed yesterday, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund agreed last year to invest $2.7 billion in Russia’s state-run Rosneft Oil, even as Qatar is host of the largest US military base in the region, US Central Command. This particular pivot may have also added to fears that Qatar was becoming a far more active supporter of a Russia-Iran-Syria axis in the region, its recent financial and ideological support of Iran notwithstanding.

As a result of the tiny nation's growing financial and political "independence", its neighbors grew increasingly frustrated and concerned: “Qatar used to be a kind of Saudi vassal state, but it used the autonomy that its gas wealth created to carve out an independent role for itself,” said Jim Krane, energy research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, quoted by Bloomberg.

Furthermore, Qatar’s natural gas output has been "free from entanglement" - and political pressure - in the OPEC, the oil cartel that Saudi Arabia dominates.

“The rest of the region has been looking for an opportunity to clip Qatar’s wings.”

And, as Bloomberg adds, "that opportunity came with U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, when he called on “all nations of conscience” to isolate Iran. When Qatar disagreed publicly, in a statement the government later said was a product of hacking, the Saudi-led retribution followed."

To be sure, in a series of tweets, Trump himself doubled down on the "official narraitve", taking credit for Qatar's isolation (perhaps forgetting that a US base is housed in the small nation).

So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017

...extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017

The cynics may be forgiven to assume that if Trump is tweeting that the reason for Qatar's isolation is "to end the horror of terrorism", even as the US just signed a $100+ billion arms deal with the single biggest supporter of terrorism in the world, Saudi Arabia, then indeed the Trump-endorsed "narrative" is to be dismissed outright.

Which again brings us back to nat gas, where Qatar rapidly emerged as the dominant, and lowest cost producer at a time when its neighbors started demanding the commodity on their own, giving the tiny state all the leverage. As Bloomberg adds "demand for natural gas to produce electricity and power industry has been growing in the Gulf states. They’re having to resort to higher-cost LNG imports and exploring difficult domestic gas formations that are expensive to get out of the ground, according to the research. Qatar’s gas has the lowest extraction costs in the world."

Of course, with financial wealth came the need to spread political influence: "

Qatar gas wealth enabled it to develop foreign policies that came to irritate its neighbors. It backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and armed factions opposed by the UAE or Saudi Arabia in Libya and Syria. Gas also paid for a global television network, Al Jazeera, which at various times has embarrassed or angered most Middle Eastern governments. http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-OR38576TTDS201-1A35FOGV
5R86HIK42LB78GPGCD

And, above all, "gas prompted Qatar to promote a regional policy of engagement with Shiite Iran to secure the source of its wealth."

And here the source of tension emerged: because as Steven Wright, Ph.D. Associate Professor at Qatar University told Bloomberg, “you can question why Qatar has been unwilling to supply its neighboring countries, making them gas poor,” said Wright, the academic, speaking by telephone from the Qatari capital Doha. “There probably was an expectation that Qatar would sell gas to them at a discount price.”

It did not, and instead it took a step backward in 2005, when Qatar declared a moratorium on the further development of the North Field that could have provided more gas for local export, adding to the frustrations of its neighbors.

Qatar said it needed to test how the field was responding to its exploitation, denying that it was bending to sensitivities in Iran, which had been much slower to draw gas from its side of the shared field. That two-year moratorium was lifted in April, a decade late, after Iran for the first time caught up with Qatar’s extraction rates.

As Qatar refused to yield, the resentment grew.

“People here are scratching their heads as to exactly what the Saudis expect Qatar to do,” said Gerd Nonneman, professor of international relations and Gulf studies at Georgetown University’s Doha campus. “They seem to want Qatar to cave in completely, but it won’t call the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, because it isn’t. And it isn’t going to excommunicate Iran, because that would jeopardize a relationship that is just too fundamental to Qatar’s economic development.”

* * *

Whether nat gas is the source of the Qatari isolation will depend on the next steps by both Saudi Arabia and Iran. Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates and Egypt - are all highly reliant on Qatari gas via pipeline and LNG.

