 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have here with us Prabir Purka as the editor-in-chief of NewsClick to discuss the Qatar crisis. Hello Prabir. Prabir, recently Saudi Arabia leading other Gulf countries has imposed sanctions and embargoes on Qatar. Can you give a little background to this? Very interesting scenario really because we would have thought that the Gulf monarchies are at least all solidly unified against what would be called the secular nations such as we had earlier Iraq, Syria, Libya. On the issue of Libya and Syria, all of them seem to have acted in concert having supported different kinds of regime change operations, funding from Al Qaeda, ISIS to the Free Syrian Army in Syria and various shades of opposition to Qaddafi for the armed insurrection against Qaddafi supported by the west. So from outside it appeared that they were all together. Well it does, we have always known that there have been differences primarily on the issue of Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood has been supported largely by Qatar and also Al Jazeera has been an open public supporter of Muslim Brotherhood and as you know Al Jazeera is really an arm of the Qatari government or the Qatari principality. Saudi Arabia initially in the 50s, 60s, even up to 70s was the main supporter of Muslim Brotherhood, funded them in different ways and this is all a part of what I would call the US attempt to have a NATO plus monarchy consolidation, Islamist consolidation against the nationalist forces in West Asia and against of course Soviet Union at that time. So this genesis of Muslim Brotherhood being supported by Saudi Arabia, if we take now what is developing it is clear that between Saudi Arabia and Qatar there are significant differences with respect to Muslim Brotherhood but also with respect to Iran. Qatar has it right now called for normalizing relations with Iran or reaching some kind of peace with Iran which means it does not really want to be on the firing line on Syria, it does not want a much larger difference between the Shias and Sunnis in the region. So this attempt to really try and create a Shias-Sunni conflict which is what Saudi Arabia is leading that does not seem to be something Qatar has been backing. Now this is not the first time Saudi Arabia is intervening in Qatar for regime change. The earlier Emir was replaced by the current Emir because Saudi Arabia intervened in Qatar and saying they thought that they were really going out of line that Qatar was supporting a lot of forces which could be dangerous. For the monarchies and the earlier Emir was thought to be too shall we say dangerous and therefore the present Emir has had taken over. So this is really not the first regime change that Saudis are trying. This time things seem to have gone well beyond what it was earlier and this is of course a significant escalation. It has not been done behind the scenes. It is out in the open. Saudi Arabia essentially has said that this regime has to be changed. They have to fall in line with what Saudi Arabia is doing and Qatar cannot be an independent voice in this region. So what we are seeing is among the monarchies that the Saudi Arabia wants to be the preeminent voice. Now within the Saudi dispensation we have the shall we say the second in command who is really behind the crown prince, the current crown prince and there are rumors that he is going to be the current crown prince will be replaced by the second in command bin Salman, King Salman's son and second in line in succession or the first in line succession and he has a much more aggressive policy which was seen when Saudis intervened in Yemen rather disastrously. They don't seem to have made much of a headway. So now turning this Qatar is also muscle flexed by Saudi Arabia. So to some extent this is an external enemy Iran trying to get the whole Gulf Council unite behind Saudi Arabia against Iran and internal replacement by which you have no support to Muslim Brotherhood which today Saudis see as also a threat to their regime. This whole episode of Qatar being sanctioned in Abbad Ghur follows closely Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia and also Trump's own Twitter comments seem to indicate that somehow this whole thing has his support. What is the role of US in this and also what is the role of Israel in this? It's a very interesting issue that this should have happened just after Trump had his famous sword dance with the king of Saudi Arabia. The sword dance seems to indicate that it was not just waving of the swords but it went beyond that. And you're right that this following so closely after Trump's visit would seem to indicate it has Trump sanctions. Now without going into whether this is in the US long term interest that's that I think is a separate issue. And I'm not really interested in that question because the US long term interests are for no interest to the rest of the world. But looking at what is happening it's very clear that Trump is much more narrowly focused in Iran. He does not understand too much of West Asia but he has recognized that Iran is a long term threat to US interests and more important more significantly Israeli interests. Let's not forget one of the reasons that the US intervened in Iraq was Iraq was seen to be major military force and therefore a long term threat to Israel. And therefore Israel did support United States taking Iraq out in what what it really did under Bush. So Iran has been identified with Israel as the next threat. Now because Iran even Islam in Iran is seen to be relatively shall we say non monarchy. It is though it is also resting on clergy in a larger sense. But there is much more mass participation in Iran in politics that it's possible in the monarchies. People do vote. People may not agree with all the candidates they are they are allowed to vote for. But the point is there