As with so much else in the crisis, the line between fact and alternative fact is sometimes difficult to divine. The affair began on May 23, the date of an alleged hack of the Qatar News Agency, in which a news story was posted that cited comments purportedly made by Qatar’s Emir Tamim in support of regional Islamist movements and Iran. Soon, articles in Saudi and Emirati-owned outlets began to appear linking Qatar to a range of destabilizing state and non-state actors, portraying it as co-conspirator with Iran; one article in Al Arabiya even suggested that the emir’s palace was under guard by members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. On June 5, the Saudi- and Emirati-led bloc sundered diplomatic relations with Qatar and imposed punitive economic measures on the country—unprecedented in the 36-year history of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

All along, a key objective of the anti-Qatar campaign appears to have been winning the battle for hearts and minds in Washington, and, in particular, within a White House deemed sympathetic to the Saudis and Emiratis. One imagines that the articles associating Qatar with Iran and various Islamist groups across the Middle East were tailored with Trump officials like James Mattis and H.R. McMaster in mind—their hawkish views are aligned closely with those in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. That the media campaign against Qatar began two days after Trump’s visit to Riyadh may have encouraged officials in regional capitals to believe that the White House would take sides in the dispute.

Initially, Trump appeared to back the Saudi-Emirati position in a series of characteristically direct tweets posted on June 6 that suggested that Qatar was indeed a funder of “radical ideology,” and implied that he had discussed the issue with regional leaders during his visit to Saudi Arabia. But in the days since, the Departments of State and Defense have reaffirmed the strategic and commercial value of the Qatar partnership to U.S. interests. The June 14 confirmation of a $12-billion sale of F-15 jets to Qatar signaled that Washington was not about to abandon the country that has hosted the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command since 2003. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also advocated for a negotiated solution to the standoff, and is well aware, from his tenure at ExxonMobil, of Qatar’s importance both to global energy markets and U.S. energy companies.

What may have spurred the Saudi-led bloc to send its list of demands to the Qataris via their Kuwaiti mediators: unusually blunt criticism from State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert, who challenged the nations to back up their hitherto-generic accusations with specific examples of Qatari wrongdoing. On June 20, Nauert stated that Washington is “mystified that the Gulf states have not released to the public nor to the Qataris the details about the claims that they are making,” adding that with each passing day, “the more doubt is raised about the actions taken by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.” These comments reflected a sense of unease bubbling up within parts of the U.S. government that the standoff was an unnecessary one that complicated, if not undermined completely, Trump’s effort in Riyadh to assemble a (Sunni) Arab alliance against regional extremist groups and Iran. Washington’s patience for the dispute indeed appears to be wearing thin.