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5 Arab States Break Ties With Qatar, Complicating U.S. Coalition-Building 5 Arab States Break Ties With Qatar, Complicating U.S. Coalition-Building
(about 4 hours later)
SYDNEY, Australia — Hours after five Arab countries broke diplomatic relations with Qatar, a crucial United States ally, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson offered on Monday to broker the impasse in hopes of preserving the Trump administration’s efforts to create broad coalitions against Iran and terrorist groups in the Middle East. BEIRUT, Lebanon — Egypt, Saudi Arabia and three other Arab countries severed all ties with Qatar early Monday, in a renewal of a four-year effort to isolate it and a sign of a new boldness after a visit to the region by President Trump.
The five Arab states not only suspended diplomatic relations, as they have in the past, but also cut off land, air and sea travel to and from Qatar and ordered their citizens to leave the country.
Qatar, like other monarchies in the Persian Gulf, is a close ally of Washington, and it hosts a major American military base that commands the United States-led air campaign against the Islamic State.
As such, the feud among regional allies threatens to stress the operations of the American-led coalition and complicate efforts in the region to confront Iran.
The severing of all connections by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen created an immediate crisis for Qatar. Qatari diplomats were given 48 hours to leave their posts in Bahrain, while Qatari citizens were allotted two weeks to depart from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Qatar, a relatively small country jutting into the Persian Gulf, has a border with Saudi Arabia and is vulnerable to its larger neighbor. It imports almost all its food, about 40 percent of it directly from Saudi Arabia. There were reports of runs on food markets after the announcements on Monday.
Air traffic was disrupted, with the United Arab Emirates suspending service to Qatar by its three carriers, Etihad Airways, Emirates and FlyDubai, beginning Tuesday morning. Qatar Airways was banned from Saudi airspace.
Saudi Arabia said it was taking the action to “protect its national security from the dangers of terrorism and extremism.” The Foreign Ministry of Qatar released a statement saying the action had “no basis in fact” and was “unjustified.”
Last month, Qatar said its state news media had been hacked, after comments attributed to the emir, Sheikh Hamad bin al-Thani, were published referring to tensions with Washington over Iran policy and saying Mr. Trump might not be in power for long. Qatar denied the comments said it had been the victim of a “cybercrime.”
The other Arab states that took action — all but Bahrain majority Sunni — have long sparred with Qatar over its support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and around the region, including through the broadcasts of the Pan-Arab news network Al Jazeera, which Qatar funds. Qatar’s rivals have also faulted it for condoning fund-raising for militant Islamist groups fighting in Syria, although several of the other Sunni-led monarchies in the region have played similar roles.
Qatar’s opponents have added a third allegation to those grievances: that it is conspiring with their regional rival, Iran. That latest charge is especially striking because Qatar has been actively participating in two wars against Iran, in the Saudi Arabian-led war against the Iranian-backed Houthi group in Yemen, and in the rebel fight against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who is supported by Tehran.
There was no clear event in the region that might have precipitated the renewal of the campaign against Qatar. But it followed a recent visit to Saudi Arabia by Mr. Trump, who made clear that he strongly backed Saudi Arabia in its push against both Iran and against Muslim Brotherhood-style Islamist groups. Mr. Trump’s support may have helped encourage the other Sunni states to renew their campaign against Qatar as well.
In another indication of how the Trump visit may have emboldened Gulf monarchies, over the past two weeks Bahrain has cracked down on opposition from its Shiite majority.
At least 5 people were killed and 286 arrested in the crackdown, which came as the government ordered the dissolution of the country’s last opposition group and the shutdown of an independent newspaper. Amnesty International describing it a “blatant campaign to end all criticism of the government.”
Qatar, the richest country in the world per capita, has used that wealth in recent years to play an outsize role in regional politics.
It has taken an important back-channel role with Iran to defuse points of contention in the Syrian war. It has repeatedly brokered hostage and prisoner exchanges, paying millions of dollars to insurgent groups in the deals.
