A recent tweet by official Saudi outlets has been debunked as “an apparently fake Islamic State statement expressing support for Qatar”, according to a New York Times article, which highlighted Trump’s bid to end the stalemate that the Gulf Crisis has come to.

This hardly comes as a surprise, seeing as Dubai TV aired fake news claiming anti-government demonstrations took place in Doha, and troops—including Turkish soldiers—fired tear gas at protesters. That particularly outrageous piece of misinformation was aired only a month ago.

Qatar has strongly and consistently denied allegations of supporting terrorist groups like ISIL. The very real possibility may be that Saudi Arabia is attempting to distract Western media from reports of a link with the hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Marwan Kabalan, director of policy analysis at Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, emphasised the likelihood of these diversion tactics by the Saudi media in a statement to Al Jazeera.

"This shows that Saudis are doing their best to divert the attention from yesterday's reports by The New York Post and The Independent,” he said.

As the media war between Qatar and the blockading countries continues, misinformation of this sort is becoming dangerously commonplace, and Qatar remains a target.

Inline picture courtesy: Al Jazeera