Tillerson’s firing echoes across region

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s firing is reverberating across a Middle East where Iran fears his replacement will fight to end the 2015 nuclear deal, a hope of Gulf Arab states as Palestinians worry about a further emboldened nationalist Israeli government.

Also at play is the ongoing diplomatic dispute between Qatar and four Arab nations, a crisis the former oilman sought to reconcile with no success during his brief tenure as America’s top diplomat.

How Tillerson’s proposed successor, CIA director Mike Pompeo, will handle these challenges remains to be seen. But Pompeo remains a major opponent of the atomic accord, while Tillerson had been pursuing a delicate strategy with European allies and others to try to improve or augment the Obama-era deal.

Already in Iran, some are expressing concerns.

Iran’s daily Javan newspaper, believed to be close to the hard-line Revolutionary Guard, said that replacing Tillerson with Pompeo signaled the end of the nuclear deal.

“For quitting the deal, his dumping was necessary,” Javan said.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi, meanwhile, sought to minimize Tillerson’s firing, calling it part of the “frequent and multiple” changes in Trump’s administration.

Tillerson’s firing was welcome news for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which view Iran as a regional menace. They have also pushed Washington to take a harder line on Qatar, which they and other Arab nations have boycotted since last year, accusing it of supporting extremist groups and cozying up to Iran. Tillerson had sought to mediate the crisis among the U.S. allies.

In the UAE on Wednesday, the Englishlanguage Khaleej Times borrowed from the U.S. president’s showbiz days for its headline: “YOU’RE FIRED!” Saudi Arabia’s English-language Arab News had the same headline.

Another English-language newspaper, the state-aligned The National newspaper of Abu Dhabi, offered an editorial saying Tillerson’s firing would “surprise few,” pointing to his disagreement with Trump over Qatar.

The UAE, along with Bahrain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, cut off land, sea and air routes to Qatar in June 2017. Qatar, which has backed Islamist opposition groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, has denied supporting extremists. It shares a massive offshore natural gas field with Tehran.

Trump has at times appeared to side with Qatar’s rivals in the dispute, while Tillerson had projected a more neutral stance. ExxonMobil, which Tillerson ran before becoming secretary of state, had a long business history in Qatar’s natural gas plays.

For Israel, the Pompeo announcement appears to be good news for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been an outspoken opponent of the Iranian nuclear deal and who sees Iran’s involvement in neighboring Lebanon and Syria as a major threat.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.