US worries amid deepening Gulf crisis
MORE than three months after it began, the Persian Gulf dispute that has driven a deep wedge between the US’s closest allies in the region appears no closer to resolution.
The Trump administration, which depends on the gulf states as its main air and sea launch pad for the fight against the Islamic State, and as a bulwark against Iran, is starting to get worried.
“We have an awful lot of equities here,” a US official said. “Is it acceptable that American business starts reporting to us that contracts are getting cancelled because of the climate in the gulf ?” Or that the air base “from which we rain down holy hell” on militants in Syria and Iraq is endangered? “We’re all starting to feel that the Qatar crisis gets in the way of things we want to do,” said the official.
The initial eruption came just days after President Donald Trump proclaimed the gulf allies united during a visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in late May.
Charging that Qatar was financing terrorists and trying to undermine their governments – charges that Doha denies – four nations in the region – gulf monarchies Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, joined by Egypt – broke relations and closed their air, land and sea borders to the tiny, energy-rich peninsula.
Since then, the protagonists on both sides have waged a public war of insults and accusations, much of it through shrill, multimillion-dollar US lobbying campaigns targeting political opinion in Washington.
The largest political ad buy of the summer came from an organisation called the Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee, Saprac, which spent $1.6 million on TV spots on local news and Washington broadcasts of national programmes.
“One country in the gulf region is a threat to global security,” intones the narrator of the ad over doomsday music. “President Trump, Qatar cannot be trusted.”
Home to a crucial air base and more than 10 000 US service members, Qatar has been cited in the past by US officials for lax control over terrorist financing.
But few officials appear to believe Qatar’s sins are much worse than others in the region. Instead, many chalk up the conflict to what one person involved in US efforts to end it called differing outlooks among gulf leaders on how best to stay in power.
At a September 7 news conference with the visiting emir of Kuwait, whose own mediation efforts have been unsuccessful, Trump said he might have to handle the negotiations himself.
But any rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Qatar in a phone call facilitated by Trump the next day was short-lived. Both governments soon claimed the other had blinked first and sought talks. The effort was suspended. – Washington Post