It was on June 5 last year that Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE came together to subject Qatar to an illegal siege.

Unwilling to bend over backwards, Qatar faced the blockade head on and now, almost a year down the line, is still going strong.

Despite little signs showing of the blockading countries’ antagonism towards Doha easing up, Qatar has, by common consent, coped remarkably well with life, according to a report by international business magazine Forbes.

In some ways, there is now more pressure on the four countries on the other side of the dispute to justify their policy of trying to freeze out Qatar or otherwise back down, the publication said.

The embargo saw the quartet cut off all economic and diplomatic ties with Doha amid claims and counter-claims of state-sponsored hacking, the promotion of fake news and support for terrorism.

There were some issues which Doha had to come to terms with straight away.

Its national airline, Qatar Airways, found that the 18 air corridors it had been using had been cut to just two overnight, as it was blocked from flying through Bahraini, Saudi or Emirati airspace.

As the IMF noted in a review of the Qatari economy in March, new trade routes were quickly established — with Oman, Turkey and Iran among others — and the banking system also adjusted, in part through a rise in government deposits.

Indeed, the dispute has pushed the Qatari authorities to make useful reforms, for example relaxing visa entry rules to encourage more visitors and diversifying their range of trading partners.

Other observers also say the country has coped well with what could have been a debilitating crisis.

“We’ve seen the resilience of the Qatari economy,” says Alastair Wilson, managing director for global sovereign ratings at Moody’s Investors Service, a credit ratings agency.

“At least from what we've seen so far, the impact is nowhere near as severe on the Qatar economy as we might have thought.”

Doha has also arguably played a cannier diplomatic game than its opponents.

US President Donald Trump initially offered vocal support for the position of the Saudi-led quartet, but in subsequent months the US adopted a stance that looks far more sympathetic to Qatar, which is home to a huge US military base.

The rest of the GCC has been far from united. While Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have imposed their trade embargo, two other members of the club – Oman and Kuwait – have stayed resolutely above the fray and continue to talk to and trade with all sides.

In addition, the three GCC countries at the forefront of the dispute have also not been as tough as they might first appear. Natural gas continues to flow through the Dolphin pipeline from Qatar to the UAE and on to Oman, supplying much-needed fuel to these countries.

The UAE and Qatar have also continued to cooperate on their shared Bunduq offshore oil field – in March a concession agreement on the field was renewed with a Japanese consortium.

Meanwhile, efforts to resolve the dispute continue, led within the region by Kuwait. In recent days, Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Jaber Al Sabah has sent envoys to all the other GCC capitals, but there has been no sign the diplomatic push is having any effect.

Kuwait seems intent on continuing to try and bring an end to what is seen as a ‘pointless confrontation.’

While the latest wave of diplomatic turmoil in the region is in large part a result of decisions made in Washington, the US would find the region slightly easier to deal with if the Qatar dispute was solved.

However, given the relative comfort with which it has coped with the embargo to date, there is little incentive for Qatar to make any significant concessions to its opponents.

Those on the other side of the dispute also show little sign of being willing to step back.

It is likely to take much greater outside pressure to force both sides to the negotiating table. The most obvious candidate to exert that pressure is the US, helped on the ground in the region by Kuwait.