1/ So, progress on the Qatar blockade? I’ll believe it when I see it. So many false starts thus far.

It’s certainly within KSA’s gift to ratchet down tensions and open its border. After all, very, very, very small issues can be solved very easily.

2/ But I fail to see what Qatar can offer, beyond platitudes & rhetoric. No points of the original 13 demands will be offered wholesale.

As they did in 2008, Q leadership could force Al Jaz to calm its coverage – but it’ll not shutter the place. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/world/middleeast/04jazeera.html

3/ Since the beginning, I expected Q to buy its way back into KSA good books: ‘major mutual investment in our harmonious future jointly bla bla’. Perhaps that chit is being cashed.

4/ Otherwise, I fail to see why KSA cares to ratchet down tensions now: I don’t see what they gain. Gift to Biden? Then, a la Iranian hostages, wait until he’s in power. Even then, I find this logic only partly convincing.

5/ What is Kushner/DT offering? Are they just looking for a rhetorical win for posterity? What pressure / inducement do they have? Unclear to me.

6/ No signs of our UAE friends coming along; the opposite, really. All signs point to the Qatar-UAE relationship becoming the US Cuba anomaly of the Gulf, barring an extraordinary turnaround.

7/ If there is a Q-KSA thaw, this will not boost UAE-KSA relations, but expectations of an Abu Dhabi-Riyadh break are wide of the mark: any thaw will be wafer thin, tenuous, mostly rhetoric, & UAE-KSA retain deep (unique) strategic alignement.