Matt Bevan

It was a divide and conquer strategy.

with Netanyahu hoping Hamas would weaken the more moderate Palestinian Authority.

So there's money flowing in all sorts of directions for all sorts of reasons and Qatar wanted to be at the centre of it.

Having a diplomatic and financial relationship with everybody means nobody will want to attack you.

Simple.

Over the last 50 years, Qatar has grown from being a strange barren peninsula with no fun facts, to being home to the richest citizen population on earth, to being the center of an enormous intricate spider web, which stretched into the business, economic, journalistic, tourism, cultural, energy, and political worlds.

But Hamad, and after his abdication in 2013, his son Tamim, didn't do all this for fun or for ego or for glory.

It was a long-term strategy of making Qatar a significant player in world affairs.

If they were at the centre of the web, they would be too important to mess with.

It was a rational strategy formed during an era where rational people ran the world.

Their refusal to just sit there and be rich may have made Saudi Arabia grumpy, but what was Saudi Arabia going to do about it?

Qatar had made itself too important.

The strategy was all working very well until around May 2017, when there were hints that the era of rational strategy may be coming to an end.

The new US President Donald Trump was invited to the Saudi capital Riyadh to dance with swords and join the Saudi King Salman in laying his hands upon a glowing orb.

It was a surprising destination for Trump's first foreign trip as president.

Before he left, the Saudis agreed to a massive trade and weapons deal.

Around $147 billion in US arms sales to Saudi Arabia and $270 billion in other trade.

Two weeks after Trump's visit, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered an extraordinary military operation

against Qatar.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain imposed an aggressive blockade on Qatar.