X post from aad:
At a guess, I assume this is how things went down:
1) trump's team both are stereotypically as anti Iranian as one would expect, but also contain more scepticism to the Gulf and its foreign influence than was previously expected from the GOP. This is a shift not limited to trump, with anti-Saudi, Emirati and Qatari narratives becoming fairly popular in even 'mainstream' 'establishment' circles.
2) Saudi does not want to lose its cover from the west, so when trump visited it basically blamed everything on Qatar. I.e. "oh we agree with your concerns on terrorism and we are dealing with it, but you know who isn't dealing with it? Qatar". This is not a completely unfair assessment - Qatari ideological influence on the islamic world is a lot more quasi-populist, revolutionary theology than Saudi promoted salafism which theologically is more rooted in ultra-conservatism" Trump would have been happy to hear this, especially as it neatly links in with his handlers' main concern of isolating Iran.
the global western establishment will be in two minds. One the one hand, they view Qatar as a pretty malignant influence, with a lot of delusions about its own significance and far more likely to disrupt 'useful' dictators and more open about funding jihadi proxies than Saudis are. On the other, this is a very risky move, which could cause the ultimate fear - a war between Iran and KSA, which at worst could cascade and bring in the entire Muslim world or even further, draw in Russia and USA to save their respective charges. (trumps relative detente with Russia would not last IMO)
I'm fairly interested on where Erdogan and Barzani will fall in such an escalation.
Within the Greater Middle East - not Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Central Asia, Black Muslim Africa etc. Maybe Pakistan, but even that is doubtful.