is still mass sanction. Clergy plays an important role but it is still limited. It is not an unlimited role as a monarchy has in Saudi Arabia. But the clergy and the monarchy rules together in a way that their dictates only pass and nobody else is a voice. So given that Iran does pose an internal threat of a different kind of Islamic politics shall we say which is also true for Muslim Brotherhood because they are not so antithetical to shall we say elections and so on. And both in Turkey where Eddogan is a Muslim Brotherhood formation. His party is a Muslim Brotherhood formation. And earlier in Mursi in Egypt we saw that they are quite okay with mass politics of a certain kind. Now this for this is something which while the monarchies found distasteful. Israel looks upon Iran as a military power which has definitely not only an army. It has a huge economy. It has supported Hezbollah. It has given them rocket technology if not rockets. So Hezbollah is the most serious military force that Israel faces. So weakening Iran is the interest of Israel and it seems to be also the interest of United States who do not want any regional power in West Asia to even remotely challenge their might. How will this impact Qatar because after all it is a small country. On one side it is surrounded by Saudi Arabia and on the other side it is surrounded by the sea. So probably very dependent on Saudi Arabia. So how is it going to impact that country? Well three fourths of the food import comes from Saudi Arabia. But you know the number of people in Qatar are not very large. In fact probably only 20% of Qatar is 80% of non-Qatari residents. Particularly the Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and other workers who are building the 2022 World Cup stadiums for football. So this is one part of it. Yes there would be some impact. How much you can fly in? How much you can supply by sea? Those are questions we have to answer. I don't think the immediate economic impact is the major one. Yes there would be some food impact and so on. Because you can always fly in food. Qatar has an airline so it has oil. So its ability to fly in food is not that limited. It's also true that it can also fly in if it wants to normalize relations with Iran. They can fly in food from Iran. They can get ships to come from Iran to give them food. So I don't think that's really the issue. The issue is can Qatar withstand the sanctions by other Gulf Council members. And also the enmity of the United States. Don't forget there is a US base over there. So US has an enormous military role in the region. And Qatar being able to withstand Saudis on one hand and the Americans on one hand. Mean that they would have to then align with Russia and Iran. That is something Qatar will find it very difficult to do. Does this whole episode, does it imply any kind of shift in dynamic of that whole Shia-Sunni thing in the West Asia? Because now Saudi Arabia has gone against Qatar. And also there seems to be some kind of friction with Turkey as well. So what do you think it means? Well this is the issue. The only major Muslim brotherhood power left in the region is Turkey. That Turkey while being close to West Asia is not West Asia. So can Turkey support Qatar and provide a kind of counterweight to Saudi Arabia? It's something we have to see. Yes, that is a possible line that Qatar could take. Align much more closely with Saudi Arabia, make peace with Syria, make peace with Iran. To be it doesn't seem that that kind of possibilities exist so much in Qatar. On the Shia-Sunni issue that you are talking about, you know this to be is really a big Saudi Arabian attempt to try and polarize the people along lines by which all Syrians will support Saudi Arabia. And they will do it on the basis of all Shias, all other sects, not only Shias from Druze to Alavis to Alavites who are loosely Shias, but really not identified as closely as Shias. The five were Shias in Yemen, the 12 were Shias of Iran, clubbing all of them as essentially apostates. Somebody who needs therefore to be either changed completely or needs to be killed. Now this kind of binary Islam which is what Wahhabism is, I think that is a much larger question. Can this kind of Islam survive in today's world? And does the Shia-Sunni conflict that we are seeing, has it anything to do with the people? Or is it something artificially being propped up by Saudi Arabia for its own survival? Not its own survival as much as the survival of the monarchy and of course the United States. How does this impact India's relationship with GCC on one side and also Qatar because there are a lot of workers from India working in Gulf countries including Qatar. Well let's put it this way, we have about I think 600 to 700,000 Indians in Qatar largely in the construction area, but also in a lot of the middle class jobs which particularly from Kerala. So it is a significant part of our what would be called expatriate income. But if you look at the entire Gulf region, this is a much smaller part than what is elsewhere, what is present elsewhere. So for India maybe 10% of our money expatriate money which comes from the Gulf comes from Qatar probably even less. So economically can we bulk, can we really economically, can we really maintain our relations with Qatar as well as maintain our relations, economic relations with Saudis with the Emirates that we have to see. The United States has taken a position that it's not going to withdraw its troops from Qatar, it's not going to accept embargo while saying Qatar should fall in line. What India will therefore will do is something somewhat similar will say this is an internal dispute will not intervene in it, will try to keep everybody happy and as long as we have the airlines, the Qatar airlines running between India and Qatar and India doesn't Indians don't have to go to other ports they should be relatively okay.