State Department shake-up leaves Qatar hanging
President Trump’s ouster of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson knocks out a leading champion for resolving the monthslong Qatar crisis in the Persian Gulf.
In ousting his chief diplomat on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump has eliminated a key champion for ending the monthslong Gulf crisis over Qatar and left US plans to resolve the dispute in flux.
Trump’s surprise decision to replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with CIA Director Mike Pompeo sent shock waves through Washington, just a week before Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is set to visit. Tillerson had close ties with all the Gulf leaders from his four decades with Exxon Mobil, while Pompeo is largely seen as more sympathetic to Saudi criticism of Qatari ties to Islamists and Iran.
“Qatar is in trouble now, they’re going to have to give up something,” said Theodore Karasik, an analyst with Washington-based consulting firm Gulf State Analytics. “Doha may have overplayed its hand by relying too much on Tillerson. I don’t think the US can do much to settle the conflict.”
A Qatari official who spoke to Al-Monitor said the emirate, which has faced a Saudi-led embargo over alleged terror ties for the past nine months, is still figuring out how they’ll handle Pompeo, a former three-term Republican congressman from Kansas who took the helm of the spy agency in January 2017.