Qatar is also a sponsor of the “Four Towns” agreement in Syria, negotiated with Iran and Hezbollah, in which civilians trapped under siege by government troops or by rebel forces have been bused to other areas. The deals are hailed by some as the only way to rescue civilians, but they have been derided by others as forced displacement according to sect.
Qatar’s riches, and its ambitions to showcase itself as a modern Arab country on the world stage, have also raised tensions even while making it a major player in media and culture.
Yezid Sayigh, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon, said that the latest diplomatic actions were a more aggressive version of a standoff in 2014, when Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates pulled their ambassadors from Qatar, citing interference in their internal affairs.
That was part of the feud over Qatar’s backing of Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader in Egypt. But that confrontation did not include air and sea blockades, as it does now.
Mr. Sayigh said that the new moves had come as Bahrain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia saw an opportunity to distract from their internal troubles and reflected “bullishness” prompted by the Trump administration’s stances — on the confrontation with Iran and on a willingness to look the other way on human rights violations — “which they see as support of their views on regional threats and the best ways to respond.”
Saudi Arabia received a political and material lift from military hardware deals it signed with the United States at the time of Mr. Trump’s recent visit, Mr. Sayigh said.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are getting “no U.S. pushback” on human rights or on the Yemen intervention, he said, while “Egypt also feels off the hook with Trump, and is using the opportunity to repair ties with the Saudis, reinforce with the Emiratis and be more assertive in Libya.”
But, Mr. Sayigh warned, “Cutting relations with Qatar suggests a worrying readiness to be assertive and belligerent, which masks the countries’ deeper problems and challenges and may prove to be a case of overreach.”
Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson offered on Monday to broker the impasse in hopes of preserving the Trump administration’s efforts to create broad coalitions against Iran and terrorist groups in the Middle East.
“We certainly would encourage the parties to sit down together and address these differences,” Mr. Tillerson said.“We certainly would encourage the parties to sit down together and address these differences,” Mr. Tillerson said.
“If there’s any role that we can play in terms of helping them address those, we think it is important that the G.C.C. remain unified,” he said, adding a reference to the Gulf Cooperation Council, a group of Persian Gulf countries. Mr. Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who appeared in their first joint news conference, in Sydney, Australia, after talks with their Australian counterparts, insisted that the rupture in relations among the Arab states would not undermine the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
The remarks by Mr. Tillerson, who is in Australia with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, came on the heels of dramatic announcements by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen that they were suspending diplomatic ties, as well as air and sea travel to and from Qatar, potentially choking off access to an important United States ally. In its statement, Saudi Arabia urged “all brotherly countries and companies” to do the same. “I am confident there will be no implications,” Mr. Mattis said.
The five countries cut diplomatic ties because of an array of disputes that involved Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and its sponsorship of the satellite news channel Al Jazeera, which is often critical of the Egyptian and Saudi authorities. But the escalating confrontation between Qatar and other Sunni-led Arab states presents a fresh and unwelcome complication for the United States military, which has made strenuous efforts to forge a broad coalition against the Islamic State.
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling the decisions “unjustified.” How, for example, can the American-led air campaign include warplanes from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates if those governments will no longer allow their military representatives to be based or even to visit a major United States command base?
The split came two weeks after President Trump visited the Saudi capital, Riyadh, to offer a tight embrace of the kingdom in hopes that Saudi Arabia could help lead fellow Sunni Arab nations in a fight against extremism and, with Israel, present a united front against Shiite-led Iran. Beyond the military difficulties, a host of multinational corporations have operations in the feuding nations. A Saudi call for companies to withdraw from Qatar could present international executives with a blizzard of difficult choices about where to do business.
Indeed, Mr. Trump became so enamored of the Saudis that he cast them as the centerpiece of a possible peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians. But such a deal relied in part on the Arab world uniting behind the Saudis as an interlocutor, a prospect made far less likely by Monday’s events. Qatar is hosting the 2022 World Cup, for instance, and is building facilities for the tournament that are part of an ambitious construction boom, including creating branches of major international museums and universities.
