Yesterday I talked about Qatar, purported US ally in the Middle East, home of CENTCOM's forward base in the region, and why suddenly Saudi Arabia turned on it along with basically every other Gulf State and blockaded it on Monday. None of it made sense, it was way too complex to slice up in such a short period of time, and it was basically completely bonkers to the point of endangering the region.
Today we find out that, because Tang the Conqueror can't keep his damn mouth shut on Twitter, there's a significant chance that Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia last month meant Riyadh simply talked Trump into giving them the green light for screwing over Doha with "state sponsor of terrorism" as an excuse, completely ignoring the Saudis doing the same thing on the Sunni side.
President Trump took to Twitter Tuesday morning, saying that during his trip to the Middle East, he warned about funding "radical ideology" and leaders there "pointed to Qatar."
Mr. Trump's comments come as Saudi Arabia and three other Arab countries have officially severed ties with Qatar and moved to cut off land, sea and air routes to the energy-rich nation that is home to a major U.S. military base, accusing it of supporting regional terror groups.
Mr. Trump issued additional tweets, saying his visit to the region was "already paying off" and that "perhaps this will be the beginning of the end of the horror of terrorism."
Literally the Saudis told Trump that Qatar was the "real bad guy" on the peninsula and Trump of course completely believed them, so much so that now we're openly supporting the blockade of Qatar until further notice. The Saudis couldn't be happier. Iran couldn't be more pissed off.
I guess what the Qatari government really should have done instead of that CENTCOM base is to put a Trump Hotel in Doha like the Saudis have.
This is how we conduct our foreign policy now, whoever gets Trump's ear can use that access to go after any of our other allies that they may not like. Qatar vs Saudi Arabia is bad enough, but let's magnify that to say, India vs Pakistan and you begin to see the potential downside of this mess.
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