'Lovely doing war business with you, your supreme headchoppyness'
The 'coincidences' and connections have been coming thick and fast over the past few days. Blink and you'll miss them, so I recommend keeping an eye on Sott.net's daily analysis.
First we had the London bridge terror attack, just two weeks after the Manchester bombing and just a week before what are perhaps the most crucial UK general elections in a generation.
In the last few days we were treated to the farcical spectacle of Qatar being 'outed' as a jihadi terrorism sponsor by arch jihadi terror sponsor, Saudi Arabia. That's pretty much the same as McDonalds accusing Burger King of selling junk food, so there's obviously more to this 'spat' than meets the eye (or the mainstream media are reporting).
Coming just a couple of days after the jihadi terror attack on London Bridge, the timing of the Saudi accusation was apparently meant to convey the message, 'blame Qatar, not us!'
Also relevant to the jihadi-terror lovers' tiff is the
long-delayed "sensitive" UK government report into Saudi funding of terrorism in the UK. This report is, of course, even more "sensitive" given the upcoming UK elections where the Conservative [establishment] government, (which is extremely close to the Saudi head-choppers and very much enjoys selling them large quantities of weapons) is seeking a 'mandate' from the British people to provide 5 more years of Saudi-funded terrorism on British soil, not to mention Syria, Libya, Iran and anywhere else where the mass murder of civilians can be put to good geopolitical use.
Another likely motivation for the Saudi smack-down on Qatar is the fact that
the Qataris (the world's largest Liquified Natural Gas exporter) have been engaging in far too much realpolitik as regards Iran and Russia.
Both Iran and Qatar share ownership of the massive Pars/North Dome gas and oil field in the Persian gulf (by far the largest in the world). Vast quantities of oil and gas still lie untapped beneath the gulf floor. While the Qataris have been exporting since the mid-90s, it was only last year that the Iranians secured a deal with France's Total energy company (along with China's CNPC and Iran's Petropars) to expand extraction in their section of the field.
Interestingly, Total (along with several other Western energy corps) are also involved in the Qatar gas business. The problem, however, is the shared nature of that field. While both countries have maritime borders defining what they 'own', the gas field does not recognize those boundaries and the amount of gas recoverable by either country depends on how much each can extract (gas tends to flow into emptied spaces).
Since sanctions against Iran were lifted in 2015, the Iranians have been steadily catching up with the Qataris in gas production. It makes economic and logistical sense therefore for the Qataris to strike a deal with the Iranians on exploiting their communal field, and that seems to be what they have quietly been doing in recent months. To make matters worse,
last year Qatar bought a 19.5% stake in Russian energy giant Rosneft for €10.2 billion, only the second foreign interest ever permitted to do so.
All of this raises the specter of the possible resurrection of some version of the Qatar-Turkey pipeline that was intended to send Qatari gas through Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria to Turkey, and on to Europe. When the original pipeline plan was nixed by Assad in order to "
protect the interests of their Russian ally" (Russia dominates the EU gas market),
Syria was embroiled in a 'civil war' (that had long been planned) fueled by Qatari and Saudi-backed jihadi mercenaries with the direct help of Western governments.
In the last year, however, the chimerical Qatari royals appear to have finally accepted that Assad isn't going anywhere and Russia is in the Middle East to stay. So
what may really be spooking the Saudis and their Western allies of late is not just the prospect of an Iran/Syria/Russia alliance in the Middle East, but one that includes the Qataris and their massive gas reserves.
So you can start to see why during his Saudi trip Trump called on "
all nations of conscience to isolate Iran" and why the Saudis recently took a step in that direction by threatening the Qataris. You can also understand why today jihadis (no doubt funded by the Saudis) killed 12 people in an attack in Tehran, and why
the Iranians immediately blamed the Saudis. And, to round out the farce, when the Qataris responded to Saudi accusations of 'funding terrorism' by stating that a Qatari news channel had been hacked and a fake story planted linking the Qatari royals to Iran, the temptation was too much for the US 'deep state' to bear, and via their official propaganda channel - CNN -
they permitted 'unnamed sources' to reveal that the Russians were behind the Qatari 'hack'.
As I've written about
on several occasions, terrorism is being used as a foil for the war over who will control Middle Eastern natural resources and therefore, who will 'control the world'. The anglo-American establishment has long since thrown its lot in with the Saudi headchoppers who sit on the largest oil reserves and production facilities in the world.
American firepower and Saudi oil has made it possible for the West to reign supreme for many decades. But that era appears to be rapidly coming to a close.
Sadly, there is little hope that the 'exceptional' anglo-American establishment and their head-chopping ideological brothers will bow out gracefully. No indeed, their approach seems to be similar to the one portrayed by the quintessential power-mad tyrant as represented in literature throughout the ages - you know, the guy who, when faced with his inevitable fall from power and grace, decides something along the lines of '
if I can't have it, no one can!' How very cliché of them.
As an essayist and print author, Joe has been writing incisive editorials for
Sott.net for over 10 years. His articles have appeared on many news sites and he has been interviewed numerous times by
Sputnik News and Press TV. His articles can also be found on his personal blog
JoeQuinn.net.
Reader Comments
The little Prince seems to be permanently embedded.
[Link]
Kent
There is some old history and some further back stories that can be sifted and filtered through from World Oil here [Link] and here [Link]
Btw, how you described the rift between Qatar and Saudi Arabia re jihadi terror sponsoring with "That's pretty much the same as McDonalds accusing Burger King of selling junk food," was a pretty accurate assessment.
the first time in Qatar I didn't know what was happening in Qatar at the time. Besides I was on my way for some relaxation , my mind wasn't in the Qatari desert. After a week of fun and on my way back, from Doha airport again, I noticed
for the first time that the specific airport had a dual role , it was both civilian and military. Usually civilian airports don't have a military role, but sometimes they do,
especially if there's not much space available. As I was waiting for my flight's departure I heard that unbelievable loud noise I had heard only a couple of times since then in my life and immediately I lifted my head towards the sky (I was busy talking to a friend on my cell phone till that moment). What I saw was a Russian made military jet painted in desert (white/brown) camouflage colors , unmarked, flying in full after-burner speed over the Doha airport. I said to myself, what the hell, who gives them permission to fly over a civilian airport ? And then I noticed , they weren't more than three and small at the time, parked
military aircraft not very far away from where I was standing. And only then I understood the dual role of the specific airport. And then a pair of Qatari Royals,
right in front of me, brought in wheel chairs in order not to walk , rolled there by their servants, dressed from top to bottom, in order not to be seen, the man in white , the woman in black with
blind sides (unbelievable I know, for our western habits, customs and mentality).
I visited the Maldives for a second time that same year, had a great time for a second time, took a picture of Saudi Arabia from the Qatar airways airplane (a brown desert, nothing more) and caught up with my flight as they were boarding.
I think what happened to the Qataris over the years and there's no rolling back from that game now is what happens to anyone who gets a lot of money suddenly and not deserving it. They got drunk in their own money and apparently there's no stopping now. Money is just another drug. If you get ADDICTED to it, there's no getting off of it without withdrawal symptoms, so unavoidably you roll back. More and more and more...till eventually you burst like all addicts. Well, that remains to be seen...Joe keep us posted, ok ? Good article.