President Trump has reversed course on Qatar today, speaking to the Qatari Emir on the phone and offering to help resolve the ongoing split between them and other Gulf Arab states. He was said to have emphasized the importance of all the countries in the region working together against terror.
That’s about as far as possible away from President Trump’s position only the day before, during which he not only cheered the other GCC member nations for turning on Qatar, but personally took credit for it, saying that his visit to Saudi Arabia was “already paying off.”
While White House officials insist Trump’s Tweets should be treated the same as any official press statement from them, elsewhere across the administration officials were supporting Qatar, and praising Qatar for hosting America’s largest military base in the Middle East.
Pentagon and State Department officials seemed aware from the beginning that the GCC split was potentially bad for America’s policy priorities in the region, and it seems that President Trump is back on the same page with them after what was a tremendously visible split.
