The plan was discovered by the Qatari intelligence sometime in the early summer of 2017 and confirmed several months later by US and UK intelligence. Qatar reportedly informed Tillerson of the planned invasion, and the US diplomat unleashed a flurry of phone calls in an effort to prevent it.


At the time Saudi Arabia was bracing itself for a period of low oil prices and burning its reserves fast. If the troops successfully seized Doha, “they would potentially have been able to gain access to the country’s $320 billion sovereign wealth fund,”