There are rules, called the fare rules. There's little recourse EK has however. Try book an itinerary with a long layover in DXB, it should price out the same, then you have an excuse. You could even try using multi city search to build in something like a 2 month stopover in DXB before the DXB-DOH flight, which generally is at no extra cost, and you may find that this way if you need to fly to DOH in the future you can book the flight there effectively for free if you set your date long enough in advance.

So DOH-(DXB)-LAX / LAX-DXB / DXB-DOH