 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to discuss about the Saudi Arabia and Qatar crisis. And we are joined by Prabir Prakash, editor-in-chief of NewsClick. So, welcome to NewsClick, Prabir. So, Saudi Arabia has put this 13 points demand in front of Qatar. What does that mean and what is Qatar's response to it? Well, it's very clear that Qatar is not going to respond positively to it because it's a set of demands, which essentially would mean that Qatar becomes completely subservient to Saudi Arabia. And essentially it is not only regime change of Qatar but also asking Qatar to really become a part of Saudi Arabia as it was. So, I think that's a possibility that's very remote and Qatar therefore is unlikely to accept this demand. It's also very unusual for such a set of demands to be put because the argument that's been given there is they have to respond within 10 days and after that they will be monitored for the next few years. Now, these are not demands that you can make to a sovereign country. So, the fact that Saudi Arabia has made such demands either they have a very inflated image of what their power in the region is or it is not expected to be fulfilled that this is really for sure. The other part of this and I think that's an important part that recently the U.S. has come out to the statement. It's a little strange. One felt that U.S. or the Trump visit what had actually triggered of this crisis. But this letter, whatever the U.S. made public, was asking Saudi Arabia that what are its evidences against Qatar on questions of terrorism, etc. Now, as we know, this itself is a false claim because both Qatar and Saudi Arabia are equally guilty of supporting different kinds of terrorist activities as per the U.S. definition in West Asia. So, that was never a serious issue. But the fact that asked this question of Saudi Arabia and this has been Saudi Arabia's response itself does seem to indicate that Saudi Arabia doesn't want to back off. It is going to continue its aggressive posture with Qatar and it has also demanded a set of things which are almost impossible for Qatar to accept. It has demanded Turkey withdraw its troops. Now, that is again asking another sovereign country to leave Qatar and it's not something that Turkey is going to be happy about. So, that's another fracture opening up very clearly. The second is asked Al Jazeera to be closed out. So, we are beginning to understand what is driving all this that Al Jazeera is seen as a threat to the Saudi monarchy because it does say a certain set of things which the Saudi Arabians don't like. It's certainly a much better professionally run station when the Saudi royal families run. So, it may be following Qatar's foreign policy and on a certain set of issues it does. But it also is, as I said, a much better professionally run station and therefore it gets much more eyeballs in West Asia, particularly the Arabic channel then what Saudi channels get and that's really beginning to rank in Saudi Arabia and it's a threat to the long-term Saudi Arabian monarchy. So, I think these are the issues that have come up. How much of it is related to Saudi internal politics that we have to see. When you talk about the Saudi Arabian internal politics, the things are changing there as well as the Saudi king has announced Mohammed bin Salman as the heir to him, not his nephew. So, what implications will that have? Well, there's been this argument that King Salman is already in the fairly advanced stage of dementia, advanced or otherwise. But he's suffering from dementia and he wants his favorite, his 31-year-old son, Mohammed bin Salman to take over. He's moved his earlier heir out, Mukherin and then now he's moved the current heir crown prince out. Of course, this is all palace politics. So, essentially in a monarchy we are too interested in who becomes the king because as far as I'm concerned all of them represent a similar kind of monarchy setup which is the primary problem in Saudi Arabia. Internal politics, I think, is also very clear that Mohammed bin Salman was a young man in the hurry. He's the one who's supposed to have been behind the Yemen invasion. He's the one who's supposed to be also behind the Qatar Mroglio. So, there are indications that he seems to be playing by different rule book than what Saudi Arabia had done earlier, which is relatively quite backroom politicking. But not being exposed to direct aggressive military politics in the region and their military policies were really pegged on which power would support them militarily, not exposing themselves to this. At the moment, they're overexposed. They've overexposed themselves in Yemen and they are not getting anywhere against the Houthis. They're really having a tough time. Houthis have in fact attacked them inside Saudi Arabia a couple of times. There that war isn't going well except they have endangered the health of millions of Yemenis who are now suffering from cholera. So it's a global disaster which the globe is not willing to look at because it's being done by Saudi Arabia who buys the maximum number of weapons from European countries as well as of course the United States. So that is one disaster that is already on the offing for Saudi Arabia, though it has been a much bigger disaster for the Yemenis. Coming to Qatar, Qatar is a very small country. So it might appear on the books that it should be easy to overshoot but the same problem that they have. Saudi Arabia has is that if it is backed by Turkey, military action is very difficult. It has a huge military air base of the United States which is involved in the actions against ISIS for instance in Syria as well as in Mosul. Now are they going to do away with the air base? Are they moving it? Are they going to move it? Not easy for the United States to do it. So at the moment though Qatar militarily is a very small country. The fact that it is a US air base of this proportion and Turkey is willing to support, Turkey is a much more militarily powerful country than Saudi Arabia means that it is not going to be easy for them to prohibit Qatar and Qatar economically is very well off because it's sitting on a huge gas reserve which it shares along with Iran. It's a common gas field. So in that sense it is very difficult to isolate Qatar easily because of Al Jazeera, because of money, because of Turkey now. So I think that Qatar has the ability to write this out for quite some time.