The blockade of Qatar by its neighbours will cease if the country is stripped of or surrenders the 2022 World Cup, a top Emirati official has claimed.

A link between the controversial staging of the tournament by the tiny Gulf state and the boycott of it by four Arab nations has been drawn for the first time by one of the parties involved, Dubai’s head of security, lieutenant general Dhahi Khalfan.

“If the World Cup goes out of Qatar, the crisis in Qatar will end because the crisis was made to break it,” Khalfan posed on Twitter on Sunday night.

That was two days after a row broke out over whether the country’s hosting of the World Cup was under threat after a report warning of “an increasing political risk” to the tournament was leaked.

The study, carried out by management consultants Cornerstone Global, was passed to the BBC amid the ongoing diplomatic crisis which has engulfed the tiny, gas-rich emirate and its neighbours.