UAE said to be holding up Gulf deal that could end Qatar blockade and protect US interests in Middle East

It is time for the Gulf Cooperation Council to unite to protect American interests in the Middle East.

That is the assessment of analysts who say that the three-year-old blockade against Qatar by its fellow Gulf members should be dropped, as a way for the region to consolidate against the continued threat from Iran.

"If President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo can end the GCC rift, that will be a diplomatic victory – and one of the few within reach before the November election," said Dr. Rebecca Grant, a veteran national security analyst and president of IRIS Independent Research in Washington, D.C.

In 2017, Qatar's neighboring Gulf nations, Saudi Arabia and The United Arab Emirates (UAE), cut ties and issued a list of 13 demands of Qatar. These included shutting down the TV station Al Jazeera, closing a Turkish military base and scaling down ties with Iran, demands that then-U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson considered “very difficult to meet."

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The move was intended to choke off Qatar, but instead only pushed the small and strategically important Gulf nation to rely on other neighbors such as Iran, Turkey and India to supply food and other necessities.

An agreement to end the blockade was expected in months, but instead, the dispute has dragged on for years.

Then last December, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., attended a conference in Doha and addressed the Iranian threat. He urged the Gulf states to mend their rift with Qatar and present a unified front against Tehran.

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"Maybe we should get the region talking to each other, maybe the first thing to do is see if people in the region can begin to talk to Iran and see where that takes us," Graham said. "I hope the region will play a part in it, I hope we will ask everybody to be at the table."

Following the Doha conference, at the beginning of this year, the Trump administration increased pressure on the different countries in the region to finally try to resolve the dispute. Two months ago, with Washington playing the role of mediator, the discussions took a positive turn when Saudi Arabia indicated a willingness to accept elements of the U.S.-led solution. President Trump then tasked senior administration officials with crafting a deal that was acceptable to all sides.

Sources say that after a series of high-level discussions among the top leaders from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and the U.S., an agreement to end the blockade was apparently at hand in the past week.

But Fox News has learned that the UAE, at the last moment, shifted course and asked Saudi Arabia to withhold support for the U.S.-backed proposal. The delay caused by the UAE has temporarily denied the Trump administration a crucial, hard-fought foreign policy win in the Middle East that would strengthen the U.S. hand against Iran.

"Resolving this dispute will open the way to better regional cooperation and would be an instrumental diplomatic breakthrough," said Jonathan Wachtel, global affairs analyst and former communications director to the United States Mission to the United Nations.

For starters, the resolution would restore Qatar Airways' rights to traverse Saudi Arabian and Emirati airspace, an important goal of President Trump's maximum pressure campaign on Iran, which has already severely squeezed the Iranian economy and sparked widespread protests against the theocratic regime inside the country. Restoring the southern flyover rights would eliminate a source of income for the Iranian regime to the tune of $133 million a year that Tehran reportedly charges Qatar Airways to fly through its airspace to the north, since the blockade was imposed.

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The accidental downing of Ukrainian Airlines flight 752 by an Iranian missile as it took off from Tehran last January has made Iranian overflights more dangerous, observers say. Easing the blockade’s restrictions on Qatar Airways flights so that its aircraft would no longer fly over Iran would make travel much safer for U.S. troops stationed at the Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar and diplomats in Doha.

"An easy way to paper over the feud is to lift airspace restrictions. Right now, all Qatar Airways flights in and out of Doha pay a fee to fly over Iran since the feud closed other airspace," said Grant.

Experts also agree that a united GCC would play a strong role in confronting Tehran, a major Trump administration goal in the region.

"The GCC was created in 1981, amidst the Iran-Iraq war, so that the weak gulf states could speak in one voice and project greater strength. This would certainly be useful in the face of a threat from Iran," noted Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President of the  Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

But experts say that the blockade has also sowed divisions among the Gulf states that have worked to Iran's advantage.

“It creates fissures in our regional alliance that Iran can exploit,” said Michael Singh, the Lane-Swig Senior Fellow and Managing Director at The Washington Institute For Near East Policy, about the standoff.

