Qatar's Crisis With Saudi Arabia And Gulf Neighbors Has Decades-Long Roots By Peter Kenyon Published June 17, 2017 at 7:00 AM EDT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Coverage by the Arabic-language satellite channel Al-Jazeera has long been a sticking point in Qatar's relations with its neighbors. Saudi Arabia and others are pressuring the country to shut down the channel. Corrected: June 17, 2017 at 12:00 AM EDT A previous version of this story misspelled Mehran Kamrava's first name as Merhan.