Trump appears to suggest Mideast leaders followed his advice and cut ties with Qatar
Source: Politico
By POLITICO STAFF 06/06/2017 08:58 AM EDT
President Donald Trump on Tuesday weighed in on the escalating dispute between Qatar and several Arab nations, appearing to suggest on Twitter that leaders in the Middle East followed his lead and cut ties with Qatar.
During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look! Trump tweeted. His tweet follows moves by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to sever ties with Qatar for allegedly supporting terrorism through the Muslim Brotherhood.
All five countries are key allies in the U.S. fight against terrorism, and on Monday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson downplayed any effect the diplomatic break from Qatar would have on U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The U.S. currently has a major U.S. airbase in Qatar.
During his trip to the Middle East last month, Trump discussed the global fight against terrorism. During his visit to Saudi Arabia, he spoke of honestly confronting the crisis of Islamic extremism and the Islamists, and Islamic terror of all kinds.
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Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/06/trump-appears-to-suggest-mideast-leaders-followed-his-advice-and-cut-ties-with-qatar-239179
UltravioletDingo
(65 posts)It's so easy!
Eugene
(61,900 posts)http://www.reuters.com/article/us-gulf-qatar-idUSKBN18X0KF
Link to tweet
... as told to him by Saudi f---ing Arabia?
Tanuki
(14,918 posts)(Unrelated point....where the hell did he pick up his bizarre habit of capitalizing random nouns in the middle of sentences? Didn't any of his teachers ever point out that this is non-standard ad stigmatizing?)
https://www.google.com/amp/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-saudi-arabia-extremist-funding-terrorism-gulf-states-qatar-isis-al-qaeda-labour-a7773451.html%3famp
"Jeremy Corbyn has said the difficult conversations Theresa May wants to have about Islamist extremism should start with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states [which] have funded extremist ideology.
........
He criticised her alleged suppression of a report into foreign funding of UK-based extremism which was originally due to be published in 2016 but was held back over due to its "sensitive" contents." (More at link)
I am not at all educated about the state of the Middle East, but don't we have a large military base in Quatar?
karynnj
(59,504 posts)So, if this was a goal of his, you would have thought he might have thought about the fact that we have an airbase. He might further have questioned WHY we put the airbase there - vs Saudi Arabia. (Hint - one reason OBL first attacked the US was anger over the US having bases in the holyland , SA. ) Note that another base is in unstable Turkey.
I assume that the US ultimately may need to move the airbase (to where I have not a clue, but it will be at great cost!) OR we need to defend Qatar.
If you watched the Obama administration dealing with this area of the world, it was clear everything was an extremely delicate balance. It was clear we needed to stop ISIS which was on the march in 2014. We pushed Iraq to select a PM who would be more inclusive - a relative term - than Maliki. The coalition supported Iraq as it has taken back almost all of its land from ISIS. It was much much trickier in Syria, which was in the middle of a Civil War, where we were against Assad, but also against both ISIS and Al Nusra, which was allied with AQ. (One observation - IF stopping ISIS had also been Russia's main goal - they and Assad were better positioned to take back land in Syria than we were. Instead, Russia mainly ignored them, while fighting the Civil War.)
IronLionZion
(45,457 posts)I would not want to be stationed there while Trump is spewing BS. He puts our soldiers in danger of attack.
Phoenix61
(17,006 posts)Couldn't possibly be that they exported one-third of the world's global trade in LNG (liquefied natural gas) per the International Gas Union World LNG 2015 report.
http://www.igu.org/sites/default/files/node-page-field_file/IGU-World%20LNG%20Report-2015%20Edition.pdf
dchill
(38,505 posts)karynnj
(59,504 posts)Not to mention, it ignores that Saudi Arabia, in addition to having cool ( ) sword dances, itself sponsors more terrorism. In fact, their problem with Qatar might have more to do with Qatar having relations with Iran. What was clear is that Trump wants to further inflame the Shia/Sunni conflict.
Not to mention, this goes against Trump's claims to having created this "new" Arab unity. This ignores that the Arab League, which currently has 22 member nations. It started in 1945. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_League