Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s team accused Saudi Arabia on Tuesday of trying to settle a score with a neighbor under the guise of fighting terrorism.
Saudi Arabia led a bloc of Arab states in cutting diplomatic ties and imposing a blockade on Qatar, which has long been suspected of providing support for terrorism and cozying up to Iran, the Saudis’ chief rival in the region. That move seemed likely to put the United States in an uncomfortable position, because it has major military operations in both Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but President Trump nevertheless praised the Saudis for the move.
But the administration sounded a sharply different note on Tuesday, accusing the Saudis of operating in bad faith.
“Now that it has been more than two weeks since the embargo started, we are mystified that the Gulf states have not released to the public nor to the Qataris the details about the claims that they are making towards Qatar,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters. “The more that time goes by, the more doubt is raised about the actions taken by Saudi Arabia. … At this point we are left with one simple question: Were the actions really about their concerns regarding Qatar’s alleged support for terrorism, or were they about the long-simmering grievances between and among the GCC countries?”
Qatar has long supported Hamas, a Palestinian group designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization, which also has links to Iran, Saudi Arabia’s chief rival in the region.
Nauert’s statement is a dramatic shift from Trump’s initial celebratory comments. “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets. “They said they would take a hard line on funding, extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!”
Trump’s tweets seemed like a sign of the administration’s commitment to Saudi Arabia’s position, particularly given that Qatar hosts the U.S. military’s headquarters in the Middle East.
Outside analysts speculated that Saudi Arabia might succeed in forcing Qatar to reform, provided that there were no “signals from the U.S. that it would not pressure these countries to back down.” Within days, however, Tillerson called for the Arab states to ease the blockade. Nauert put even more distance between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia’s position on Tuesday.
“What we see this as [is] long simmering tensions that have been going on for quite some time,” she said. “And that is why we believe that this can be resolved peacefully among the parties without the United States having to step in in some sort of formal mediation role, that they can do this on their own, and we’re asking them to move this along.”