According to Reuters, traders startled by the development, have begun to plan for all eventualities, especially any upsets to piped gas supplies from Qatar to the UAE. The UAE consumes 1.8 billion cubic feet/day of Qatari gas via the Dolphin pipeline, and has LNG purchase agreements with its neighbor, leaving it doubly exposed to tit-for-tat measures, industry sources and traders said.

So far flows through Dolphin are unaffected but traders say even a partial shutdown would ripple through global gas markets by forcing the UAE to seek replacement LNG supply just as its domestic demand peaks.

With LNG markets in bearish mood and demand weak, the UAE could cope with Qatar suspending its two to three monthly LNG deliveries by calling on international markets, but Dolphin piped flows are too large to fully replace.

"A drop off in Dolphin deliveries would have a huge impact on LNG markets," one trader monitoring developments said.

And since it all boils down to who has the most leverage as this latest regional "balance of power" crisis unfolds, Qatar could simply take the Mutual Assured Destruction route, and halt all pipeline shipments to its neighbors crippling both theirs, and its own, economy in the process, to find just where the point of "max pain" is located.

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Cool Qatar: Riyadh plan backfires after Trump flip-flop & Turkey ruse

Saudi Arabia’s standoff against Qatar was fraught with miscalculations and comically ill-conceived notions from the start. But now the crisis is becoming a threat to Riyadh’s own prominence and security in the Middle East.

“Almost all relationships begin and continue as mutual forms of exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be determined when one or both parties run out of goods.” - English-American writer, W. H. Auden.

This Ramadan will surely be remembered in the Middle East by Saudi Arabia’s inflated idea of a new zealous relationship formed with the US. Following Donald Trump’s ‘Arab Summit’ visit in May, Riyadh is reinvigorated with a new sense of importance and power, and has indulged itself on just how far warm sentiments from the Trump administration can take its new government and its struggle against Iran, an enemy of convenience that gives Saudi Arabia an important role in the region. But who needs the other more? The Saudis or the Americans?

In recent days, Saudi Arabia’s bold plan to isolate tiny Qatar in a bid to get it to agree to Riyadh’s geopolitics appears to be coming off the rails. But worse than merely suffering a modicum of humiliation when Riyadh inevitably climbs down and admits its zany plan didn’t come off, there are signs that the attempt to destabilize Qatar is going to backfire. Indeed, King Salman bin Abdulaziz’s new, inexperienced government has yet to recognize, let alone even understand an important maxim in politics: ‘When in a hole, stop digging’.

Although the cataclysmic errors of going ahead with such ill-conceived plans - like backing extremists groups in Syria - could be blamed on his predecessor, his brother King Abdullah who died in 2015, Salman must accept responsibility for other mistakes, like the beleaguered campaign in Yemen, which shows no signs of ending. And now Qatar.

It’s as though the Saudis are simply incapable both of effective military strategy or any form of sage diplomacy; blinded by delusional ideas of their own capabilities and power, they blunder ahead with scant regard of the consequences, even towards themselves.

“Most worrying is that Saudi Arabia and the UAE may repeat the mistakes that were made when the Saudi leadership decided to launch a war in Yemen,” said Yezid Sayigh, a Beirut-based senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They had no clear political strategy, based their action on false assumptions, have incurred heavy financial costs and a growing human toll, and are probably now worse off in terms of their security,”according to Livemint.com

Indeed, the swift 180-degree turn by Trump, who started off entirely behind the Saudi move but ended on a more cautious note, must have really hit Riyadh hard. After the Pentagon more or less put Trump straight on Qatar and the implications of this tiny country going rogue, the architects of this foolhardy plan were confronted by a stark reality: ‘We’ve gone too far.’

