The Associated Press said: "Qatar is at the heart of Middle East cold war". During back-to-back summits in recent days, tiny Qatar displayed some big mood swings. First the Persian Gulf emirate hosted a Gaza crisis conference that included Iran's president and Hamas' leader and became a soapbox to bash America and its Mideast allies. Then three days later in Kuwait, Qatari leaders had lunch with Saudi King Abdullah and gushed about unity with Washington's top Arab partners. President Barack Obama has inherited the familiar map of Arab-Israeli minefields. But off to the side — sticking like an exclamation point into the Gulf — Qatar could quickly become a quandary for the new White House. It looks a bit like a cold war in the Middle East now. There's the side firmly with the United States and (Palestinian President Mahmoud) Abbas, and the others backing Hamas and, by extension, seen as moving toward Iran," said Nadim Shehadi, a Mideast affairs specialist at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. "And, like with a cold war, no side is willing to push it too hard because the risks are so great" he added. Nearly every high-stakes question in the Middle East these days somehow draws in Qatar, which is just half the size of Belgium but strives for a place alongside Arab heavyweights such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It is rich in oil and gas reserves, has wide influence in the Muslim world as the patron of the Al-Jazeera TV network, and has proved adroit at maneuvering between rivals. You sometimes get the feeling that Qatar has multiple personalities," said Mustafa Alani, director of national security and terrorism studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. "It's hard to say which one will show up." Qatar has long had cozy relations with Washington, hosts one of the largest U.S. air bases in the region, and allowed the Pentagon set up coordination hubs for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The United States and its main Arab allies are worried about Iranian efforts to shift the regional balance of power. Tehran makes no secret of its desire to expand its influence in the Gulf and elsewhere through proxy groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
