Matt Bevan

And when push came to shove, it was the Saudis who were really calling the shots.

Qatar could have just lived with that reality.

It's what their fellow emirs in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates decided to do.

Basically accept that they were all a big, happy family of Sunni Arabs and that there was more that united them than divided them.

Just let the Saudis run the show.

Don't rock the boat.

Just sit there quietly and be rich.

But in 1995, Khalifa did something that no Qatari emir should ever do and went on holiday to Switzerland.

his son Hamad saw an opportunity to take a leaf out of his dad's book.

Sheikh Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani seized power from his father in a palace coup.

The thing was, the new emir, Hamad, wanted to exercise more autonomy over Qatar's foreign affairs than his father had.

This displeased Qatar's big brother.

In case you've forgotten... Big brother is Saudi Arabia.

The new emir wasn't willing to accept Saudi Arabia's role as the regional superpower.

So Saudi Arabia tried to get rid of him.

The Saudi counter-coup failed, potentially, because Hamad refused to go on holiday, but it left him in a tricky position, wedged between a pushy big brother to the south and something even scarier to the north.

The only real threat to the development programs of the ruling family would appear to be Islamic fundamentalism along the lines of the Iran model.

Iran.

While Saudi Arabia might see the Qataris as a little brother, they were at least from the same family.

Iran is extremely different in almost every way.