In recent weeks, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has presided over a massive shift in Saudi foreign policy. A decade after Saudi Arabia requested the United Arab Emirates’ help in Yemen, bin Salman bombed Emirati-trained forces and then demanded both those Southern Forces and their Emirati advisors leave. While the Saudi-Emirati rivalry is nothing new, someone in Riyadh flipped a switch and Saudi pundits and trolls turned on their former allies.
The same held true on Israel. The antisemitic invective from Saudi officials and the online pundits who suck from their teats shocked diplomats, U.S. congressmen, and Jewish community leaders. While Saudi defense minister Khalid bin Salman, the crown prince’s brother, rushed to Washington to calm concerns, his sincerity is unclear. After all, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan once treated Jewish leaders as useful idiots as he doubled down on Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Recent Saudi rhetoric suggests Riyadh prefers partnership with Hamas over Israel.
While Saudi Arabia outlaws the Muslim Brotherhood at home, Mohammed bin Salman empowers it abroad. He utilizes the Muslim Brotherhood as his chief proxy in Yemen, despite its ties to both the Houthis and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Recent Saudi rhetoric suggests Riyadh prefers partnership with Hamas over Israel. Geopolitically,
Mohammed bin Salman now promotes ties to Turkey and Qatar as his rift with the United Arab Emirates deepens.
If the 2017 Arab Quartet and boycott sought to punish Qatar’s destabilizing tolerance for the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia’s defection creates a new “Axis of Ikhwan” that seeks to contain, if not roll back, the Abraham Accords and isolate the United Arab Emirates and its vision of a new Middle East. By flipping Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey can isolate United Arab Emirates. There will be few tears in Doha as, from Qatar’s perspective, Abu Dhabi gets a small taste of what it delivered to Qatar just under a decade ago. Washington, for its part, now learns the downside of anchoring its regional strategy to a single man rather than a system.
Qatar should be wary, however, for it, too, will lose from Saudi Arabia pivot, even if Riyadh’s turn toward the Ikhwan would seemingly be to Doha’s geopolitical benefit.
Here, the problem is not Qatar, but rather, Saudi Arabia’s collective ego. Even Qatar’s critics acknowledge how it has punched above its weight geopolitically under Tamim bin Hamad al Thani’s rule.
While Qatar can and should feel itself on par with Saudi Arabia, all Saudi leaders look at themselves as first among equals. It traditionally looks down at all its Gulf neighbors, be it the United Arab Emirates or Qatar.
Saudi Arabia’s pivot to the Muslim Brotherhood might please Qatar and offend the United Arab Emirates, but Qatar will not reap its rewards. In many ways, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is analogous to that between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for his effort to reconcile with Eritrea. That peace never fully took hold, though, because Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki refused to accept Abiy as an equal; instead, Isaias saw his neighbor as, at best, a little brother and, at worst, an upstart.
Compounding the Saudi attitude is its leaders’ and general population’s belief that its role as the guardian of the two holy mosques and as the birthplace of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi doctrine to which both Saudi and Qatari adhere, in Najd, in what is now the Saudi heartland.
The Saudi crown prince can be petulant and will nurse grievances against his smaller neighbor.
Saudi and Qatar’s competition may manifest itself first in a battle for prestige: Who can host what sporting or international events? Under normal circumstances, such competition might be positive, but the Saudi crown prince can be petulant and will nurse grievances against his smaller neighbor. In 1992, Saudi and Qatari forces clashed at Qatar’s al-Khofous Border Crossing, leaving three dead. Qatar stood down to de-escalate, but then Saudi Arabia attacked again.
Skirmishes flared again in 1994. Only with Egyptian mediation did the two countries agree on their border and, ultimately, in 2001 restore relations. Bin Salman’s volatility is such that, if he feels Tamim is upstaging him, then Saudi Arabia will precipitate another crisis.
Among absolute monarchies, personality is policy. Ego matters. Certainly, ideology plays a role in the current Saudi-Emirati dispute, but it is not the major factor. The problem is Mohammed bin Salman’s ego and immaturity. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates may never be on the same page ideologically, but it is only a matter of time until they discover an unstable personality in Riyadh poses a common threat to them both.
