Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani attending the reception ceremony of the Qatari Emiri Air Force
Life is always going to be uncomfortable for a small country when surrounded by much larger, expansionary ones, but in the geo-political tinderbox of the Middle East, it can prove positively existential.
Such is the plight of tiny little Qatar, caught precariously between the opposing regional ambitions of Saudi Arabia on the one hand, and Iran on the other. Qatar’s very existence as an independent Gulf state is under more or less permanent threat.
It is now exactly two years since Saudi Arabia’s young crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, imposed a travel and trade blockade on Qatar for alleged support of Islamic terrorism and his mortal enemies in Iran, but there is little sign of the standoff easing; an attempted rapprochement in Mecca last weekend ended in renewed acrimony and mutual recrimination.
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