Saudi Arabia and Qatar smooth out the rough edges
The tension in the Middle East between Saudi Arabia and Qatar could be coming to an end after three years of diplomatic and commercial break-ups. In the summer of 2017, Saudi Arabia, together with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, imposed a land, sea and air blockade on Qatar under the accusation of financing and supporting terrorism, in addition to the fact that Doha had forged closer ties with Teheran. This blockade, which, among other things, closed these four countries' airspace to Qatar, led the latter to decide to leave the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries at the beginning of 2019.
In recent days the Trump Administration has attempted to mediate in this Middle East dispute, as it would have done in relation to the Abraham Agreements which have normalised relations between several Arab countries and Israel. This mediation has included Jared Kushner's recent visit to Saudi Arabia, where he met the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and to Qatar itself, where he met Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani. From these visits, Kushner could have drawn confirmation of both countries' intention to bring their positions closer together, something that would be a new diplomatic success for the outgoing US president, Donald Trump.
From the information that has come to light from US sources, the possibility is raised that this initial rapprochement will open up airspace and Emirati airspace to Qatari lines, even though other sources suggest that the basis of this agreement would only affect Saudi Arabia and would not include either the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain. The understanding between Doha and Riyadh will take time, but it is important, the experts say, to open up channels of communication in order to settle any clashes and tensions that may arise in the future.
To understand why such an abrupt change of opinion-Saudi Arabia was demanding, among other things, the closure of the Al Jazeera media outpost-must go back a little over a year, when Saudi Arabia suffered a drone attack on the oil plants of Khurais and Abqaiq, the world's largest processing plant, which belongs to Aramco. The attack, which came from the Yemeni territory controlled by the Huthias-militias supported by Iran-caused Saudi Arabia's crude oil production to drop by 50 percent, causing the price of crude oil to soar.
In addition to these attacks, and others that were later claimed by the Huths, there were also incidents involving oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, one of which was attacked with missiles, as reported by Iran. As a result of these events, and Iran's interference through the militias present in many of the region's countries in conflict-Syria, Yemen, Iraq-Riyadh is concerned that its interests could come under attack again and that the future US president, Joe Biden, will not maintain a stance as harsh as Trump's with respect to Teheran's behaviour. For all these reasons, the possibility of bringing positions closer to Doha and closing off one of the fronts that Saudi Arabia is keeping open has been progressively taking shape.