Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged Arab countries to mend ties after a diplomatic fissure opened between U.S. allies, just weeks after President Trump’s visit to the region.
“We certainly would encourage the parties to sit down together and address these differences, and we — if there’s any role that we can play in terms of helping them address those, we think it is important that the [Gulf Cooperation Council] remain unified,” Tillerson told reporters in Australia, where he is on diplomatic travel.
Saudi Arabia led a bloc of Gulf countries in cutting diplomatic ties with neighboring Qatar, which the Saudis accused of supporting terrorism. The split is also driven by the major regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran; the Saudis accused Qatar of aligning with the Iranian side of a civil war in Yemen.
That’s an uncomfortable fissure for the United States, which has major military operations based in both countries.
“I think what we’re witnessing is a growing list of some irritants in the region that have been there for some time, and obviously they have now bubbled up to a level that countries decided they needed to take action in an effort to have those differences addressed,” Tillerson said.
That explanation of the fight implicitly blamed Qatar for the fallout and pushed back against Iranian officials who argued that President Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia had brought controversy to the region. “The first impression of the U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to the region is the recent tension in the countries’ relations,” Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s Foreign Policy and National Security Commission, said on state media per CNN.
Tillerson maintained the war of words between Saudi Arabia and Qatar wouldn’t prevent the Arab states from cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State.
“I do not expect that this will have any significant impact, if any impact at all, on … the unified fight against terrorism in the region or globally,” he said.
