Did Tillerson Stop the Invasion of Qatar?

I don't know if you've heard the news.

According to a new expose by The Intercept, Rex Tillerson lost his job because he prevented the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ?) from invading Qatar.

Mohammed bin Salman

Qatari intelligence agents working inside Saudi Arabia discovered the plan in the early summer of 2017, according to the U.S. intelligence official. Tillerson acted after the Qatari government notified him and the U.S. embassy in Doha. Several months later, intelligence reporting by the U.S. and U.K. confirmed the existence of the plan. 

The plan, which was largely devised by the Saudi and UAE crown princes and was likely some weeks away from being implemented, involved Saudi ground troops crossing the land border into Qatar, and, with military support from the UAE, advancing roughly 70 miles toward Doha. Circumventing the U.S. air base, Saudi forces would then seize the capital.

As the former CEO of Exxon Mobil who had very close ties to the Qatari royal family, it is no surprise that Tillerson placed dozens of calls to both United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia governments right away to defuse the situation.

Rex Tillerson

He understood the stakes and the risks. There is a large American military base in the country and Qatar is the largest producer of natural gas in the world.

The piece suggests that Tillerson was successful because he enlisted the help of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and together they stopped the plot.

I don't think so.

Jim "Mad Dog" Mattis was fun for Trump initially until he sided with "the grown ups." And Rex "he is a fucking moron" Tillerson was doomed when he never denied the actual quote.

Trump did not pay any attention to them once they looked like they thought they were more intelligent than him.

Sure, I concur that there was a plan to invade Qatar. As I've written many times, Saudi Arabia was and is essentially bankrupt.

But I don't think it was Tillerson's efforts that stopped the invasion.

Allow me refresh your memory.

White House and Trump were in on it from the get go.

When the Saudis and Emiratis were about to launch the blockade of Qatar in June, then-US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Stuart Jones got a call in the middle of the night from UAE Ambassador Otaiba to inform him of the impending action. Jones’ reaction was “extremely harsh. ‘What are you guys doing? This is crazy,’” a former US ambassador to the region told Al-Monitor. “And … Yusuf [sic][Otaiba]'s response was, ‘Have you spoken to the White House?’”

You see how cool and confident that riposte is?

"Have you spoken to the White House?"

Al-Otaibi

The next day Trump was in the Rose Garden accusing Qatar of "funding terrorism at a very high level".

He did so just as Tillerson was intensely urging the Gulf countries to stop the embargo and ease the tensions.

As I reported at the time, that line about Qatar was scripted by the UAE Washington ambassador Yousef al-Otaibi who is a very close friend of Jared Kushner and was inserted by Kushner in Trump's speech.

It should also be said that Kushner was and is very close to MBS and MBZ, you know, the Crown Princes.

And for Kushner, this was a payback for Qatari investment company Al-Mirqab pulling out of a deal involving 666 Fifth Avenue (which itself might have been a payback by HBJ for losing his position after the previous Emir's forced abdication).

With both Trump and Kushner on the side of Saudi Arabia, nothing would have stopped MBS from invading his tiny neighbor.

Besides, given his financial woes, he had no other choice. The war in Yemen has been depleting the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund at an alarming rate. Qatar's SWF has $320 billion in it, not to mention the country's continuous natural gas revenues.

In fact, getting his hands on a substantial amount of money was so critical that, when he couldn't do the invasion, he had to round up his relatives in a posh hotel and extort $100 billion from them.

In short, it was too important for MBS to back down on the strength of Tillerson's opposition. Especially if Trump and Kushner were on board. And they were.

But Qataris are not stupid. As I explained before, they bought themselves three great insurance policies right away.

In fact, they later bought a fourth one that made them pretty invincible, much to the chagrin of MBS.

First, they enlisted Iran's help right off the bat and the Islamic Republic made it clear that they would not allow such an invasion.

By itself, it would not have been enough to stop MBS, especially if he assumed that Trump would come to his help against Iran. In fact, he might have seen as a bonus. But it still gave him pause.

The second policy was to enlarge Turkish military base in Qatar and sign a mutual defense agreement with Turkey. Again, this might have given MBS pause but if Trump was firmly on his side, his thinking would have been, well, how far would or could Turkey go to defend Qatar's sovereignty.

The best policy was the third one and it is also the one that stopped Trump from siding with the Saudis at the time.

As you can see in that post, Qatar's SWF purchased a 19.5 percent stake in Russian oil and gas giant Rosneft just after the US presidential elections. The deal was put together, during the campaign, by Carter Page, a Trump advisor, in August and was announced immediately after Trump was elected.

Critically, the deal had a secret clause which stipulated that Russia could buy that stake back any time. Essentially Qatar's Emir was lending $11.5 billion to Russia making it look like a commercial transaction.

A Saudi invasion would have made that stake permanent as MBS had no reason to honor it.

That's when Putin reached out to his poodle and whispered the magic words.

I know you don't believe me. But do you know what happened next?

Trump stopped saying that Qatar funded terrorists.

Just like that.

Then he hosted the Emir at the White House like nothing happened and praised him for combating terrorism financing.

[O]n Tuesday he praised Sheikh Tamim Al Thani for becoming a "big advocate" of combating terrorist financing. 

He also said the emir was a "great gentleman" and a "friend of mine".

There is one more wrinkle to the story and that is the fourth insurance policy bought after the fact by Qatar.

As I said, they are not stupid.

As soon as they realized that Kushner was siding with the MB playboys because their former Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs HBJ (Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani) refused to pay for the albatross on Kushner's neck, they moved to correct that mistake.

666 Fifth Avenue loan payment is due in six months (February 2019) and Javanka do not have the money.

So it needs to go away and if it does, they know that Trump White House will make MBS and MBZ go away.

Good thinking, you say. Like foreign dignitaries making a point of staying at Trump's Washington Post Office Hotel.

Obviously by then, Qataris were fully cognizant that they could not openly invest in that doomed property. Too on the nose. Anbang did that and got burned. Their CEO is still in jail.

What Qataris did was to find a clean and nice third party in which they had a massive stake and move through them.

Enter the nice and clean Canadian real estate company Brookfield. Even the name sounds nice and innocuous.

Well, they have just leased the property for 99 years and agreed to invest $700 billion US dollars for upgrades.

They also bought the shares of Vornado Realty. And interestingly, they succeeded even though nobody thought Vornado would sell.

One more thing.

And, this is unheard of in the real estate annals, Brookfield agreed to pay the totality of 99 years lease upfront.

Not annually as it is required. Everything.

Which will allow Kushner to pay back its lenders in full in February 2019. And the Kushner family will get the building back in 99 years.

By now you might have guessed who is behind such a sweetheart deal.

The Qatar Investment Authority is the second-largest shareholder in Brookfield Properties, ranking only behind Brookfield’s former parent company. And the Qatar fund and Brookfield have teamed up on several real-estate deals in the United States and elsewhere in recent years, including Brookfield’s retail and apartment complex, Manhattan West, now under construction on the West Side. Brookfield and Qatar also control the Canary Wharf office complex in London.

This took place three days ago and other than the Canadian Globe and Mail not many mainstream news outlets covered it.

As I say it often, we live in interesting times.
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UPDATE:

A friend told me that other mainstream news outlets covered the transaction.

Well, if you Google "Brookfield Kushner" this is what you get. None mentions Qatar's involvement.

Don't you think that's amazing?

Fake news and liberal media

The Globe and Mail piece is the only one you get if you add Qatar to the search.