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Trump Takes Credit for Saudi Move Against Qatar, a U.S. Military Partner Trump Takes Credit for Saudi Move Against Qatar, a U.S. Military Partner
(about 2 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Trump thrust himself into a bitter Persian Gulf dispute on Tuesday, claiming credit for Saudi Arabia’s move to isolate its smaller neighbor, Qatar, which is a major American military partner. WASHINGTON — President Trump thrust himself into a bitter Persian Gulf dispute on Tuesday, taking credit for Saudi Arabia’s move to isolate its smaller neighbor, Qatar, and rattling his national security staff by upending a critical American strategic relationship.
“During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology,” Mr. Trump said in a morning tweet. “Leaders pointed to Qatar — look!” In a series of tweets, Mr. Trump said his call for an end to the financing of radical groups had prompted Saudi Arabia and four other countries to act this week against Qatar, a tiny, energy-rich emirate that is arguably America’s most important military outpost in the Middle East.
On Monday, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen broke diplomatic and commercial ties with Qatar, citing its support for terrorist groups. Mr. Trump, who made the cutting of terrorist funding a centerpiece of his trip to Saudi Arabia last month, said he was responsible. “During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology,” he wrote in a midmorning post. “Leaders pointed to Qatar — look!”
“So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off,” the president said on Twitter. “They said they would take a hard line on funding.” Qatar has long been accused of funneling money to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as to radical groups in Syria, Libya and other Arab nations. But it is also home to two major American command posts, including a $60 million center from which the United States and its allies conduct their air war on Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.
Moments later, he added, “Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!” Those contradictory roles may explain the mixed signals the administration sent after Saudi Arabia’s unexpected move. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis initially tried on Monday to smooth over the rift, with Mr. Tillerson offering to play peacemaker and Mr. Mattis insisting it would have no effect on the campaign against the Islamic State.
Qatar has long been accused of funneling arms and money to radical groups in Syria, Libya and other Arab countries. But so has Saudi Arabia. And Mr. Trump’s tweets have huge potential strategic consequences in the Middle East, where Qatar is a crucial military outpost for the United States. Less than 12 hours later, however, Mr. Trump discarded that approach by putting his thumb on the scale firmly in Saudi Arabia’s favor. His tweets, which a senior White House official said were not a result of any policy deliberation, sowed confusion about America’s strategy and its intentions toward a key military partner.
A peninsula that juts into the Persian Gulf, Qatar is home to the forward headquarters of the United States Central Command. It is a major intelligence hub for the United States in the Middle East and the base where the United States plans and carries out airstrikes on the Islamic State. “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off,” Mr. Trump wrote. “They said they would take a hard line on funding.” He added, “Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!”
Qatar has also built deep ties to American academia, providing funding and real estate to build Middle Eastern campuses for six major universities, including Cornell, Georgetown and Northwestern. Additionally, officials in Jordan said on Tuesday that the country would downgrade its diplomatic relations with Qatar and revoke the license of the Doha-based television channel Al Jazeera, Reuters reported.
Qatar’s financing of radical groups has long been a source of tension with Washington. But the United States has generally avoided taking sides in the regional feuds in the Persian Gulf since it has strategic ties with several of the gulf states. On Tuesday evening, the president appeared to be trying to ease tensions. In a call with King Salman of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Trump said that unity among gulf nations was “critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability,” according to a White House statement.
Mr. Trump’s comments were a sharp break from his top national security aides, who tried to play down any impact of the rift within the Sunni Arab coalition that is helping the United States fight the Islamic State. Administration officials said Mr. Trump was not trying to cause a rupture among Sunni Muslim nations in the Middle East. Rather, they said, he was expressing genuine frustration with Qatar’s record and making sure it followed through on the commitments it made in backing a new joint Terrorist Financing Targeting Center, which the president announced last month in Riyadh.
“We certainly would encourage the parties to sit down together and address these differences,” Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson told reporters in Sydney, Australia, where he and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis were meeting with officials. “The U.S. still wants to see this issue de-escalated and resolved immediately, keeping with the principles that the president laid out in terms of defeating terror financing,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary.