And they really have. In a matter of days, the reality has hit home: not only is Trump and Tillerman now calling for Saudi Arabia to back down on the siege, but it appears that the requisite premise of the entire idea – that the US would militarily defend the Kingdom’s huge borders – is also folly. Suddenly, the veiled threats of Saudi Arabia going further beyond just the blockade look disingenuous when any skirmishes that may result on Saudi’s borders will have to be dealt with by its own army.
Erdogan, the real Sultan of Swing

But it gets worse. If the Saudis massively over-estimated the support their masterplan would muster from the US, they also underestimated that another wild card in the region would swiftly run to the aid of Qatar: Turkey.

I recently argued about the significance of Qatar merely starting a debate about whether Iran is really a threat and how Qatar’s refusal of the Saudis using Iran as a pretext to hang its entire geopolitical strategy on is detrimental to Riyadh. But a ‘third way’ is already happening now and this is entirely the Saudi’s fault.

Previously this alternative strand of joined-up-thinking was contained and confined to only Qatar as the underhand control that Saudi Arabia has on media in the entire region is almost absolute and succeeds in muffling any such debate, according to a recent report by Wikileaks.

But now, with the Saudi move – despite it being planned in advance, right down to the planted op-eds in US newspapers about how Qatar is the problem in the region to countering terrorism – the third way is very much a real, living beast. It is a trilogy of those who consider Saudi Arabia – as opposed to Iran - as the threat, a group made up of Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood itself.

Incredibly, the West - perhaps even Trump himself - has to accept some responsibility for this. Just three days before Trump gave his speech in Riyadh before over 50 heads of state of Muslim countries, where he denounced Iran and Hezbollah, Turkish President Erdogan left Washington DC entirely empty handed. I initially speculated that Trump’s people could not trust Erdogan and I stand by this. But there was more to it than that. Trump’s people could not give what the Turkish President wanted in Syria as it might have upset the Saudis; the best kept secret in the Middle East is that the Saudis intensely dislike Erdogan and were hoping that the attempted coup in July of 2016 would have ousted him. Erdogan flew back to Ankara from Washington empty-handed, realizing that he will never be part of the powerful elite and should look East.

Qatar’s $1bn ransom to jihadists & Iran aided Gulf states’ decision to cut ties – media https://t.co/l8yFa9itTOpic.twitter.com/Dj40OpT1Pj
— RT (@RT_com) June 7, 2017

Few Western commentators in the region understand that Turkey supporting Qatar is payback to Trump and the Saudis, as the real ideology that Erdogan supports (apart from his own Sultan-like autocracy) is the Muslim Brotherhood, which is universally loathed by the Saudis. By giving Qatar the support it needs, Erdogan believes he cashes in big time - as if Qatar gave in to pressure, it would have left Turkey as the only real player who supports the pan-Arab Islamic group. He gets a new role in the Middle East as a dangerous ally of two hated creeds in one blow: the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. Erdogan suddenly becomes more than just a wild card, but a figure to fear more than merely a leader of a rogue state in terms of how the Turkish leader can impact Saudi stability.

Yet even Erdogan will pay a very high price for this cavalier play and not just with the expected withdrawal of Saudi and UAE investment in Turkey. but more how Moscow will now treat him, given that he has proven to Putin that he simply cannot be trusted by defiantly going against the wishes of Russia to stay neutral. “If Erdogan enters the Qatar conflict head on, he will be going against Russia’s legitimately stated position of neutrality,”argued The Duran. “If Erdogan jumps into the Gulf he will at once isolate himself from Wahhabi Saudi, the secular Arab world (which he is already largely hated in), Russia and the United States."

The heart of the beast

But did you ever wonder if you were being told all the story? In the Middle East disputes are never what they seem. There is always a hidden agenda and the Qatar calamity is no exception. We are lead to believe that the heart of the dispute is the funding of terrorist groups. A hilarious notion if we are to examine that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have both funded ISIS and its affiliates, at some stage of the Syrian war.

