The personal relationships of Gulf leaders are often tinged with the exotic in the eyes of western audiences. So when the flowing black robes of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia embraced the flowing brown and gold of Sheikh Tamim al-Thani, emir of Qatar, this week, most American voters will not have realised how closely involved they were in making it happen. SponsoredThe meeting between the two men at a Saudi airport was a symbolic display to their subjects that a bitter rift that has set the Gulf states against each other for three and a half years was at an end. The argument, involving regional issues such as the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in politics, control over state-run television stations and

Source: The Times January 07, 2021 17:03 UTC