Mr. Mattis added, “I am positive there will be no implications coming out of this dramatic situation at all, and I say that based on the commitment that each of these nations that you just referred to have made to this fight.” Mr. Spicer denied that the president was taking sides. He said Mr. Trump had had a “very productive” discussion with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the 37-year-old emir of Qatar, during his visit to Riyadh. But another person briefed on the conversation said it had been noticeably colder than the president’s meetings with other gulf leaders.
Mr. Trump’s messages also appeared to contradict the American ambassador to Qatar, Dana Shell Smith, who this week retweeted a post of hers saying that Qatar had made “real progress” in curbing financial support for terrorists. Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been accused previously of support for extremist militants. In Washington, Qatar’s ambassador, Meshal bin Hamad al-Thani, expressed surprise at Mr. Trump’s tweets. “No one approached us directly and said, ‘Look, we have problems with this and this and this,’” he said in an interview with The Daily Beast.
At the Pentagon, some Defense Department officials said they were taken aback by Mr. Trump’s decision to thrust the United States into the middle of a fight with its close partners, particularly given the American military’s deep ties to Qatar. There was little immediate threat to American military facilities in Qatar, administration officials and outside analysts said, not least because Qatar views America’s military presence as an insurance policy against the aggressive moves of its neighbors.
Al Udeid base, outside Doha, the country’s capital, is home to around 10,000 American troops. Mr. Mattis made a point of visiting in April, spending three nights in Doha, where he met with the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. But the mood there was jittery. Government officials and news outlets described the cutoff of diplomatic relations, travel and trade as a “siege” and even as an attempt at a coup.
Mr. Mattis “reinforced the importance of deepening the U.S.-Qatari strategic partnership and discussed shared security interests, which include the defeat of ISIS,” the Pentagon said in its statement about the meeting, using another name for the Islamic State. The official statement also spoke of the “value of the Qatari support to the counter-ISIS coalition as well as the country’s role in maintaining regional stability and security.” Those jitters have been intensified by suspicions that Russia was behind a cyberattack that published fake information on Qatar’s state news agency — a claim the United States is investigating, according to an official briefed on the inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official said it was unclear whether the hackers were state-sponsored.
After the president’s tweets on Tuesday, Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, tried to steer clear of the appearance that the United States had taken sides. An American diplomat warned that there was a temptation to blame malicious acts on the Russian government before the evidence had been weighed. But the same diplomat noted that Russia had much to gain from divisions among Iran’s rivals in the region, particularly if they made it more difficult for the United States to use Qatar as a major base.
“I consider them a host to our very important base at Al Udeid,” he said. “We have no intention of altering our current operations, not only in Qatar but anywhere in the G.C.C.,” he added, referring to the Gulf Cooperation Council of Sunni states in the region. “For sure, this is an attempt at regime change,” said Jamal Elshayyal, a senior producer for Al Jazeera, the Qatari-owned news channel that many in the region accuse of spreading extremist ideas.
Privately, however, several Defense Department officials said that Mr. Trump’s tweets had undercut the Pentagon, particularly given how crucial Al Udeid base is to the war against the Islamic State. Pentagon officials said they, too, were taken aback by Mr. Trump’s tweets, particularly given the American military’s deep ties to Qatar. The military has been eager to avoid political quarrels with the Qataris, a goal reflected in statements by its spokesmen.
In addition to the military’s combat and intelligence mission based in Qatar, the American end of the “de-confliction” line is there, a conduit for discussions with Russia to try to avoid accidental conflict in the skies above Syria and Iraq. “The United States and the coalition are grateful to the Qataris for their longstanding support of our presence and their enduring commitment to regional security,” Lt. Col. Damien Pickart, spokesman for the Air Force component of the Central Command, said on Monday.
American officials had been anticipating the Saudi-led move, a Defense Department official said, and had received reassurances from Qatari officials that the United States would not be shut out of Al Udeid. But that was before Mr. Trump’s posts on Tuesday morning. Al Udeid Air Base, outside the Qatari capital, Doha, is home to more than 11,000 American and coalition service members. Mr. Mattis made a point of visiting in April, spending three nights in Doha, where he met with the emir.