Arab League nations v Qatar: How it all started https://t.co/2sy1JUbmI8pic.twitter.com/ixWnJTtDsi — RT (@RT_com) June 6, 2017

The greatest fear that the Saudis have is that their omnipotent role as leader of the GCC countries will be undermined by debate, which is sparked by this new trilogy, which will force other countries to look closely at Iran and ask is it really a threat to the region or more of a fake foe being used to keep a house of cards standing – a point I made in my earlier article, which has since been confirmed by a number of respected, leading journalists covering the Middle East.

David Hearst is editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye, who was previously chief foreign leader writer of The Guardian. He also writes that the spat has nothing to do with “funding terrorism or cosying up to Iran. In fact the Emiratis do a roaring trade with Iran, and they are part of the coalition accusing Qatar of siding with Tehran”.

“Their real demands” he continues, “which were conveyed to the Emir of Kuwait - who is acting as an intermediary - are the closure of Al Jazeera, de-funding of Al Arabi al Jadid, Al Quds al Arabi, and the Arabic edition of Huffington Post."

So, it may well be that the trilogy of Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood has actually been created by Saudi Arabia’s blundering- which just adds to the gargantuan failure of the plot. But what is really at the core of the Saudi plan is to silence all debate which questions the Saudis. It’s really that simple. If you can’t buy media, then simply threaten the state which owns it to have it shut down.

In reality though, they are doing the opposite and actually making Qatar cool and creating more debate than ever.

Inevitably, the coming days might see the UAE cutting off its gas pipeline from Qatar but in the weeks to come keep an eye open for a curiously high number of Opeds about Qatar’s human rights record and how this should prevent it from hosting the world cup in 2022.

Although Trump faked out his Saudi hosts over taking a bold stand against Qatar, there is still some time before either Riyadh or Washington “run out of goods”.

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Curb diplomatic ties with Iran and close its diplomatic missions there. Expel members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and cut off any joint military cooperation with Iran. Only trade and commerce with Iran that complies with US and international sanctions will be permitted. = No talking to Shia Muslims

Sever all ties to “terrorist organisations”, specifically the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, al-Qaida and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Formally declare those entities as terrorist groups. = Only Saudi-approved terrorists are allowed

Shut down al-Jazeera and its affiliate stations. = We don’t allow press freedom you can’t have it either. Especially one that criticises us. Shut down what is, for all its significant faults, one of the best media outlets in the world.

Shut down news outlets that Qatar funds, directly and indirectly, including Arabi21, Rassd, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed and Middle East Eye. = Only Saudi propaganda allowed. al-Jazeera was far too willing to report government repression during the Arab Spring. So close down all non Saudi controlled media.

Immediately terminate the Turkish military presence in Qatar and end any joint military cooperation with Turkey inside Qatar. = Qatar isn’t allowed its own diplomatic sovereignty.

Stop all means of funding for individuals, groups or organisations that have been designated as terrorists by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, the US and other countries.= Stop funding anyone who opposes Saudi or other undemocratic regimes in the ME. No democratic dissent allowed.

Hand over “terrorist figures” and wanted individuals from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain to their countries of origin. Freeze their assets, and provide any desired information about their residency, movements and finances. = Hand over to us all dissidents we want to imprison or behead.

End interference in sovereign countries’ internal affairs. Stop granting citizenship to wanted nationals from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain. Revoke Qatari citizenship for existing nationals where such citizenship violates those countries’ laws. = Hand over people we don’t like that have taken refuge in Qatar. We do the interfering (see this list of demands) not you.

Stop all contacts with the political opposition in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain. Hand over all files detailing Qatar’s prior contacts with and support for those opposition groups. = Help us oppress dissidents

Pay reparations and compensation for loss of life and other, financial losses caused by Qatar’s policies in recent years. The sum will be determined in coordination with Qatar; consent to monthly audits for the first year after agreeing to the demands, then once per quarter during the second year. For the following 10 years, Qatar would be monitored annually for compliance; Align itself with the other Gulf and Arab countries militarily, politically, socially and economically, as well as on economic matters, in line with an agreement reached with Saudi Arabia in 2014; Agree to all the demands within 10 days of it being submitted to Qatar, or the list becomes invalid.= Make yourself a vassal state of Saudi, pay us money, let us control your treasury and foreign policy and agree to all this NOW. Or else, Saudi, its minions, the US and Israel will try to paint you as part of a new axis of evil.

