WASHINGTON _ As his top advisers sought to defuse an escalating crisis in the Middle East, President Donald Trump Friday doubled down on his criticism of Qatar, a key U.S. ally, calling it a longtime "funder of terrorism at a very high level."
Trump again took credit for what he described as a growing movement to fight Islamist-inspired terrorism in Sunni Arab countries. He did not acknowledge any responsibility, however, for adding to the tension with criticisms that his aides have been trying to counter.
To that end, just an hour before Trump's comments at a news conference, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on Saudi Arabia and three other Arab nations to ease their recent crackdown on Qatar.
Tillerson said the decision of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt to cut diplomatic and economic relations with the neighboring, energy-rich emirate was having dire humanitarian consequences and hurting U.S. military operations fighting Islamic State militants.
Qatar is the site of the largest U.S. military base in the region and the launching point of numerous U.S. Air Force bombing missions.
"Our expectation is that these countries will immediately take steps to de-escalate the situation and put forth a good faith effort to resolve their grievances they have with each other," Tillerson said, reading from a statement. He called for a "calm and thoughtful dialogue" to ease the crisis, which he said was causing food shortages, separation of families and loss of business in Qatar.
Trump, however, did not seem to be on the same page, and a short time later contradicted his secretary of state, again praising Saudi Arabia, "my friend King Salman" and the "truly historic summit" that the Saudi ruler hosted in Riyadh.
Trump also made an explicit commitment to the NATO's core mutual defense obligation, weeks after he declined to do so at a meeting of alliance members in Brussels.
"I am committing the United States to Article 5," Trump said.
By siding so vociferously with Saudi Arabia, the president's latest foray into Middle East diplomacy has managed to roil allies and adversaries alike, and inflame tension between the Persian Gulf region's two powerhouses, Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran.
Veteran diplomats called Trump's actions confused or simplistic at best _ and at worst, reckless and dangerous. They said the contradictions undermined Trump's broader desire to form a coalition of Arab states that would fight Islamic State, isolate Iran and help make peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Administration officials "have been all over the map," said Michele Dunne, a former specialist at the State Department and director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Saudis "have long wanted to bring Qatar to heel ... but it is not in the interests of the United States at all."
Many experts saw the decision to turn on Qatar as an action promoted by Saudi Arabia to punish the tiny emirate for its independence and efforts to influence foreign policy matters. Unlike more authoritarian Gulf states, Qatar reacted positively to the Arab Spring of anti-regime protest movements in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere, and has been more proactive in reaching out to Israel, still officially shunned by most of the Arab world. It also welcomed establishment of the Al Udeid U.S. military base.
Qatar's capital city, Doha, is also the home bas of the Al Jazeera international news network, highly regarded in much of the Arab world and also quite critical of Riyadh and other authoritarian regimes. That earned it enmity in Saudi Arabia, which ordered its offices closed as part of the freeze on Qatar.
This international activism has been a mixed bag. Qataris have supported anti-authoritarian groups but also pro-Islamic groups, which in some parts of the region are the same thing.
So Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt riles the government of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, who considers the Islamic political and social organization to be a terrorist front.
Tillerson, with Defense Secretary James Mattis, worked in the past few days to repair the rift and were holed up part of the time with Trump, even during the Senate hearing Thursday of fired FBI Director James Comey. Trump also was on the telephone to several Gulf leaders Thursday and Friday, including the emir of Qatar, all in an attempt to avoid further escalation. The latest of those was Friday with el-Sissi, to whom Trump expressed "the importance of maintaining unity among Arab countries," the White House said.
In addition to offending Qatar, Trump's efforts to boost the Saudis and other Sunni nations against Iran _ while not completely out of line with past U.S. policy _ does end what had been efforts under President Barack Obama to promote a soft rapprochement with Tehran to bolster moderates, and keep Iran in check with an international agreement to limit its nuclear ambitions.
"This poses serious problems for the United States and brings to the fore the battle of wills between the Saudis and Iran," Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East envoy for Democratic and Republican administrations, said Friday. "And all of this is swirling about when the administration is looking for coherence in policy while trying to assembly this effective (Sunni Arab) coalition."
Referring to the mixed signals from Trump and his government, Miller, now a distinguished fellow at the Wilson Center, said, "Who knows what the debates inside the administration have been on this?"
The Pentagon has said the conflict with Qatar has not interrupted the daily air attacks organized by the U.S. military out of the Al Udeid base. But Friday, spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said: "The evolving situation is hindering our ability to plan for longer-term military operations.
"Qatar remains critical for coalition air operations in the fight against ISIS and around the region," Davis said, using an acronym for Islamic State.
By favoring the Saudis over Qatar, Trump is ignoring those who have been equally supportive of terrorism abroad, critics say.
Despite Riyadh-Washington economic connections and intelligence-sharing over the years, the U.S. has "largely ignored some of the malevolent influence that the Saudis and Saudi money plays in the region and worldwide when it comes to the spread of these very violent terrorist groups," said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a leading congressional critic of Saudi Arabia.
"We are not well-served by a U.S. policy that weighs in so definitively on the side of the Sunnis in the growing set of proxy wars between Sunnis and Shiite," he said. It ultimately does not serve U.S. national security interests to alienate Sunnis and bring about more radicalization and humanitarian disaster, as in Yemen, he said.
Murphy is a sponsor of a bipartisan Senate resolution that would prohibit part of a U.S. sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia because of the killing of civilians in Yemen, where the U.S. backs a Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-supported Houthi rebels.
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(W.J. Hennigan and Michael A. Memoli in Washington contributed to this report.)
