The tortured politics behind the Persian Gulf crisis

Saudi Arabia's puzzling effort to blacklist Qatar begs the question of who's really isolated in Gulf

The splintering of the powerful Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) into warring camps — with Qatar, supported by Turkey and Iran, on one side, and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), supported by Egypt, on the other — has less to do with disagreements over foreign policy and religion than with internal political and economic developments in the Middle East.

The ostensible rationale the GCC gave on June 4 for breaking relations with Qatar and placing the tiny country under a blockade is that Doha is aiding “terrorist” organisations. The real reasons are considerably more complex, particularly among the