UAE-Qatar feud: Abu Dhabi's crown prince

said 'give them hell'

Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed

The day before unknown persons hacked a government website in Qatar, triggering a vicious
media feud among Gulf states, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi was urging a former CIA
director to give the Qataris "hell".

On 23 May, a conservative think tank with strong Israeli connections held a conference in
Washington aimed at putting political pressure on Qatar. Admission was by invitation
only and the event was "heavily attended by officials from the Trump administration".

Later that day, a story appeared on the website of Qatar's official news agency reporting a
speech allegedly made by Qatar's emir at a military graduation ceremony. Qatar said the
website had been hacked and the story was a fake.

People who were present at the military ceremony insist that the emir made no speech and
none of the available video footage shows the emir speaking. Nevertheless, remarks attributed
to the emir re-ignited old quarrels between the UAE and Saudi Arabia on one side, and Qatar
on the other (see previous blog post for more background).

The keynote speaker at the Washington conference was Robert Gates, a former CIA chief
who also served as US Secretary of Defense under President George W Bush.
On 22 May, Gates sent an email to Yousef al-Otaiba, the Emirati ambassador in Washington,
apparently apparently alluding to his talk at the conference next day. Gates wrote:

"Happily it's not a speech but a fireside chat. But I think I'll have the chance to put some folks
on notice."

Replying to this, ambassador Otaiba wrote:

"MBZ sends his best from abu dhabi. He says 'give them hell tomorrow'."

The letters "MBZ" refer to Mohamed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and deputy
commander of the UAEs armed forces.

At the conference next day, Gates accused Qatar of reneging on its commitments and said the
US should send an envoy to the emir with a list of activities that Qatar must stop supporting,
"otherwise the nature of its relationship with them will change".
Gates also suggested a way of pressurising Qatar into compliance by threatening to pull US
forces out of the Udeid airbase in Qatar (built at the previous emir's expense) which serves as
Centcom's forward headquarters.

Qatar, which had not been invited to send anyone to explain its own position to the
conference, viewed this as part of an orchestrated campaign. Its foreign minister pointed to
numerous articles that had been appearing in American media ahead of the conference. At
least four of these had been written by people working at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies, the main organiser of the Washington conference:

Congress must press Qatar for highlighting hate preacher David Weinberg, The Hill,
30 April
Fooling many of the people much of the time Clifford May, Washington Times, 9
May
By Hosting Hamas, Qatar Is Whitewashing Terror Kate Havard and Jonathan
Schanzer, Newsweek, 11 May
Qatar Needs to Do Its Part John Hannah, Foreign Policy, 22 May

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is not very prominent among Washington
think tanks but, according to John Judis in an article for Slate magazine, it has played major
role in providing "intellectual firepower" for efforts to overturn the nuclear deal with Iran. In
2013, an investigation by Slate magazine found that FDD was mainly funded by three wealthy
American Republicans Bernard Marcus, Paul Singer and Sheldon Adelson who were also
strong supporters of Israel. Adelson is said to be a close friend of Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu.

Among the six Gulf Cooperation Council states, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain have a
hostile view of Iran and on that point they have something in common with Israel. Qatar,
which shares the world's largest gas field with Iran, takes a more conciliatory line and, to
some extent, Kuwait and Oman do too.

Last month's "Muslim summit", which was attended by Donald Trump, initially looked like a
victory for the anti-Iran hardliners but its actual effect has been to open up divisions among
the Gulf states. The attacks on Qatar seem mainly intended to make it comply with the
Saudi/Emirati view but they have also focused on Qatar's alleged support for terrorism and its
connections with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas (another Israeli concern). One effect of
highlighting Qatar in this way is that it helps divert attention from Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi
ideology and its role in spawning groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Embassy emails leaked

The pre-conference email exchange between former CIA chief Gates and UAE ambassador
Otaiba was part of a series of emails that surfaced on Friday, circulated by a group calling
itself "GlobalLeaks" and using a free email account from a Russian provider. Other emails in
the series show a warm and apparently cooperative relationship between FDD and the Emirati
ambassador.
Several of these discuss arrangements for a proposed visit to the UAE on June 11-14 by three
of FDD's staff: Mark Dubowitz, Jonathan Schanzerand John Hannah. On 23 April, Hannah
wrote to Otaiba saying "our primary goal is to establish an ongoing professional relationship
with the UAE's top governmental experts on various aspects of the Middle East". Hannah
added that he hoped the trip would lay "a strong foundation for future mutually beneficial
cooperation between our respective institutions".

FDD provided the embassy with a draft agenda for the trip and the names of senior Emiratis
including Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed that its staff were hoping to meet.

Next day, Hannah sent a further email to the ambassador, adding another name to the request
list:

"Youssef: one other thing, if appropriate on your end, Schanzer (who is in AD [Abu Dhabi]
from evening 11th the early morning 13th) and I would like to request a meeting with Dahlan,
if he's willing and available."

"Dahlan" presumably refers to Mohammed Dahlan, the former head of Palestinian

preventive security in Gaza, who left Palestine amid accusations of corruption. On the face
of it, asking an Emirati ambassador to arrange a meeting with Dahlan might seem an odd
thing to do, but since leaving Palestine Dahlan has reportedly been working as a security
adviserto Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed.

The use of a Russian email address for circulating the leaked documents points to Russia as
the source, but that could be a deliberate smokescreen. One obvious possibility though
currently not supported by any evidence is that the leak might have been intended as a
reprisal for the hacking of Qatar News Agency's website.

However, it's not clear that the UAE ambassador's leaked emails were obtained through
hacking. The documents posted online appear to be photographs of email print-outs rather
than electronic copies.

Yesterday, Qatari media quoted an unnamed source as saying that "an FBI team" has been in
Doha for the last week helping to investigate the security breach at Qatar News Agency. Two
other unnamed countries were also said to be assisting. Twelve days after the incident, the
agency's website is still offline.
In another odd development, the Twitter account of Bahrain's foreign minister was hacked
yesterday. IB Times reports:

"The hackers posted a slew of disturbing images and threats against the royal family including
one tweet that read: 'We are going to paint the floor with your blood'."

The hackers also changed the minister's name of the Twitter account to Arabic words that
mean "Ball of meat". This is a nickname previously used by the Bahrain regime's opponents,
because the minister is overweight.

Material posted on the minister's Twitter feed suggests this was the work of Shia militants but,
given the timing of the attack, a connection with the Qatar hacking and the UAE embassy leak
should probably not be ruled out.