Emirati ambassador to US asks Trump to move airbase from Qatar

The United Arab Emirates' ambassador to the US said the US airbase in Qatar should be used as a political tool by the Trump administration to put pressure on Doha.

“The air base is a very nice insurance policy against any additional pressure,” Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba said Tuesday. “Maybe someone in Congress should have a hearing and just say, you know, ’Should we consider moving it?’”

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with Qatar and imposed stringent economic sanctions. Doha denies their accusations that it supports militants and Shi'ite Iran.

“We’ve gotten fed up. We’ve had enough,” Otaiba said, who urged that the US airbase in Qatar has allowed the Doha government to cause instability in the Middle East.

“If I want to be honest, I think the reason action hasn’t been taken against Qatar is because of the air base,” Otaiba said.

Qatar hosts the largest military base of the US in the Middle East.

Moving US air operations would involve a massive undertaking by the US military, which coordinates its air campaigns in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan from Qatar.

Otaiba said the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt were compiling a list of demands for Qatar that would be "handed over to the United States fairly soon."

"We’ve designated 59 people and 12 entities. It’s likely that you could see designations of their bank accounts and perhaps of the banks themselves. And so there’ll be an escalation of economic pressure, again, short of a policy shift or negotiations that lead to a policy shift,” he added.