“Qatar can certainly make it less convenient to use the base, and the president’s tweets give them reason to flex their muscles and remind the United States just how convenient the base has been for the last 15 years,” said Jon B. Alterman, Middle East program director with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Mr. Trump’s tweets also appeared to contradict the American ambassador to Qatar, Dana Shell Smith, who this week retweeted a post of hers saying Qatar had made “real progress” in curbing financial support for terrorists.
Also Tuesday, the leaders of Kuwait and Turkey offered to play mediation roles in the dispute. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, an important Qatari ally, called his counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, as well as the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, a Turkish presidential official said. On Tuesday, an American diplomat in Doha said that Qatar’s relationship with the United States was “strong” and that it had made strides: prosecuting people suspected of funding terrorist groups, freezing assets and putting stringent controls on its banks.
The emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, who has not joined the campaign against Qatar, flew to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to meet with the Saudi head of state, King Salman. Not for the first time, Mr. Trump’s comments differed sharply from those of his top national security aides.
Disagreements between Qatar and its gulf neighbors escalated after a series of uprisings against Arab autocrats in 2011. In the power vacuums that came after the uprisings, Qatar backed Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria and Libya — angering Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which see the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. “We certainly would encourage the parties to sit down together and address these differences,” Mr. Tillerson told reporters in Sydney, Australia, where he and Mr. Mattis were meeting with officials on Monday.
Like the Saudis and Emiratis, Kuwait backed the Muslim Brotherhood’s subsequent ouster from power in Egypt in 2013. Analysts said the country had taken a more conciliatory role in this week’s dispute because it was wary of ceding too much influence to the Saudi alliance. Mr. Mattis added, “I am positive there will be no implications coming out of this dramatic situation at all.”
“Kuwait feels that if Saudi Arabia and the Emirates get what they want from Qatar, then Kuwait will be next, too,” said Galip Dalay, research director at Al Sharq Forum, a Turkish think tank. In addition to hosting the air command center, Qatar is the home of the forward headquarters of the United States Central Command and an American intelligence hub in the Middle East.
Turkey publicly maintains that it is not taking sides in the dispute. “Turkey does not get into that — they’re all our Sunni brothers and our friends,” Ilnur Cevik, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Erdogan, said by phone on Tuesday. It also has deep ties to American academia, providing funding and property to build Middle Eastern campuses for six major universities, including Cornell, Georgetown and Northwestern.
The analysts said in private that Turkey was frightened of losing its best regional ally. Turkey has a military base in Qatar and supports many of the same Islamist groups in the region. Like Qatar, Turkey welcomed Muslim Brotherhood members who fled Egypt after the removal of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Qatar’s financing of radical groups has long been a source of tension with Washington. But the United States has generally avoided taking sides in the regional feuds in the Persian Gulf, because it has strategic partnerships with several countries and most of them, including Saudi Arabia, have a record of financing extremist groups.
“If Qatar gives into this pressure, that will mean that Turkey’s role in the region will be further constrained,” Mr. Dalay said. “Clearly, the Saudis and the Emiratis felt they had someone in the White House who would take their side,” said Robert Malley, who coordinated Middle East policy in the Obama administration. “This puts Qatar in a tough position: Either make a dramatic policy shift or face deeper isolation.”
Others analysts were more critical, saying the Saudis had exploited Mr. Trump by seizing on the good will generated during his visit to carry out a long-planned move against a smaller neighbor.
“The Saudis played Donald Trump like a fiddle,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former intelligence analyst who advised Mr. Obama and now works at the Brookings Institution. “He unwittingly encouraged their worst instincts toward their neighbors.”
It is not the first time the White House has struggled to explain Mr. Trump’s statements about a security partnership. Just last month, during a visit to NATO headquarters in Belgium, he declined to reaffirm America’s commitment to the alliance’s principle of mutual defense, after a senior administration official had told The New York Times he would.
That line was deleted from Mr. Trump’s speech shortly before he delivered it, according to Politico, to the surprise of officials including Mr. Tillerson and Mr. Mattis.
On Tuesday, Mr. Spicer described persistent questions about the episode as “a bit silly,” saying Mr. Trump’s mere presence at the NATO ceremony was evidence of the American commitment to mutual defense.