Qatar crisis, possible outcomes discussed at Hudson Institute

WASHINGTON: Qatar cannot continue to have a US base and host the 2022 football World Cup, while allowing financiers of terrorist groups to roam freely on its territory, US military veteran Mike Pregent said at a panel organized by the Hudson Institute on Tuesday.

The panel was titled “Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Trump Administration: Stability or Upheaval?” It included wellknown American and Saudi scholars and analysts.

Pregent, who is also the Hudson Institute’s adjunct fellow, commended efforts by the Anti-Terror Quartet (ATQ) — comprising Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt — to hold Qatar accountable for its contradictory and destabilizing policies.

The four allies broke diplomatic relations with Qatar in early June, largely over their allegations that it supports terrorist and extremist groups, a charge Doha rejects.

Mohammad K. Al-Yahya, a Saudi analyst and non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the roots of the crisis can be traced back to the 1995 bloodless coup in Qatar.

Ever since, Al-Yahya argued, Doha has been trying to exert its influence via economic investments in the West, providing basing rights to the US and supporting a wide array of militant groups across the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Pregent raised the issue of terrorism in the region and the destabilizing activities of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

But he took solace in the fact that the US continues to have reliable allies such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Jordan. “We can’t defeat” Daesh without Saudi Arabia, he said.

The experts also discussed ongoing socioeconomic reforms in the Kingdom, particularly Vision 2030.

Fatimah Baeshen, a Saudi analyst and director of the Washington-based Arabia Foundation, said women have made real progress in recent years by virtue of their increased access to the political decisionmaking process and the expanding opportunities now available to them in the work force.