The silent conflict raging between Qatar and Saudi Arabia currently revolves around two main axes. The first is their respective positions vis-à-vis the Muslim Brotherhood, and their disagreement as to whether to back or reject its ascent to power in Syria. The second concerns Saudi Arabia’s objection to the disproportionate — relative to its size — Qatari role in the region, while the latter insists on allowing its role to play out.

According to sources knowledgeable in internal Saudi affairs, Riyadh considers its dispute with Qatar — subsequent to the latter’s support for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood reaching power — as a dispute with strategic overtones. Lately, specifically after the naming of Tammam Salam as prime minister-designate to form a new Lebanese government, the alliance between Doha and Riyadh in managing the Lebanese arena has shown signs of disintegrating. The last time the two countries were in accord over Lebanon was when [former Lebanese] Prime Minister Saad Hariri visited Qatar last summer, and later appeared in a photograph with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim when both visited Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.

The Syrian crisis was responsible for restoring harmony between Qatar and Saudi Arabia in Lebanon; throughout the preceding period, between 2006 and 2011, Qatar had taken the side in Lebanon of the March 8 alliance backed by Damascus and Iran, while Saudi Arabia stood with the March 14 coalition, whose main Sunni constituent (the Future Movement) is a Saudi protégé. The reasons that drove Qatar to espouse its aforementioned position remain unknown to this day; but some in Hezbollah think that Doha’s bias toward the Iranian-Syrian axis in Lebanon was not genuine, but was merely a political role assigned by Washington on Qatar — the location of the largest American military base in the Arab Gulf. The Saudis, on the other hand, thought at the time that Qatar suffered from an “inferiority complex” that drove it to try and emulate the role and influence of Saudi Arabia in the region and the world.

During that period, the Qataris often reiterated that the smaller Arab nations had a problem with their larger neighbors who tried to limit their political aspirations. The proponents of this view long expressed pride that small nations — such as Lebanon, Kuwait and Qatar — succeeded in creating political, economic, media and democratic models that made up for their small geographic and demographic sizes, while proving they were worthy of overcoming their subservience to larger Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria, and playing a prominent role in leading the region.