At a time when the Gulf’s Arab states are signing multibillion-dollar arms deals with the west, the emirate of Qatar is a notable exception.

Despite its immense wealth, Qatar is conspicuous by its absence from the roll call of Gulf monarchies investing in advanced fighter jets and missile defence systems to counter a perceived threat from Iran.

Qatar’s oil and gas reserves have turned this former pearling outpost into the world’s richest country per capita, with gross domestic product of $83,840 per head, according to the International Monetary Fund.

But Qatar likes to do things differently from its peers.

Sharing the world’s largest undersea gas field with Iran, its neighbour across the Gulf, Qatar has maintained better relations with Tehran than have other neighbours and it is most careful not to change that.

“We are a small country and we can live with anything around us,” the Sandhurst-educated emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, has said. “Iran never bothered us, it never created a problem for us.”

But in reality, analysts say, Qatar worries about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and relations are marked by mutual suspicions.

Doha is not on a rearmament spending spree partly because it can rely on the US for its security: it hosts al-Udeid military air base, the hub for all US air operations in the Gulf.

Despite the conciliatory words towards Tehran, analysts say, the US military presence at al-Udeid could become a flashpoint with Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions were to escalate.

“Eventually they [the Qataris] might have to choose between close relations with Iran and the US protective shield,” said Gregory Gause, a Gulf expert at the University of Vermont.

Managing competing relationships is characteristic of Qatari foreign policy, which has long been managed by the emir and his prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani.

Qatari officials say that ensuring the security of their natural resources – Qatar has 26.6bn barrels of oil and 25,400bn cubic metres of natural gas – requires a complex foreign policy that keeps potential trouble at bay.

Doha indeed has managed to maintain an odd group of friends: it has good relations with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, and Hizbollah, the armed Shia group. At the same time it was the only Gulf state to let Israel open a trade office in its capital, though it stopped short of full diplomatic relations.

The controversial foreign policy sometimes poses difficulty for Qatar’s rulers, however. Doha has at times angered the Arab world’s established powers, notably Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which regard the emirate as an interfering maverick.

Last year, Qatar fell out with Israel over the Gaza war and closed the trade office. Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-owned satellite news channel, has often offended Arab neighbours.