The Gulf Crisis and America’s Opportunistic Position

We as a people do not learn from our experience and errors. The Western world has tricked us and exploited the ignorance of our people and the mistakes of our leaders time and time again over the last 100 years. Britain, France, and America have plundered our wealth, conspired against us, destroyed our homeland and labeled us as the aggressor; the West has established the Zionist state in Palestine and protected it politically, backed it financially and supplied it with the latest weapons to defeat us and occupy our land. Yet, we continue to bury our head in the sand like ostriches, trusting them, following their orders, and conspiring with them against our brothers and countries!

America is the strongest country in the world, and the most hostile to us and our causes, at the forefront of which is the issue of Palestine. In its dealings with our people and states, it relies on the "divide and conquer" policy that was evident at the Arab-Islamic Trump meeting held in Riyadh about two months ago. The aim was to exploit us politically, extort us financially and increase the differences between our countries. Trump has acquired the hundreds of billions of dollars he wanted; he has publicly asked our countries to stand with him and Benjamin Netanyahu against Iran and to fight terrorism for him; and he has exploited the chronic differences between Qatar and the Gulf Cooperation Council in order to create a crisis between them and to continue to blackmail them and have his way with the political resolution.*

After the meeting, Trump said that some Arab leaders told him about Qatar's role in supporting terrorism and that he encouraged Gulf rulers to confront it. Did Trump need Arab rulers to tell him about the countries involved in terrorism? Certainly not. He knows his industry and its financiers; but, he lied to provoke a Gulf crisis and he succeeded! If America’s CIA does not know which countries are involved in terrorism, who does? The man exploited the differences between Qatar and the GCC countries in order to put pressure on all of them and then extort them. He publicly criticized Qatar and asked it to change its policies and stop supporting terrorism! When the dispute erupted and was publicized, Trump and his administration supported the position of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt against Qatar, and asked Qatar to respond to their demands.

After Trump returned to Washington from Riyadh, Congress approved the sale of $20 billion worth of fighter jets and weapons to Qatar. After Qatar paid its billions, the U.S. administration suddenly changed its position. It said Qatar was fighting terrorism; it said that the Gulf states must resolve their differences through dialogue; and then it intervened as mediator to resolve the crisis. Trump has contacted the leaders of the concerned countries. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has visited the region several times, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Sen. Bob Corker, has supported Qatar's position and described Riyadh's actions against Doha as “a rookie mistake"!

Trump and his administration set the fire, deliberately making contradictory statements, waiting for the flames to grow, and then intervened as mediators to reap the rewards, their eyes focused on the unrestrained Arab oil and gas dollars. America is working to prolong the conflict. It manages the crisis to serve its interests and exploits it to sell more weapons to the oil states, to extort them financially and politically, and to increase and deepen Arab divisions in support of its policy of impeding Iran and helping Israel achieve its objectives.

What is happening now among the GCC countries is proof of its failure to deal with its issues, and it is better for them to resolve their differences with dialogue, and not to allow America to exploit them and ignite more fires in the region. America knows no one's loyalty, it believes only in its interests, and lies in the name of justice, equality and support for democracy. It will betray the Gulf rulers and abandon them just as it has betrayed and abandoned others when its interests demand it!

*Editor’s note: The Gulf Cooperation Council is a regional intergovernmental political and economic union consisting of all Arab states of the Persian Gulf, except for Iraq. Its member states are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.