Bahrain Mirror: If Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman can rush into a hopeless war with the Houthis of Yemen, why shouldn't he threaten the body politic of Qatar, wondered Robert Fisk, stressing that the Saudi-Qatar crisis has become so serious now.

In an article published on the Independent website, Fisk said that the Qataris know very well that if Qatar submits to the 13 unprecedented - some might say outrageous - demands that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have made, it will cease to exist as a nation state.

He further highlighted that Al Jazeera television editors, supported by a phalanx of human rights and press freedom groups, have denounced the 10-day warning that the Qatar satellite chain must close - along with Middle East Eye and other affiliates - as a monstrous intrusion into freedom of speech. One television executive compared it to a German demand that Britain closes the BBC. Not so. It is much more like an EU demand that Theresa May close the BBC. And we know what she would say to that.

The Middle East expert further noted that neither the British Prime Minister and her Foreign Secretary, while obviously anxious to distance themselves from this very dangerous - and highly expensive - Arab dispute,  nor the Americans, when their crackpot President decided that Qatar was a funder of "terrorism" a few days after agreeing a $350bn arms deal with Saudi Arabia, are going to draw the sword for Qatar.

"It's hard to see how the Qataris can respond. If they really did close their worldwide television network and other media groups, break off relations with the Muslim Brotherhood - al-Sisi's target, although his real enemy is Isis - and the Taliban and Hezbollah, downgrade their relations with Iran, close Turkey's military base and expose their account books for international Arab scrutiny for the next 12 years, then Qatar becomes a vassal state," he added.

To Qatar's friends, this seems bizarre, fantastical, almost beyond reality, says Fisk, "but who can plumb the brain of the new and highly impulsive 31-year-old Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia?," he asks. "If he can rush into a hopeless war with the Houthis of Yemen, why shouldn't he threaten the body politic of Qatar? The Saudi royal family have several times tried to humiliate their disobedient neighbour; by isolating this little pearl of wealth with its meddlesome television station."

Concluding his article, Robert Fisk said that in its earlier days, he asked one of Al Jazeera's senior staffers if the channel was merely a propaganda plaything of the Qatari royal family. "No, I was told firmly. It was a ‘foreign policy project'. And so it clearly is." He pointed out that tiny Qatar thought it had become an imperial power upon whose satellite channel the sun would never set, but if it one day acquired the power of land - by rebuilding Syria, for example - this might add territory to oil and liquid gas and Al Jazeera; something which the Saudis would never accept. Robert Fisk then asks ‘is this why Qatar's nationhood is now being threatened?'

Arabic Version