Saudi Arabia Closing Qatar's Al Jazeera Offices in Country

DUBAI (Sputnik) – According to the Ajel media outlet, the Saudi authorities ordered the Saudi journalists working for Qatari media outlets to return home.

On June 5, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates severed diplomatic relations with Qatar. Libya made a similar decision. Yemen cut diplomatic relations citing Doha's links with Houthis. The Maldives took the same step.

The diplomatic crisis took place one week after the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, when the Qatari news agency posted a speech on behalf of the country's emir in support of building relations with Iran. Afterwards, the official representative of the Qatari Foreign Ministry said that the agency's site was hacked and the emir's speech was published by hackers and had nothing to do with the Qatari leader.

However, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Manama considered this refutation to be unconvincing and continued to insist that the words about the normalization of relations with Iran really belonged to the emir.

The relations between Iran and the Arab states of Persian Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, are strained due to the differences of positions on a range of regional conflicts.