‘Battle Lines Are Being Drawn’ – Could Saudi-Qatar Spat Spiral Into Another World War?

It’s been nearly a month since Saudi Arabia issued an ultimatum to Qatar, demanding that the Gulf state cut ties with Iran, shut down Al-Jazeera, and perhaps most hypocritically, the Saudi’s demanded that Qatar stop aiding terrorist groups. When Qatar refused to comply with the ultimatum, Saudi Arabia and the UAE placed an embargo on the country, and tried to blockade Qatar’s air, land, and sea borders. Qatar is still refusing to comply with the ultimatum, and the blockade is still in place.
For now this ongoing Middle Eastern spat has been largely ignored by the media, which shouldn’t be the case. Given the tumultuous history of this region, no conflict there should go unnoticed. Perhaps the media is too busy hyperventilating about the president’s provocative memes to report on a brewing war in the Middle East.
And that’s exactly what it is. The conflict between Saudi Arabia (and many of that nation’s allies) and Qatar could easily spiral into an Arab on Arab war. By some accounts, it could even set another world war in motion.
That’s also the opinion of Gefira, which is a financial analysis group from Europe. They see many eerie parallels between what’s going on the Middle East now, and the world wars that devastated Europe in the 20th century.

This post was published at shtfplan on July 5th, 2017.