The Iran War Is Crippling One of the World’s Wealthiest Nations Iranian attacks and the stoppage of seaborne transit have paralyzed Qatar’s vital gas exports,

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz means virtually no gas has left Qatar’s shore for more than two months. The nation is also cut off from the sea routes through which it imports everything from vehicles to produce. Fears of regional instability have hurt tourism and eroded business sentiment.

Ras Laffan, Qatar’s industrial center for gas production, is shuttered, and roads are blocked. At the vast Hamad port south of Doha, loading cranes stand paralyzed. Throughout the capital, hotels and boutiques sit in noticeable silence. Qatar’s growth forecasts have been slashed amid the cessation of L.N.G. trade.

For Qatar, gas shipments “are nothing short of foundational,” Ahmed Helal, a managing director at the Asia Group, a strategic advisory firm, said in an interview in Doha recently. “Nothing you see here would have been possible without the wealth of energy,” he added. “That is why Qatar is quickly falling into a very challenging fiscal situation."

in late February, much of that activity ground to a halt. Unlike its neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have pipelines that can bypass the Strait of Hormuz, Qatar is geographically trapped behind the waterway.

Within 24 hours of the Iranian blockade, QatarEnergy, the state-owned energy giant, announced it couldn’t fulfill its contracts. Two weeks later, Iranian missiles and drones struck Qatar’s Ras Laffan plant, damaging critical equipment and causing a 17 percent reduction in Qatar’s production capacity.

Analysts estimate that QatarEnergy has already lost billions of dollars since the war started, and every day that the strait remains closed, the country bleeds hundreds of millions more in lost sales and shipping charter fees.

Most estimates put foreign workers at roughly 85%–95% of the workforce, meaning Qatari citizens make up only about 5%–15% of workers. Qatari citizens are concentrated mainly in government and public-sector jobs

The foreign citizen composition of the workforce breaks down to some degree like this: Indian: 24%, Nepalese 16%, Bangladeshi, 14%, Filipino 11%, and Egyptian 9%. It is extremely difficult for a non-Qatari worker to become a citizen of Qatar. In practice, naturalization is rare, tightly controlled, and usually unavailable to ordinary foreign laborers.

A foreigner generally cannot legally work in Qatar without employer sponsorship. The employer usually applies for the visa and residence permit on the worker’s behalf. Some foreign workers in Qatar are paying recruiters or agencies in their home countries. Recruitment fees can sometimes become a major debt burden for lower-income migrant workers.

Qatar has long hosted leaders of the Taliban and Hamas, done business with Iran, and yet has tried to claim “neutrality.” To gain influence in the US, it has supported certain politicians, spent billions on donations to universities for its Doha campus, and generally has tried to play all sides. Now that the US is the world’s largest exporter of fossil fuels, they have little leverage. Today, as other nations tire of Iranian sponsored terrorism, the Qatar strategy is failing.

“...and yet has tried to claim “neutrality...”

I can’t feel sorry for them. First of all, they are trying to play both sides. Secondly they are getting their livelihood that normally goes through the straits cut off by Iran. And lastly they are still getting missiles from Iran thrown into their lap. Anyone that sits back and watches this happen deserves what they get. If you’re not part of the answer, you are part of the problem. And they don’t have to be but are adding to it.

wy69

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