Less than two weeks after Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia and spoke of the need for Arab unity against Iran, two of the Gulf’s most prominent and ideologically similar states are at each others throats.

While received wisdom is that the Saudi led diplomatic and economic isolation of the small and wealthy state of Qatar represents a fracture in the grand anti-Iranian coalition the United States seeks to build, practically it means something less and something more at the same time.

Donald Trump spoke of the need to create a united anti-Iranian Arab front, but more crucially he said that he was neither there to lecture them on how to do it, nor would America do it for them. In other words, Trump’s speech boiled down to “here’s what to do, now go do it”.

With Saudi and Qatar at loggerheads and with many other Arab states that have hated Qatar’s sponsorship of terrorism for actual reasons (as opposed to the hypocritical and almost comical duplicity from Saudi), any attempt at building this united front has been crushed under the weight of regional economic rivalries which have been augmented by Qatar’s attempts at some sort of rapprochement with Iran.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry is staffed by deeply intelligent people, something which cannot be said for most Gulf states. Iran knows that Qatar has not suddenly developed an affinity for Iran, but rather, they see Iran as a way of putting a stick in the proverbial Saudi bicycle wheel.

Where Saudi Arabia has a decent sized but poorly trained and undisciplined armed forces, Qatar’s armed forces are so small they are numerically negligible. In the event of an actual war, both countries would have to rely heavily on Pakistani mercenaries. Pakistan’s refusal to break off ties with Qatar is a demonstrable failure for Saudi in its attempt to build a wider coalition against its neighbour.

But where does Donald Trump fit in to this? Donald Trump throughout his campaign had been critical of US involvement in the Middle East. Although his policies as President have often contradicted these sentiments, his initial feelings still often feature in his speeches.

A key section of his speech in Saudi Arabia last month is as follows,