Oh and by the way oil rules! Not the gas you and Iran want to sell!

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Furious Qatar Balks At Saudi Ultimatum As UAE Warns Of "Parting Of Ways"

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Was Saturday a "Red Wedding" moment for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? As the plot thickens in Riyadh, here's a roundup of the chatter on the streets...

It started off with the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a clearly orchestrated move produced and executed by his paymasters in Riyadh.

Hariri announced on a Saudi-owned channel from the Saudi capital that he was resigning his post in protest at [Iranian] foreign intervention in Lebanon's domestic affairs. The irony was lost on him.

The ostensible reason he gave, as he invoked his late father's name, was that he too is threatened with assassination.

As the day turned into evening, there were reports of explosions being heard close to the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. It transpired that Houthi rebels (linked to Iran and allied with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is partially linked to the United Arab Emirates) had fired at least one ballistic missile from Yemen towards Riyadh. It put an exclamation point on the fact that the war in Yemen is far from over - more than two years since Saudi Arabia launched operation "Decisive Storm".

As the clock inched to midnight another bombshell was dropped, this time by the Saudis: A royal decree ordering the arrest of several princes, billionaires, and notable figures, as well as the sacking of senior government officials. Some were the sons of the late King Abdullah. One was the head of the Saudi National Guard.

All three of these developments will have seismic implications, not just in Saudi Arabia, but in the region and beyond.

The resignation of Hariri, or sacking by his Saudi sponsors, should sound the alarm bells for any government that doesn't want to see another war erupt in the region.

A lot of chatter involved Israel.

It's no secret that Israel has been conducting military exercises on its northern front for several months now. While Hezbollah has been busy helping prop up the Assad regime in Damascus, Tel Aviv has been developing its missile defence systems. Sooner or later, it will want to test those in real-life scenarios, as the logic would have it.

Forcing Hariri to quit the government would help Israel frame any aggression against Lebanon as an attack on Iranian proxies.

With Gaza politically neutralised for now, following Hamas' handover of power to the Palestinian Authority, Israel could very well see this as an optimal time to attack. Such an attack would also provide a perfect opportunity for the West to test the new Saudi leadership's "moderate" credentials: Would it cheer Israel on?

In Yemen, the war has cost the Saudi economy hundreds of millions of dollars. This war, launched by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman to restore Sanaa's legitimate government and put Iran in check, has failed to do either. But it has succeeded in killing thousands of innocent people, displacing millions, and helping Tehran position itself as the defender of the oppressed in the Middle East.

The targeting of Riyadh could push the young prince to be even more reckless and destructive in his ongoing expedition in Yemen.

What's not so clear is the motive behind the mass arrests and sackings that took place in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

Removing the head of the National Guard and a one-time contender to the throne is an obvious play to consolidate power by Bin Salman.

However, what's more puzzling is the detention of billionaire prince Alwaleed Bin Talal. On paper, Bin Talal and Bin Salman are a match made in heaven: Both want to transform Saudi Arabia into a "secular" society, both detest the idea of democracy and liberalism, and both are equally willing to hand over the Kingdom's wealth and sovereignty to the United States.

Earlier I spoke to a contact who used to work for the billionaire prince. He told me that a possible reason for his detention was Alwaleed's refusal to put up money to help prop up Saudi's staggering economy. The message from Bin Salman to the country's wealthy elite is: Pay up or get locked up.

In the Saudi version of Game of Thobes, the 32-year-old Bin Salman shows that he is willing to throw the entire region into jeopardy to wear the royal gown. His actions have already all but destroyed the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC); Yemen can no longer be referred to as a functioning state; Egypt is a ticking time bomb; and now Lebanon may erupt. There's a lot to worry about.

