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State Department ignores Trump and bashes Saudi's Qatar blockade

The U.S. State Department yesterday issued a scathing statement on Saudi Arabia’s now two-week-old embargo on Qatar, blatantly contradicting President Trump, who weeks earlier praised the abrupt move.

“Now that it’s been more than two weeks since the embargo started, we are mystified that the Gulf states have not released to the Qataris, nor to the public, the details about the claims they are making toward Qatar,” Heather Nauert, a State Department spokesperson, told reporters Tuesday.

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The embargo was issued, according to the State Department, without giving the U.S. ally any details about the claims of its alleged ties to terrorist organizations or what it can do to help ease tensions.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain threw the region into its greatest diplomatic crisis in decades when it cut off all diplomatic ties with Qatar earlier this month. The group of Gulf countries said the decision was in response to Qatar’s alleged ties to terrorist organizations, but they failed to provide any evidence for their claims.

“At this point, we are left with one simple question,” Nauert added. “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 G.C.C. countries?” The G.C.C., or Gulf Cooperation Council, is an alliance of mostly Sunni Arab states.

Qatar claims its state news agency was hacked and a fake story featuring a Qatari emir praising Iran and Hamas was planted to sow regional discord. Russian hackers may have been behind the attack, according to an FBI inquiry, with some analysts claiming Saudi Arabia or UAE governments may have played a role in the hack.

But analysts say this confrontation was a long time coming, and takes its roots in the Gulf region’s well-known displeasure with Al Jazeera, which they allege serves as a state mouthpiece for Qatar to sow instability in the region and prop up the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. The news agency has been blocked in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain.

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Trump and the Kingdom

Trump and the The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia seem to be smitten with one another — so much so that Trump on more than one occasion seemed to side with Saudi royalty over his own administration’s advisement. At one point Trump even seemed to take credit for brainstorming the blockade.

“The nation of Qatar unfortunately has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level,” Trump told a press pool at the White House on June 9. “So we had a decision to make: Do we take the easy road or do we finally take a hard but necessary action. We have to stop the funding of terrorism. I decided … the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, meanwhile, has tried to cool the dispute from the get-go, calling for a “calm and thoughtful dialogue.” And Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has called for a resolution to what he says is a “very complex situation.”

Despite Trump’s bombast, Mattis and Tillerson appear to have prevailed over the Twitter-diplomacy president. On June 15 the U.S. announced a $12 billion deal to sell fighter jets to Qatar. And both have continued to reiterate their support for the tiny Gulf state.