Washington threatens to evacuate three US bases over Qatar’s pro-Iran policy

Iran’s PressTV agency reran debkafile‘s exclusive Saturday, May 16: “Washington has secretly warned Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani that he would lose support of US troops based in the country, if Doha insists on getting close to Tehran officials, debkafile reported.”
Friday, debkafile‘s Washington, Gulf and military sources reported exclusively that the Obama administration, using backdoor intelligence channels, had secretly warned Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani that he risks losing the three big American bases located in the emirate if he persists in promoting Iran’s radicalizing influence over Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians.
Our sources comment: An American military withdrawal from the emirate, especially the big Al Odeid air base and Central Command headquarters, would be a crushing blow to Al Thani. It would leave Qatar and the rest of the Gulf unprotected in any military conflagration in the region over Iran’s nuclear program.
The threat was underlined by Qatar’s boycott by US presidential envoys defense secretary Robert Gates and Dennis Ross when they travelled through the Gulf region in the first month of May.
It alarmed Emir al Thani enough for him to takes steps, one of which was to direct the news editors of al Jazeera TV station, which he owns, to tone down the anti-American line of its English and Arabic language broadcasts.
Our Washington sources report that the Obama administration is determined to strip Tehran of its regional support and so weakening its bargaining position in their forthcoming diplomatic talks.