Even Bahrain and Gulf Air were never so overly ambitious in the good times when BAH was handling loads of airlines from the east and the west Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Pan Am and British Airways Concorde service and GF was reigning supreme in the region(there was no Emirates). I realised QR were over doing it when they orderd the A380 quite obviously a prestige/image related mistake, if they need big aircraft they should have stuck with their sole 747-200 and later gone for the 744 if the image thing was so important.
Qatar has yet to gain its status as a competitor to Kuwait, Bahrain, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.