Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt imposed a blockade on the nation of Qatar recently because of Qatar’s relationship with a number of terrorist and terror-supporting entities. These nations demanded that Qatar adhere to a 13-point plan if the blockade was to be lifted. The 13 points include some very important steps, but also some steps that no sovereign nation could ever agree to, as they would effectively make Qatar subordinate to the other nations.

The matter is important to the United States because we have major military installations in Qatar, as well as treaties that could shatter our alliance with the Gulf states if Qatar should end up at war with those states. That would profit Iran, chief of all, as it would disrupt the alliance opposing Iranian attempts at regional hegemony. (For a fuller background, see SSG’s earlier posts here and also here.)

This week, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson flew to both Qatar and Saudi Arabia to try to resolve the crisis. He was not successful. He did obtain a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) with Qatar that the Saudis apparently rejected. (Here is Qatar’s own Al Jazeera on the topic.) This MOU is not a treaty or a deal, but it is a commitment to terms that Qatar would accept if others accepted them. The Saudis apparently didn’t find the terms acceptable, but since the United States signed the MOU as well as Qatar, the Saudis will likely propose new terms that incorporate the MOU but ask for a bit more. This is diplomacy as deal-making, very much the way the Trump administration views diplomacy.

So, how to know if the final deal is a good one from the perspective of the United States? Resolving the crisis on any terms defuses the bomb threatening to blow up our regional alliances, but not every such deal is going to address America’s core interests. Our interests are not the same as those of any of the Arab nations, though some of them overlap. Thus, it is not necessary to obtain a deal that forces Qatar to submit to the whole 13 point proposal. A deal that compromises by allowing Qatar to retain its sovereignty, while obtaining the parts of the 13 points that are American interests, is acceptable.

There are really only two things that America needs to insist upon.