The already sour relations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia were strained in late May when the Saudis accused Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, of calling for improved ties with Iran, the regional rival of the Saudi kingdom, and criticizing some gulf Arab states.
The Qataris insisted that the comments were the work of hackers who broke into the website of the Qatar state news agency and called for an investigation. But the Saudis rejected that explanation.
There have long been fissures between Qatar and other Sunni Arab nations. Qatar, for example, provided financial support to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which led the former government in Egypt and opposed the Egyptian military’s takeover as an illegal “coup.” Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., which consider the Muslim Brotherhood a threat to stability to the region, supported the Egyptian military’s takeover.
Mr. Tillerson and Mr. Mattis, who appeared in their first joint news conference, in Sydney, after talks with their Australian counterparts, insisted that the rupture in relations among the Arab states would not undermine the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
“I am confident there will be no implications,” said Mr. Mattis, who was privately informed of the decision earlier in the day.
But the escalating confrontation between Qatar and other Sunni Arab states, in fact, presents a fresh and unwelcome complication for the United States military, which has made strenuous efforts to forge a broad military coalition against the Islamic State.
Adding to the difficulties, American forces have important commands distributed across the feuding nations.
The American-led air war command in the fight against the Islamic State, for example, is at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Qatar is also the host for the forward headquarters of the United States Central Command, which oversees all American military operations in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
Bahrain hosts the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet, while the United Arab Emirates provides air bases that are used by the American-led coalition.
In breaking ties with Qatar, Bahrain and the U.A.E. indicated that they would follow the Saudi lead in ordering their citizens to leave Qatar.
But that raises a thorny question: How can the American-led air campaign include warplanes from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the U.A.E. if these governments will no longer allow their military representatives to be based or even visit the American-led air war command?
Beyond the military difficulties, a host of multinational corporations have operations in each of the feuding nations. The Saudi call for companies to withdraw from Qatar could present international executives with a blizzard of difficult choices about where to do business.
In Monday’s news conference, Mr. Tillerson also defended President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, saying he did not expect the choice to significantly affect relations with Australia or other nations.
“I think the president’s decision to exit the climate accord again was his judgment that that agreement did not serve the American people well,” said Mr. Tillerson, who pushed forcefully in internal discussions to remain in the climate accord.
Despite the decision to exit the treaty, Mr. Tillerson said that Mr. Trump recognizes that the issue of climate change is an important one.
Although many of Mr. Trump’s aides have refused to say whether Mr. Trump still believes that climate change is a hoax, as he stated during the campaign, his chief diplomats — including Nikki Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and now Mr. Tillerson — have insisted that the president views the issue as important.
“He’s not walking away from it,” Mr. Tillerson said, referring to the importance of addressing climate change perhaps in a new international agreement. “He’s simply walking away from what he felt was an agreement that did not serve the American people well.”
Julie Bishop, Australia’s foreign minister, said that Australian officials largely looked beyond President Trump’s tweets, in which he sometimes criticizes close American allies in ways that complicate international diplomatic efforts.
“In relation to Twitter, I understand that it has a maximum of 140 characters,” Ms. Bishop said. “So we deal with the president and his cabinet and the U.S. administration on what they do, what they achieve, what their strategies are and how we can work together in a close and deep cooperation.”
Although the Australians and Americans hailed their close ties, there were signs of strain. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia has admitted that he was “disappointed” by Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. On Monday, Mr. Mattis said that the two countries were close enough that the Australians “tell us what we need to hear, not necessarily what we want to hear.”
Mr. Tillerson also warned the nations of Asia to remain firm in their dealings with China despite China’s increasing economic clout in the region. China is Australia’s largest trading partner, and the two countries formalized a trade pact in 2015.
“China is a significant economic and trading power,” Mr. Tillerson said, but in a reference to a dispute over China’s increasingly assertive claims to sovereignty over much of the South China Sea, he added: “We cannot allow China to use its economic power to buy its way out of other problems.”