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"As the Iran threat grows, it resumes its nuclear activity and as it mounts airstrikes in the region, that will increase the incentive by the GCC to set aside, at least temporarily, its disputes."

Despite Qatar's standoff with its neighbors, it continues to participate with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and the UAE, in the Riyadh- based Terrorist Financing Targeting Center, a joint U.S. and Saudi effort to disrupt terrorist financing. Qatar is also part of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and Operation Sentinel, the U.S.-led maritime patrols intended to keep the Persian Gulf open from Iranian interference. Those are critical missions with broad support from individual GCC countries.

The Gulf nations originally cut ties over what they maintain was Qatar's support for Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups, charges that Doha has long denied.

"The GCC rift clearly makes achieving vital regional objectives more difficult, so it would be helpful to see Qatar play a constructive role by ending its support of Islamist groups that wreak havoc throughout the Middle East and to work with the Gulf nations in containing Iran’s aggressive quest for regional hegemony," said Wachtel.

Experts say Qatar has beefed up its cooperation with the U.S. and its allies and a resolution of the blockade would strengthen ties and increase the security of the region from potential Iranian attacks.

"If Iran develops more missiles, all the GCC states must have tightly integrated missile warning and missile defense, a fact they realize especially after the 2019 Saudi oil field attack and the 2020 missile attack on Americans at Al-Asad in Iraq”, noted Grant.

That could be a driving force to push an agreement.

"Personal animosities run very deep in the Middle East and sometimes are octagonal (at odds) to strategic interests and pull in opposite directions," said Michael O'Hanlon, who is Director of Foreign Policy Research and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and who says that the ideological issues morphed into personal disputes.

But, he noted, despite that, "the Qataris and others have to face Iran." He said that makes a somewhat stronger case for reunification, but there are still obstacles.

The UAE did not respond to Fox News' requests for comment on the stalemate. In May, the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash put the onus directly on Doha for the impasse when he spoke at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

"When the Qataris are ready and are willing to do some sort of self-analysis on where they went wrong in their policy, I think doors will be open for reintegration," he said.

The Qatari embassy in Washington issued a statement blaming its neighbors.

"It is the blockading countries that are stalling the process by rejecting the multiple calls by the U.S. to unify the GCC front."

For now, the blockade and boycott against Qatar remain in place -- but that may not for too much longer.

"The coronavirus economic impacts on top of the Russia-Saudi oil price war have hurt all GCC economies and make this a perfect moment for scrapping the boycott, which was ineffective anyway," said Grant.

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“We all share a common concern about Iran,” Singh pointed out. “We can rally those states around specific objectives, like countering Iran. The president can bring those regional allies of ours together, but the solution to their deeper problems is not in American hands.”

Top US general in the Middle East skeptical that Russian bounties led to troops’ deaths

WASHINGTON — The top U.S. general for the Middle East said Tuesday that the intelligence suggesting that Russia may have paid Taliban militants to kill American troops in Afghanistan was worrisome, but he is not convinced that any bounties resulted in U.S. military deaths.

Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command said in a telephone interview with a small group of reporters that the U.S. did not increase force protection measures in Afghanistan as a result of the information, although he asked his intelligence staff to dig into the matter more.

“I found it very worrisome. I didn’t find that there was a causative link there,” said McKenzie, who is the first Pentagon official to speak publicly at length about the issue. He warned, however, that Russia has long been a threat in Afghanistan, where there have been many reports that it has backed Taliban fighters over the years with resources and weapons.

According to U.S. intelligence officials, information that Russia offered bounties to Taliban militants for killing American troops was included in an intelligence brief for President Donald Trump in late February. The White House, however, has denied Trump was briefed at that time, arguing that the intelligence was not credible enough to bring to his attention.

McKenzie said that while he could draw no direct link between any potential payments and U.S. casualties, it’s common that intelligence is not definitive.

“We should always remember, the Russians are not our friends,” said McKenzie, who is traveling in the Middle East. “They are not our friends in Afghanistan. And they do not wish us well, and we just need to remember that at all times when we evaluate that intelligence.”

