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WASHINGTON - Players on all sides of the Persian Gulf diplomatic crisis were in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, making their cases to a divided administration that has been unable to stop the turmoil in the strategic region.
Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani's meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson came just days after his government dismissed a list of demands from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt as an illegal attempt to limit Qatar's sovereignty and control its foreign policy.
As al-Thani and Tillerson conferred behind closed doors at the State Department, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters at his country's embassy here that the demands were nonnegotiable.
"We've made our point. We've taken our positions" and Qatar knows "what they have to do," said Jubeir, whose government has led the others in breaking relations with Qatar and limiting the isolated Persian Gulf peninsula's air, land and sea access lanes.
Later in the day, Tillerson met with Kuwaiti Minister of State Mohammad Abdullah al-Sabah. Kuwait is trying to mediate the dispute between the fellow members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, a loose confederation of six gulf states.
Jordan's King Abdullah, on a private visit to Washington, also plans to hold official meetings. His country is not a GCC member and is anxious to stay out of the dispute, but it is economically beholden to investments from oil-rich Saudi Arabia and worried that the conflict is draining attention from the fight against the Islamic State.
"We hope all the parties will continue to talk to one another in good faith," Tillerson said before his meeting with the Qatari minister. He has spent much of his time over the past three weeks trying to mediate, cajole and shame the sides into a resolution, to no apparent avail. Late last week, the State Department issued a sharply worded statement suggesting that the Saudis were using terrorism charges against Qatar as a cover for long-standing political grievances.
Saudi Arabia and the others have charged Qatar with support for terrorists and incitement against their governments. They have demanded, among other things, that Qatar expel designated terrorists, shut down the Qatari-funded Al Jazeera media organization, downgrade relations with Iran, and cancel a defense agreement with Turkey that has brought about 100 Turkish military personnel to Qatar.
"It's very simple," Jubeir said. "It's up to the Qataris to amend their behavior. And once they do, things will be worked out. But if they don't, they will remain isolated. We don't have to deal with them."
The United States is a strategic partner of all involved. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are close counterterrorism allies and major purchasers of U.S. defense items. Bahrain is home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.
Qatar hosts the regional headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, with more than 10,000 American service members stationed at an air base that is used to launch U.S. operations in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Along with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Tillerson has repeatedly called for negotiations among the parties and warned that the dispute threatened U.S. military and economic interests, as well as posing a humanitarian danger to Qatar. His position was buttressed Monday by Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who said he would not approve action on any administration requests for arms sales to GCC members until the dispute is resolved.
President Donald Trump, on a visit to Saudi Arabia last month - the first stop on his maiden overseas trip - heralded agreements for the Saudi purchase of $110 billion in U.S. weapons and indicated he considers Saudi King Salman the leader of the Arab world. In a series of tweets and public comments since the GCC dispute began within days of his departure, Trump has clearly sided with Riyadh, saying that the blockade of Qatar's border with Saudi Arabia and restrictions imposed by other countries on air and sea access were "hard, but necessary."
Four of the six GCC countries, all of which are Sunni Arab monarchies, have diplomatic and economic relations with Iran's Shiite government. Despite the tensions between them, Iran has a major commercial and business presence in the emirate of Dubai. Qatar and Iran share the world's largest natural gas field.
But Saudi Arabia and Bahrain broke relations with Iran early last year after protesters ransacked Saudi diplomatic missions in Tehran.
"When we said downgrade relations" with Iran, Jubeir said, "we said don't deal with the Revolutionary Guards," the powerful branch of the Iranian military responsible only to the country's religious leaders, "and don't deal with Iranian intelligence."
Asked about contradictions within the Trump administration, he said, "I think the issue of the mixed messages, you should address to the administration, not to me. ... I can't comment about the motives of the U.S. government."
The United States has agreed with some of the charges that terrorist financing emanates from Qatar, although both the Obama and Trump administrations have said that Qatari cooperation with counterterrorism efforts has improved. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the others are also strongly opposed to Qatari support for the Muslim Brotherhood, the transnational Muslim political organization they - and many in the Trump administration - consider a terrorist movement.
While some gulf officials have privately said there is room for negotiation in the non-terrorism demands, the public position of their governments remains unyielding. If the demands are not met in full, UAE spokesman Omar Ghobach told the BBC Tuesday, "the whole idea would be to ultimately simply disengage from Qatar. ... We'd no longer be interested in bringing Qatar back into the gulf and the Arab fold," he said.