By Anthony Harwood
The propaganda war is well and truly hotting up in Washington.
Make no mistake - this row has become a battle to win the hearts and minds in Washington which will be the crucial arbiter in the dispute.
The subject came up this week during a congressional hearing into the Saudi-Qatar row which has just passed the 50-day mark.
‘It is time to face the fact that there is simply too much Gulf money sloshing around in Washington, ‘ Jonathan Schanzer, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the House Sub Committee on the Middle East and North Africa.
He went on: ‘The end result is that those who feed from this trough are unable to engage in honest conversation about the policies and behaviours of their benefactors.’
Matthew Levitt, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, was a little more blunt in his assessment.
‘Some of the recent accusations made against Qatar are exaggerated, blown out of proportion, or simply not based on fact. Consider the release today of a documentary by a UAE-funded media outlet alleging Qatari involvement in the September 11th attacks.’
This despite the fact that 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi and two were Emiraties. There were no Qataries.
‘Sad and totally counterproductive,’ as Rami Khouri, the professor at the American University of Beirut, says.
Sad because all this does is to raise the level of hysteria around the Saudi-Qatar row when everything just needs to calm down for a while, if a deal is to be done.
Consider a new Saudi-backed commercial being aired this weekend taking Qatar to task for its support of terrorism.
It’s as if the makers haven’t been reading the news for a couple of months.
On Sunday viewers of the popular NBC show ‘Meet the Press’, will be shown the same 30-second attack ad four times.
It is part of a $138,000 move by the Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee (SAPRAC) to drag Qatar’s name through the mud.
It looks like something that was made months ago.
Watching it you find yourself thinking: ‘Didn't they hear Bob Corker (Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee) say that Saudi Arabia’s support of terrorism dwarfs whatever Qatar might have done?’
Or: ‘Didn't they hear the United Arab Emirates (UAE) foreign minister Omar Gargash talk about fostering a spirit of trust between the feuding Gulf states?’
It’s like we’re back at Square One, June 5th, with insults and accusations being hurled in Doha’s direction.
So the ad has footage of President Trump’s now infamous statement from the White House that: ‘The nation of Qatar has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level.’
This despite his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, distancing himself from the remarks ever since.
‘Qatar was a double agent in the war on terror,’ shouts another headline.
This was when the American Foreign Policy Council said Qatar sent money to the Taliban and Hamas.
It was taken from an opinion piece by its senior vice president, Ilan Berman, which talked about the Emir of Qatar calling for Gulf states to ‘drop their opposition and embrace the idea of détente with Iran’s ayatollahs’.
Except the Emir never made those comments, According to US intelligence sources who spoke to the Washington Post, he was hacked by the UAE who planted the quotes on his country’s news website.
The ad also quotes MSNBC host Joe Scarborough saying: ‘The Saudis, the UAE and Israel correctly said Qatar has been funding terrorist organisations’.
Ignoring not only Bob Corker’s remark but also that of the former US ambassador to Qatar, Patrick Theros, who said Qatar is not funding terrorism ‘any more than any of their neighbours’.
There is even a clip of Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the UN, telling the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 28th that the crisis was a good time to tell Qatar to ‘quit funding Hamas..’
But it didn't include what she said in virtually the same breath, which was that it was also an opportunity to ‘go back to Saudi Arabia and say look you can talk to them (the Qataris)…you’ve got to cut this out, you’ve got to stop doing this. It’s an opportunity to kind of hit on both of them.’
Not surprisingly the Saudi researchers include the now infamous 2014 quote from Israeli ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, describing the Qatari capital, Doha, as ‘Club Med for terrorists’.
Which ignores a well-known fact that America and its allies actually quite liked having their enemies where they could keep an eye on them and encouraged groups such as Hamas and the Taliban to settle in Qatar where they could reach them to do business.
As the British MEP (Member of the European Parliament) Daniel Hannan, a Conservative, said: ‘Qatari security agencies work with Western allies to monitor violent groups. It was at the request of American and British intelligence that they encouraged various radicals, including the Taliban, to open representative offices in Doha.
‘An ex-MI6 source told me: ‘Doha was like Vienna during the Cold War. It suited us to have a place where we could keep an eye on these groups and, if necessary, open channels of communication.’
‘It likewise suited Israel to have Hamas operating out of Qatar rather than Iran’.
Even the ad’s opening gambit is a statement of gross hypocrisy. ‘One country in the Gulf region is a threat to global security – Qatar’.
Hang on, didn’t the Henry Jackson Society just say Saudi Arabia is the ‘foremost’ funder of terrorism in the UK.
The think tank produced a report earlier this month which accused the Saudis of promoting an interpretation of Islam which lends itself to violent extremism.
It said the kingdom is funding the distribution of ‘hardline and illiberal texts’ in British bookshops, schools and colleges.
Those who seek an end to the Saudi-Qatar dispute must turn their back on this one-sided outlook where everything Qatari is bad, and everywhere else is good.
The current Gulf dispute is not so black and white.
Saudi Arabia has been splashing the cash on lobbying so much so that Qatar is having to play catch up, hiring its own firm to hit back.
The reality is that none of the Gulf states are perfect, all have made mistakes, but any hope of a reconciliation has to come through dialogue and co-operation.
This attack dog mentality will get us nowhere and should be rejected by the politicians in Washington which the commercial is aimed at.
The two countries are not at war but at times it certainly feels like it.
As one American senator said in 1917 during World War One: ‘The first casualty when war comes is truth’.