He said there was no need to beef up security for troops there because the U.S. already takes “extreme force protections measures” in Afghanistan. “Whether the Russians are paying the Taliban or not, over the past several years, the Taliban have done their level best to carry out operations against us.”

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Just days after the February intelligence briefing, the U.S. signed an agreement with the Taliban, mapping out the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. That date would be nearly 20 years after American forces invaded the country after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. by al-Qaida militants.

Trump had repeatedly said he wants to have all U.S. forces out of Afghanistan. His call in May for a quick exit, fueled speculation that he wants troops out by the November election, as part of his vow to end U.S. involvement in what he calls “endless wars.

The U.S. pulled several thousand troops out this year, and now has about 8,600 there. Additional troop withdrawal is contingent on the Taliban’s commitment that extremist groups, such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, not be able to use the country as a base to carry out attacks on the U.S.

Asked about the potential for pulling more U.S. troops out, McKenzie said he still does not believe the conditions allow for a significant reduction yet.

How are e-tailers in the Middle East using human stories to drive sales?

The Middle East and North Africa e-commerce market was worth $8.3 billion in 2017, according to a Bain and Company report.

It has an average annual growth rate of 25 percent, which is slightly ahead of the global average, the report states.

The GCC and Egypt account for about 80 percent of the region’s market.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a rise in digital activity benefited e-commerce companies across the MENA region, including the Social Enterprise Project (SEP) in Jordan.

The fashion and lifestyle brand, which also has physical boutiques in cities like Geneva and London, employs around 560 women to create its merchandise.

They are mostly Palestinians from Gaza, living in the Jerash refugee camp.

Ex-Gazans make up a small percentage of the country’s two million Palestinian refugees, who live on less than two dollars a day, according to a UN report.

SEP’s overarching aim is to create sustainable paths to economic independence for hundreds of such women and their families.

The artisans create hand-stitched accessories using traditional Palestinian geometric-style embroidery.

Designs by the ladies can earn them up to $200 a month.

“Now I rely on myself. I don’t need anything from anyone,” says Haleema Al Ankasoori, a Gazan mother and artist. “We’re taking our dues from our work, payment and education,” she told Euronews’ Salim Essaid.

Before the pandemic, online sales made up around 20 percent of the company’s estimated 5,000 annual transactions.

From March to June of this year, SEP’s online sales nearly doubled.

Since the company’s 2013 launch, the brand has used the human story behind each product to attract customers.

“We are using internet tools to connect better with customers by making their experiences more personal,” explains SEP project manager, Waseem Salameh, “By showing them how the item is made and by whom.”

As a result, SEP’s best-selling product, the keffiyeh, or traditional headdress-scarf, has made a Netflix appearance.

One of the hand-crafted pieces was worn by Dembe Zuma, the lead character in the series ‘The Blacklist’.

Also creating more human-interaction for online retail experiences, are social media content creators Balkis Ksouri and Samy Chaffai in Tunisia.

The public figures, in their early twenties, work with brands to reach an approximate combined Instagram following of two million people.

They believe this directs the purchasing power of their viewers.

Chaffai, who is an aspiring filmmaker while also studying for a doctorate, believes that shoppers are looking for relatable content from people they trust, wrapped up in an entertaining package.

“I like to combine cinematic experience with realness and with authenticity,” he explains. “I have to respect what my partner wants me to do, and I have to stay honest to my community.”

Chaffai and Ksouri say the glamour of their work doesn’t always match their earning potential, with an average monthly income ranging from nothing to $2,000.

Despite this, Ksouri dropped out of university to create content full time. Nevertheless, many Tunisians, she says, still don’t take her work seriously.

“We are not considered as people with real jobs,” remarked the content creator known as Beki to her fans, from her YouTube channel ‘Beki’s world’. “So, it’s sad and humiliating in a way,”

Ever the optimist, Ksouri is hopeful that her followers will continue to support her, even when others in society may not.

Slovak Michaela balances life as a new mother and an entrepreneur.