The split within the Gulf Cooperation Council is deeply damaging to U.S. But the United States also relies on the Qatari-built and maintained al-Udeid Air Base for operations over Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, and has approximately 11,000 troops deployed to Qatar, which serves as a forward base for U.S. The biggest remaining terror-funding problem all across the Gulf is that of private money flowing through informal hawalas and the cash economy. On the terror-funding issue, Qatar has now joined the rest of the Gulf in tightly regulating its banking sector and local charities, and has even prosecuted some egregious funders. officials need to send messages to those groups). Qatar has been slower than some of the other Gulf states to tackle terrorist financing, and its hosting of both Hamas leaders and Taliban figures has been a particular irritant (except when U.S. Key tensions have revolved around Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood, arming extremist groups in Syria, and a more agnostic approach towards the threat posed by Iran. It is true that Qatar’s independent-minded foreign policy has often irked American officials, just as it has Doha’s regional neighbors. In subsequent days, the “adults” managed to get Trump on the phone with the four Arab leaders most involved in the dispute, and issued readouts emphasizing to each of them that unity was important to “ preserve regional stability.” But on June 9, just an hour after Tillerson sought to move the parties forward by calling on Saudi Arabia to ease its blockade of Qatar, Trump publicly blasted Qatar as a funder of terrorism in a Rose Garden press conference.įar from jumping into the midst of intra-GCC squabbles, the United States has traditionally played a moderating role.įar from jumping into the midst of intra-GCC squabbles, the United States has traditionally played a moderating role. Regardless of whether his boasting was well-founded, there is no question the tweets undercut Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who were both working the phones trying to bring the parties together. goals in the region even harder.Įven as Trump’s interagency was still determining how they would respond to the (renewed) breakdown amongst Gulf Cooperation Council states, the president tweeted his support for the Saudi-led squeeze on Qatar, and took credit for the action. But it appears likely that the president’s visit to Riyadh and his unconditional support for the Saudi view of the roots of regional instability has instead exacerbated that instability, and made the achievement of U.S. Trump and his senior foreign-policy advisers seem to agree on a fundamental approach in the Middle East: After years in which, in their view, President Barack Obama ceded ground in the region to Iran and Russia, they seek a revision of the regional power balance back in favor of the United States and its Sunni allies. The administration’s current approach has launched the United States into the middle of a slew of regional rivalries and may well exacerbate the geopolitical conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia-one with significant religious and sectarian undercurrents. Trump’s swift embrace of the Saudi side in this family argument exacerbates the danger and undermines his own declared goals. The fierce eruption of this intra-Arab split threatens to undermine key American goals in the Middle East, at a particularly delicate moment.
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