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“Explosive” Leaked Secret Israeli Cable Confirms Israeli-Saudi Coordination To Provoke War


Early this morning, Israeli Channel 10 news published a leaked diplomatic cable which had been sent to all Israeli ambassadors throughout the world concerning the chaotic events that unfolded over the weekend in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, which began with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s unexpected resignation after he was summoned to Riyadh by his Saudi-backers, and led to the Saudis announcing that Lebanon had “declared war” against the kingdom.

The classified embassy cable, written in Hebrew, constitutes the first formal evidence proving that the Saudis and Israelis are deliberately coordinating to escalate the situation in the Middle East.

The explosive classified Israeli cable reveals the following:

On Sunday, just after Lebanese PM Hariri’s shocking resignation, Israel sent a cable to all of its embassies with the request that its diplomats do everything possible to ramp up diplomatic pressure against Hezbollah and Iran.

The cable urged support for Saudi Arabia’s war against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.
The cable stressed that Iran was engaged in “regional subversion”.
Israeli diplomats were urged to appeal to the “highest officials” within their host countries to attempt to expel Hezbollah from Lebanese government and politics.

As is already well-known, the Saudi and Israeli common cause ...

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... against perceived Iranian influence and expansion in places like Syria, Lebanon and Iraq of late has led the historic bitter enemies ...

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... down a pragmatic path of unspoken cooperation as both seem to have placed the break up of the so-called “Shia crescent” as their primary policy goal in the region. For Israel, Hezbollah has long been its greatest foe..

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which Israeli leaders see as an extension of Iran’s territorial presence right up against the Jewish state’s northern border.

This is a EXPLOSIVE thread that proves how Saudi and Israel are deliberately coordinating to escalate the situation in the MidEast. https://t.co/dMe4PnkwTf — Trita Parsi (@tparsi) 6 November 2017]

The Israeli reporter who obtained the document is Barak Ravid, senior diplomatic correspondent for Channel 10 News. Ravid announced the following through Twitter yesterday:

I published on channel 10 a cable sent to Israeli diplomats asking to lobby for Saudis/Harir and against Hezbollah. The cable sent from the MFA in Jerusalem [Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs] to all Israeli embassies toes the Saudi line regarding the Hariri resignation.

The Israeli diplomats were instructed to demarch their host governments over the domestic political situation in Lebanon – a very rare move.

The cable said: “You need to stress that the Hariri resignation shows how dangerous Iran and Hezbollah are for Lebanon’s security.”

“Hariri’s resignation proves wrong the argument that Hezbollah participation in the government stabilizes Lebanon,” the cable added.

The cable instructed Israeli diplomats to support Saudi Arabia over its war with the Houthis in Yemen. The cable also stressed: “The missile launch by the Houthis towards Riyadh calls for applying more pressure on Iran & Hezbollah.”

1 \ I published on channel 10 a cable sent to Israeli diplomats asking to lobby for Saudis\Hariri &against Hezbollah https://t.co/AbeLPC35GP — Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) 6 November 2017

Watch today’s Hebrew broadcast Channel 10 News report which features the Israeli diplomatic cable – the text of which is featured in Channel 10’s screenshot (below) – here. http://news.nana10.co.il/Article/?ArticleID=1272790&sid=126

Below is a rough translation of the classified Israeli embassy cable using Google Translate as released by Israel’s Channel 10 News:

“To the Director-General: you are requested to urgently contact the Foreign Ministry and other relevant government officials [of your host country] and emphasize that the resignation of Al-Hariri and his comments on the reasons that led him to resign illustrate once again the destructive nature of Iran and Hezbollah and their danger to the stability of Lebanon and the countries of the region.

Al-Hariri’s resignation proves that the international argument that Hezbollah’s inclusion in the government is a recipe for stability is basically wrong. This artificial unity creates paralysis and the inability of local sovereign powers to make decisions that serve their national interest. It effectively turns them into hostages under physical threat and are forced to promote the interests of a foreign power – Iran – even if this may endanger the security of their country.

