UAE Slams Qatar for Restoring Ties with Iran

The UAE State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, has posted a number of messages in his Twitter account blaming Qatar for its decision to restore ties with Iran.

According to a Farsi report by the Fars News Agency, Qatar is under pressure by Saudi Arabia and a number of other Arab states including the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt for its ties with Iran. The coalition headed by Saudi Arabia has already cut its ties with Qatar and put the country under blockade with the aim of exerting economic pressures on it.

“Qatar is offering confusing justifications to restore its ties with Iran,” Gargash wrote, adding that no sovereign state is ashamed of its independent decision.

Gargash described Qatar’s decision to restore diplomatic ties with Iran as childish and wayward and said its justifications are not convincing.

The hard-line UAE diplomat went on saying that Doha’s reference to trade ties to justify its decision to send back its ambassador to Tehran intentionally neglects Iran’s main economic interests in the region, namely the gas fields shared by Qatar and the Islamic Republic.

This is the UAE’s second reaction to Qatar’s decision to restore full diplomatic ties with Iran within 24 hours. Earlier, Gargash posted a message on twitter saying Qatar has put itself in deeper troubles by such a decision. “With such a bad crisis management, Qatar will lose more opportunities and weaken its own sovereignty,” he added.

According to Gargash, by adopting the policy of escaping forward, Qatar has only deepened the current crisis and weakened mediatory efforts. “We didn’t see the expected prudence in Qatari officials,” he noted.

He said it is better for Qatar to put more efforts into tackling the current crises, “but with its latest decisions about relation with Yemen and Iran, it has actually deteriorated the crises.”

On Wednesday, Qatari government decided to send back its ambassador to Tehran. According to a statement published by the Qatari Foreign Ministry, Doha intends to deepen its bilateral relations with Iran over 20 months after it recalled its ambassador from Tehran following Saudi Arabia’s severance of ties with Iran.