No one will miss Hamad and his delusions of grandeur

TEHRAN,June 30(MNA)--Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani handed over power to his son, Crown Prince Sheikh Tamim, on Tuesday in an unprecedented move in the history of Arab autocracies. For weeks, Qatar was the subject of rumors about the possibility of a coup d’état against the emir, all of them quickly rejected by the Qatari government. No one really knows what is happening in the backroom of Qatari politics and what has paved the way for such a swift transfer of power in the tiny Persian Gulf emirate. However, one thing is quite clear. Whatever the outcome of the emir’s decision and whatever impact it has on the current situation in the Middle East, Hamad will not be missed because his policies created many problems for the countries of the region. The transfer of power in Qatar pleases Saudi Arabia more than any other country. Over the past few years, the two countries have been engaged in a serious competition for greater influence in the region. The Saudis felt uneasy about the tiny emirate’s sudden and unjustifiable rise in the region and the fact that it had strengthened its connections with the United States, which seriously threatened Riyadh’s traditional position as the leading power of the Arab world. The Syria crisis has intensified the rivalry, with each country trying to gain control of the rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Syria is also happy about the abdication of the Qatari emir since it views Doha as the biggest supporter of the armed rebels and terrorists operating in the country. The changing of the guard in Qatar may also please the United States, since U.S. officials are apparently beginning to accept the realities on the ground in Syria and to understand the great risk of a military intervention -- like what happened in Libya and Iraq. Thus, the U.S. will try to persuade the new emir to gradually reduce Qatar’s financial and military support of the rebels and to engage in a political process to resolve the crisis. Iraq and Afghanistan are two other regional players that will benefit from the emir’s departure. Qatar has been one of the main instigators of sectarian strife in Iraq, which has sharply risen in the wake of the crisis in neighboring Syria. Moreover, Iraq has suffered great losses due to Qatar’s interference in Syria over the past two years, and the emir’s abdication will definitely have an affect on the situation in the country. The controversial presence of a Taliban office in Doha, which was established on the orders of Washington, has repeatedly been criticized by Afghan officials, and they have even threatened to withdraw from the peace negotiations. The new Qatari emir is expected to change his approach to Afghanistan if he does not want to be harshly censured by Kabul. It seems that Hamad’s departure was a long-awaited move for many inside and outside the region. In fact, no one will miss him as the ruler of a tiny state who had delusions of grandeur that he would become a world-class leader. Mehdi Mohammadi is a political analyst and a columnist for the Tehran daily newspaper Keyhan based in Tehran. (By Mehdi Mohammadi)