By Frida Ghitis, on 11 Jul 2013 World Politics Review

Qatar made a name for itself in recent years with its bold, headline-grabbing foreign policy. Among its many controversial moves, as I noted in earlier articles, none looked as risky as the decision to give strong support to the Muslim Brotherhood in the wake of the Arab uprisings. Now, with the Muslim Brotherhood out of power in Egypt, one of the potential downsides of that risk equation has materialized, leaving Doha at a foreign policy crossroads.

For Qatar, the turn of events in Egypt is the most significant, but it is only one in a series of recent reverses to Doha’s activist foreign policy agenda. Given the timing and magnitude of the crisis, it will inevitably push the emirate to urgently reassess its regional stance.

Events are not moving Qatar’s way in Egypt or in Syria. Making matters worse, one of the emirate’s principal sources of soft power, its Al Jazeera network, is the target of anger and bitterness for its editorial line in support of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Qatar has come to be seen as the enemy by many opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood, a risky and rather ironic position for a regime that sought to place itself on the winning side of the Arab revolutions.

All of this is happening as Qatar inaugurates a new leader, making this the perfect time for Doha to make a sharp, if discreet, pivot away from the Muslim Brotherhood.

The time may have come, in fact, for Qatar to start walking more quietly in its raucous neighborhood. There are already signs that the emirate is preparing for a period of more inward-looking policymaking.

Over recent years, the minuscule, superwealthy emirate perched on the tip of a Persian Gulf peninsula within a few miles of both Saudi Arabia and Iran has leveraged its vast oil and gas revenues to become a force on the global stage. Qatar, a country no larger than a city, has wielded influence on a par with its full-size neighbors.

Qatar’s just-retired emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, took power from his father in a 1995 palace coup. Since then, he engaged in a process of rapid economic growth with a brazenly independent foreign policy and a dramatic impact on the regional balance of power. Hamad agreed to host a giant American military base. At the same time he improved relations with Iran, visited Gaza and angered his neighbors with the groundbreaking journalism of Al Jazeera and support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar’s limelight diplomacy also put the emirate at the center of efforts to bring reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah and between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Both efforts have so far failed.

On June 25, Sheik Tamim bin Hamad, who had just turned 33 years old, officially took power from his father.

Tamim stepped in at a pivotal time in a historic era.

He took the reins only days before the fall of Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, a government to which Tamim’s father gave billions of dollars in support, in addition to strong political and diplomatic backing. Some of Doha’s closest contacts within the Egyptian Brotherhood are now under arrest.

Doha’s generous support for Morsi’s Egypt earned Qatar the scorn of its Gulf neighbors. Now isolated but still superwealthy, Qatar is standing back, watching its rivals, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, step in with their billions in aid for post-Morsi Egypt.

In the aftermath of the Brotherhood’s fall the charges of those who had accused Qatar’s Al Jazeera network of acting as an instrument of Doha’s foreign policy, engaged in a “love affair” with the Muslim Brotherhood, have all but been proved true. Anger at Al Jazeera boiled over in recent days when Egyptian journalists expelled an Al Jazeera reporter from a Cairo press conference.

And, only hours later, dozens of Al Jazeera Egypt employees resigned, complaining of editorial pressure from Doha to report a pro-Muslim Brotherhood line in the ongoing conflict.

The incident is embarrassing and damaging to Al Jazeera’s credibility, but more than anything it undermines one of Qatar’s most powerful tools of influence.

Just as Qatar’s favorites were losing power in Egypt, the emirate’s efforts in Syria took a negative turn. Doha has acted as principal advocate of intervention to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, and it has managed to place its favored members of the opposition in the rebellion’s top roles.

In recent months, however, the once-foregone conclusion that Assad will fall has started to look more dubious after Lebanon’s Hezbollah intervened on Assad’s side at Iran’s behest. Just this week, the top opposition political organization, the Syrian National Coalition, rejected Qatar’s man.

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