The events in Lebanon and the launching of a ballistic missile

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by the signatories to the Riyadh agreement require increased pressure on Iran and Hezbollah on a range of issues from the production of ballistic missiles to regional subversion.”

Thus, as things increasingly heat up in the Middle East, it appears the anti-Iran and anti-Shia alliance of convenience between the Saudis and Israelis appears to have placed Lebanon in the cross hairs of yet another looming Israeli-Hezbollah war. And the war in Yemen will also continue to escalate – perhaps now with increasingly overt Israeli political support. According to Channel 10’s commentary (translation), “In the cable, Israeli ambassadors were also asked to convey an unusual message of support for Saudi Arabia in light of the war in which it is involved in Yemen against the Iranian-backed rebels.”

All of this this comes, perhaps not coincidentally, at the very moment ISIS is on the verge of complete annihilation (partly at the hands of Hezbollah), and as both Israel and Saudi Arabia have of late increasingly declared “red lines” concerning perceived Iranian influence across the region as well as broad Hezbollah acceptance and popularity within Lebanon.

What has both Israel and the Saudis worried is the fact that the Syrian war has strengthened Hezbollah, not weakened it. And now we have smoking gun internal evidence that Israel is quietly formalizing its unusual alliance with Saudi Arabia and its power-hungry and hawkish crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

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Saudi Arabia Orders Its Citizens To Leave Lebanon Immediately

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If I told you that Democratic Party lobbyist Tony Podesta, whose brother John Podesta chairs Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, is a registered foreign agent on the Saudi government’s payroll, you’d probably think I was a Trump-thumping, conspiratorial nutcase. But it’s true.

The lobby firm created by both Tony and John Podesta in 1988 receives $140,000 a month from the Saudi government, a government that beheads nonviolent dissidents, uses torture to extract forced confessions, doesn’t allow women to drive, and bombs schools, hospitals and residential neighborhoods in neighboring Yemen.

The Podesta Group’s March 2016 filing, required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, shows that Tony Podesta himself oversees the Saudi account. At the same time, Tony Podesta is also a top campaign contributor and bundler for Hillary Clinton. So while one brother runs the campaign, the other brother funds it with earnings that come, in part, from the Saudis.

Those familiar with the Citibank cabal that assigned Obama’s cabinet prior to his election would also recognize bin Talal’s name, for his and Citibank’s instrumental role the Obama administration’s decimation of the middle class.

Pam Martens warned us back in 2012, additional emphasis added:

Citigroup was showing serious strains in 2007 but the meltdown came the week of November 17, 2008. On Monday, the firm called a Town Hall meeting with employees and announced the sacking of 52,000 workers. On Tuesday, November 18, Citigroup announced it had lost 53 per cent of an internal hedge fund’s money in a month’s time and that it was bringing $17 billion of off-balance sheet assets back onto its balance sheet. The next day brought the unwelcome tidings that a law firm was alleging that Citigroup peddled the MAT Five Fund as “safe” and “secure” then watched it lose 80 per cent of its value. On Thursday, Saudi Prince Walid bin Talal, a major shareholder, stepped forward to reassure the public that Citigroup was “undervalued” and he was buying more shares. The next day the stock dropped another 20 percent to close at $3.77. All told, Citigroup lost 60 per cent of its market value that week and 87 percent for the year to date.

Now here is where you need to pay close attention. Just one month prior to the stock meltdown, the U.S. government through its Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) had injected $25 billion into Citigroup on October 28, 2008. With a market cap of $20.5 billion on Friday, November 21, 2008, the U.S. taxpayer effectively owned this company lock, stock and barrel.

The Treasury and the Fed knew exactly whose interests they were protecting. Just 11 months earlier, Citigroup had publicized a capital raising of $12.5 billion in convertible preferred stock in a private placement?—?meaning the full details were not released to the public. The press release said the investors included Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Sandy Weill and the Weill Family Foundation.

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