1/ Nooooo… Looking for a larger regional role is about the last thing Q should be doing. It has the inalienable right as a sov state to do what it wants. But it needs to heed geopolitical reality. https://twitter.com/andreas_krieg/status/1347465568929067008

2/ There is a reason it has been the centre of deep regional ructions four times since 1990. That’s not to say that it’s “fair” that that is the case… but that is the case.

3/ I interviewed some folk at the US Embassy in Doha back in the day, asking about Q being an interlocutor between the US and Iran. They laughed and me: not close to enough trust there. Things have certainly improved. But Q-Iran relations remain warm, cordial, surface level only

4/ Q’s relations with Iran are almost always overblown. As ever, I go back to HBJ’s quote about Q-Iran relations: “they lie to us, and we lie to them.” All Q wants is no war: that’s it. Even significant tensions worry Q given it shares a gargantuan gas field with Iran.

5/ Certainly, being a critical regional interlocutor for the US is a prominent goal of Q foreign policy => https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/qatar/2013-06-25/qatars-foreign-policy-adventurism

6/ This is a reasonable goal to have. But this must be achieved balancing against the needs of its near-by relations. All states are prisoners of their geography, and must, like it or not, take into account nearby politics, some (small) states more than others.

7/ Q failed do to this very well in recent years and decades. Wonderful relations with Uncle Sam *clearly* only go so far and are, at best, a medium-term strategy. Q won the blockade. Fine. Now’s the time for conciliatory consolidation.