Saudi Arabia and its allies have ramped up pressure on Qatar since declaring a diplomatic embargo of the the small Gulf state earlier this month. They say the action is because of Qatar's links to Iran and support for the Muslim Brotherhood group but analysts see it as a power struggle over the future of the region. On 5 June several countries, notably Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, announced they were cutting ties with  Qatar. This is the first time such action has been taken since the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was created in 1981. Each day there are new developments, as the leaders of the pack -- Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt – unveil new measures to block Qatar: stopping its access to their airspace, shutting down its ground border with Saudi and kicking out Qatari nationals. The two main reasons for the cut in ties were said to be Qatar’s growing relationship with Iran and its harbouring and support of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which has branches across the Middle East. According to David Hearst, the editor in chief of the Middle East Eye, this is really a play between three regional blocs vying for power. Bloc one is Iran and its state actors of Iraq and Syria and non-state actors of the Shia Muslim Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Iraqi Shia militias. Bloc two is what he calls the old regime, made up of the absolute monarchs and military dictatorships that stand to lose from any government changes resulting from the Arab Spring of 2011. This includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Egypt and Jordan. The third bloc is Turkey and Qatar, working in conjunction with the Muslim Brotherhood who momentarily took advantage of the Arab Spring to win support and, in Egypt's case, power. Why now? Hearst believes that this attack was premeditated and in fact follows on from unfinished business in 2013 when Egypt's then president Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, was ousted and the organisation was banned and driven out of the country. While it is true that many of those who have fled Egypt since Morsi's overthrow ended up in Qatar for a time, many more ended up in Turkey, according to Eric Trager, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of Arab fall: how the Muslim Brotherhood won and lost Egypt in 891 days. "And, of course, Istanbul is where the Muslim Brothers and their fellow travellers have established roughly five satellite television networks which are very active in promoting the Muslim Brotherhood’s message, really across the region and as well as online.” Essentially, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt showed other governments what could happen in their countries. Is fear of Muslim Brothers justified? “The Muslim Brotherhood poses a significant threat to some of these governments” says Trager. “The MB's entire ideology is about replacing existing governments on the assumption that the empowerment of the MB is the same as the empowerment of Islam itself. The brotherhood equates its organisation and its empowerment with the victory of the religion more broadly.” There is also some popular mistrust of the organisation, Trager explains. “Many people across the region, seeing as how the 'Arab Spring' turned out, are also wary of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood because they fear chaos more than they fear their current government,” . The embargo also appears to have been made possible by Riyadh's confidence that it had Washington's backing. The declaration came just after US President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia in May, during which Riyadh was able to secure the partnership of Washington Hearst also sees the Muslim Brotherhood as being a main impetus for the cutting of ties, especially when the job that was started after Morsi was ousted, was never finished. “They [the states against Qatar] saw Trump as an