{"id":35007,"date":"2017-06-06T12:21:11","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T12:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/uae-email-leak-yousef-al-otaiba-criticises-trump\/"},"modified":"2017-06-06T12:18:14","modified_gmt":"2017-06-06T12:18:14","slug":"uae-email-leak-yousef-al-otaiba-criticises-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/uae-email-leak-yousef-al-otaiba-criticises-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"UAE email leak: Yousef al-Otaiba criticises Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{New round of leaked emails show repeated criticism of then presidential candidate Trump by UAE ambassador to the US.}<\/p>\n<p>The latest round of leaked emails of the United Arab Emirates&#8217; ambassador to the United States reveal repeated criticism by the diplomat of US President Donald Trump. <\/p>\n<p>The Huffington Post, the US media outlet that received the latest series of emails, said they showed Yousef al-Otaiba denigrating Trump and others in communications with officials close to then President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n<p>The Huffington Post said one of the emails showed Otaiba corresponding with Rob Malley, Obama&#8217;s chief adviser on the Middle East, on election night.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You got room for me in Abu Dhabi?&#8221; Malley wrote to Otaiba.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This isn&#8217;t funny,&#8221; the UAE ambassador responded. &#8220;How\/why is this happen. On what planet can Trump be a president.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>READ MORE: Hackers leak emails from UAE ambassador to US<\/p>\n<p>In another exchange from 2016 with Judith Miller, a right-wing US commentator who reportedly sent Otaiba a series of tweets from a Saudi whistle-blower that criticised Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE diplomat said &#8220;the 7 minutes I spent reading this was the equivalent of watching 7 minutes of Donald Trump. A waste of my time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The latest email leak comes after US media reported on Saturday that emails, released by a group called &#8220;GlobalLeaks&#8221; &#8211; not affiliated with the software developer, GlobaLeaks &#8211; showed clear collaboration between Otaiba and a pro-Israel think-tank in an attempt to discredit Qatar.<\/p>\n<p>Otaiba is a well-known figure in US national security circles &#8211; he has been called &#8220;the most charming man in Washington&#8221; &#8211; and has participated in Pentagon strategy meetings at the invitation of defence officials.<\/p>\n<p>Al Jazeera&#8217;s Shihab Rattansi said those behind the leak told Huffington post that &#8220;their intention is to reveal the &#8216;two-faced nature&#8217; of Emirati foreign policy&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He added that &#8220;from these emails it would appear that the ambassador to Washington doesn&#8217;t have a very high opinion of Trump&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>READ MORE: All the latest updates on the Qatar diplomatic crisis<\/p>\n<p>Huffington Post reporter Akbar Ahmed told Al Jazeera the emails &#8220;certainly shows a high level of UAE scepticism over Qatar&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Ahmed added that the emails also reveal that the &#8220;prime focus&#8221; of UAE officials in public &#8220;is Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood&#8221;, but &#8220;it seems that a prime focus of these messages has been about neighbouring state Qatar&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He said this showed the UAE&#8217;s &#8220;influence, their access and the kind of agenda they&#8217;re pushing&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>US and UAE officials have not commented on the recent leak. <\/p>\n<p>On Monday, the UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen and the Maldives cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar, a move Qatar&#8217;s foreign ministry called &#8220;unjustified&#8221; and &#8220;based on claims and allegations that have no basis in fact&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The dispute between Qatar and the Gulf&#8217;s Arab countries escalated after a recent hack of Qatar&#8217;s state-run news agency. It has spiralled since.<\/p>\n<p>Following the hack, comments falsely attributed to Qatar&#8217;s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, were published.<\/p>\n<p>Qatar&#8217;s government categorically denied that the comments.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There are international laws governing such crimes, especially the cyberattack. [The hackers] will be prosecuted according to the law,&#8221; Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar&#8217;s foreign minister, said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>UAE-based Sky News Arabia and Al Arabiya kept running the discredited story, despite the Qatari denials.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-20599 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/b023064668d34ed69f78ace724367c51_18.jpg\" alt=\"Emails taken from inbox of Yousef al-Otaiba earlier this week revealed Emirati ambassador played role in campaign to tarnish Qatar&#039;s image\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Source:Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{New round of leaked emails show repeated criticism of then presidential candidate Trump by UAE ambassador to the US.} The latest round of leaked emails of the United Arab Emirates&#8217; ambassador to the United States reveal repeated criticism by the diplomat of US President Donald Trump. The Huffington Post, the US media outlet that received [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-35007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35007"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=35007"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=35007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}