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00:00On June 5th several Middle Eastern states including Saudi Arabia the United Arab Emirates separate relationships with Cutter . They accused the Gulf state of supporting terrorism and their forsworn enemy Iran. The dispute has thrown an already unstable region into deeper turmoil. Germany for a conversation about the crisis and other recent develops in Middle East is Yousef Tabor. He has been the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States since 2008. He had been called the most influential ambassador in Washington and Michael Morrell. He is a former deputy director of the CIA and acting director of the CIA and frequent guest on this program which we are deeply grateful. Let me begin with you Yousef. What is the problem with the stories for your country what is it they're doing that so offend you. So I think there's two ways to look at this . First is this a diplomatic agreement disagreement or is this more of a philosophical disagreement. I tend to think our differences with Qatar go beyond the diplomatic and tend to more into the philosophical if you ask UAE Saudi Jordan Egypt Bahrain what kind of Middle East they want to see 10 years from now it will be fundamentally opposed to what I think Qatar wants to see 10 years from now. Well we would like to see his more secular stable prosperous empowered strong governments. What we've seen Qatar do for the last 10 to 15 years support groups like the Muslim Brotherhood Hamas Taliban Islamist militias in Syria Islamist militias in Libya. Exactly the opposite direction we think our region needs to go. So our disagreement is about what the future of the Middle East should look like and that's not something that's we have been able to square with the holidays for a long time. And they want the Middle East to look like. I think they want more groups like the Muslim Brotherhood like Hamas like the Taliban. I don't think it's a coincidence that inside Doha you have the Hamas leadership. You have the Taliban embassy you have the Muslim Brotherhood leadership. You have groups going on Al Jazeera everyday promoting and encouraging and justify suicide bombings. Now why they do that. We don't have an answer. Perhaps Michael and some of his analysis can help us but we seem to be at odds with a very core belief of what we want the region to be. Is there a central demands because there was a long list of demands including ending Al . Al Jazeera and other things you have essentially wanted to isolate them. It hasn't worked entirely. Jordan is not isolated from cutter partially what are the core demands. How could this be negotiated. So this is a great question. So the core demands if you step back and look at what we went through with cut out in 2014 just to put some context behind what's happening today 2014 Saudi UAE and Bahrain pulled their ambassadors from Doha over the exact same set of grievances the exact same set of issues support for terrorism meddling in our internal affairs and incitement and provocation and November 2014 the late King Abdullah hosted a meeting in Riyadh and he invited all the JCC leaders and he had a very very open conversation we'll call it a very honest airing of his grievances with the company leader and at the end of that meeting there was a document that was signed and we called it the Riyadh agreement. And I brought a copy with me and it's right here and it has the signature of the Emir of Qatar. It was over the exact same set of issues and Qatar promised to stop supporting the groups and individuals that were giving us a hard time unfortunately everything that has been signed into this agreement has been violated for the last three years. So the collective frustration with the four countries today is at a new level. So the demands while they're more specific they are still in line with exactly what the colonies signed up to in 2014. We are ready to sit down with Qatar tomorrow and negotiate the 13 demands. If the countries are set we are willing to say that they're ready to negotiate. So far they haven't been able to say that. But we want a solution and the solution has to be a diplomatic solution. But the willingness to find a solution lies not in Riyadh not in Abu Dhabi and certainly not in Washington. It lies in Doha. OK. This disagree with leaking to took place in one year in November of 2014 and 2014. So three years ago. Yes. So this didn't just happen because of the visit of President Trump to Riyadh and the Arab summit conference Absolutely not. This has been this is like a pot that's been sitting on a stove for a really long time and it's finally boiled over except it's boiled over twice once three years ago it was resolved. But these commitments were never lived up to. And today it's actually gotten worse. So we've got to a point. Charlie where we've said we can't live like this anymore. You can't sit around the table with us and support the groups that are threatening to kill us and kill our children. You can't be inside the tent while you are supporting the groups that undermine our security. And so if you want to continue that foreign policy and support Hamas and the Brotherhood and Islamist militias you're more than welcome to . They have every right to come back tomorrow and say we reject these demands and we don't want to negotiate and we are also within our means if they do that. We are then we are within our rights to say we don't want to have a relationship with you is very hard for you to come and force upon any country having a relationship with a country where they don't think that relationship's in their best interests. And you have four countries who feel that Qatar has been supporting groups that undermine them. It's not one or two. And like I said there's been going on for a very long time. All right. What's the U.S. attitude about this. Because on the one hand you have the president saying he is all in and then you have the secretary state saying he's trying to negotiate. Well first I'll tell you what my All right attitude is and then we can get to what their attitude is. Look I think I think Yousef is is absolutely right . Has been going on for a long time. I think what happened here is that Qatar small country small population significant wealth from from natural gas wanted to play a bigger role in the region . They wanted to have a foreign policy that was outsized for itself and they looked around. They looked around and said OK where can we where can we make a difference. And one of the one of the areas that was open was talking to these groups that the rest of us won't talk to and won't interact with. And they saw an opportunity to play a role with that. And as they became closer and closer to these groups over time they started supporting them supporting them financially supporting them in many ways. So so as Yusuf said for example groups that the United States of America considers to be international terrorist organizations that we have designated as such. Hamas and the Taliban have offices in Doha and then also supporting them them and others with money and arms including al-Nusra another designated terrorist organization of the United States in Syria. So no clear clear support to terrorist groups. And then a lot of people talk about the the the Muslim Brotherhood. We don't. In the United States see it as an international terrorist organization we've looked at it hard. We haven't we don't see it that way. But it is absolutely an organization that wants to. That wants through political means. We think right. They would think they would tell you a slightly different story through political media use political means and elected a president in Egypt. Right. But then they want to impose a particular way of life on the populations throughout the Middle East. And Qatar supports those organizations. So how should the American people think about this. From my perspective they should think about it as the countries are trying to do with the Muslim Brotherhood in places like the Emirates in places like Saudi Arabia. What the Russians tried to do in the United States in terms of interfering in our politics. It's exactly the same .

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The Crisis in Qatar: Charlie Rose

We are joined by Michael Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, and Yousef Al-Otaiba, ambassador from the United Arab Emirates to the United States, for a look at conflict between Qatar and some Sunni Arab states and issues related to the growing power of Iran. (Source: Bloomberg)

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