Showdown with its neighbours heaps pressure on Qatar, threatens GCC’s future

The most consequential dispute among Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) members for years has escalated from a curious allegation of injudicious comments and hacking into a full-blown diplomatic and economic crisis in the space of a few weeks, to the point where it no longer feels fanciful to question the bloc’s long-term viability. Such is the dispute’s gravity that Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani’s rule has been called into question, while Qatar is confronted with a potentially deep and multi-faceted crisis.