Olivier Da Lage is the Editor-in-Chief of the radio station RFI. Considered one of the best experts in the Gulf region where he lived for three years (more precisely in Bahrain), he is the author of several books on the subject such as "Qatar, the new masters of the game", (collective work), Demopolis, 2013, "Thirty years that shook the Persian Gulf, Éditions du Cygne, 2011" and "Geopolitics of Saudi Arabia”, 2nd edition, Complexe, Brussels, 2006. He is also a specialist in India and has just published "India, Desire for Power", Armand Colin, 2017. He agreed to answer questions for L’Observatoire du Qatar.

You said last Monday evening at the conference on the crisis in the Gulf held in the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS), Paris, that the withdrawal of the United States from the Iran nuclear deal was responding to a "plot". Could you clarify your own position on that?

Even a successful plot, I would say, which had been implemented by the coalition formed by Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia had discovered very late the existence of secret negotiations between Iran and the Obama administration extending over many months in the Sultanate of Oman, without Riyadh having been informed.