What you’re probably missing

While all of Washington and the nattering class have been directing your attention this week to the Senate testimony of former FBI Director James Comey and his meetings with President Donald Trump, significant events were underway in the Middle East.

Sliding under the radar and getting shoved aside by the Comey theater is a growing rift and shifting of alliances in the Middle East. The mainstream media is calling the contention between Saudi Arabia and Qatar as a dispute over terrorism funding and relations with Iran.

Saudi Arabia announced it was cutting diplomatic ties and closing border crossings with Qatar and halting air and sea travel to the small nation. Bahrain and Egypt have joined in on a travel ban.

Trump tweeted that the rift was about terror funding.

So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017

…extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017

That’s nonsense, though Qatar has been funding ISIS and various other groups on the ground in the Syria. But so have Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. And so has the U.S.

Tensions between the Muslim nations are near boiling. Qatar has put its military on its highest alert. It’s reached a deal with Turkey allowing an increased number of Turkish troops to be deployed to a base in Qatar. Both Turkey and Qatar agree they want to see Syria’s Bashar al-Assad deposed. As do Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Egypt and the U.S.

But Trump – and the neocon warmonger class — wants even more to isolate Iran. Getting as many Muslim nations on board with that was the purpose of his trip to Saudi Arabia – not terrorism. If the idea was halting terrorism, Trump would isolate Saudi Arabia which, outside of the U.S., is the biggest exporter and funder of terror in the world. He wouldn’t sell them billions of dollars in weapons.

There is a back story that no one in the MSM is talking about. It’s liquid natural gas.

Qatar shares the largest natural gas reserves in the world with Iran. Antagonizing Iran will not serve Qatar’s interests. And when they declined to join the cabal they were put on the bad list. So Qatar is pivoting to Russia and sending its foreign minister to Moscow to talk about the situation.

Remember the whole Syria war was about a desire to run a natural gas pipeline from the South Pars/North Dome Gas-Condensate field in Qatar to Turkey and then Eastern Europe.  It had nothing to do with Obama “red lines,” or Assad “gas attacks,” or “human rights abuses.”

Assad opposed having that pipeline run through his country and that’s why he needed to be deposed. ISIS was created through the use of various terrorist groups for that effort.

The rising tensions are causing natural gas speculators to consider putting Qatar-linked gas projects on hold. There’s also the risk that Egypt will shut down Qatar’s LNG exports headed to Europe.

The big winners may be the U.S. and Russia. If gas begins to run short in the EU because of tensions in the Middle East, those nations will turn to the U.S. and Russia to pick up the slack.

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