article: He's not only trying to mediate a solution to a visceral feud among America's Gulf Arab allies which threatens US national security interests. He has also been undermined by President Trump, who has publicly taken a side in the dispute and may even have helped to trigger it. At issue are the accusations - levelled by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt - that Doha supports terrorists. They've cut diplomatic and travel ties and issued a sweeping set of demands that Qatar claims are so "unrealistic" they're really aimed at forcing it to "surrender its sovereignty". Mr Trump has delegated the mess to Mr Tillerson, but that didn't stop the president from castigating Qatar at a White House press conference for having funded terrorism "at a very high level". He made the remark shortly after a visit to Saudi Arabia that so fulsomely embraced Riyadh some regional observers believe it emboldened the kingdom to take radical action on long-standing grievances against Doha. "We felt that we had Trump by our side," mused a Saudi security expert, "so let's finish this little country that's been bugging us for years." Qatar has been "bugging" its neighbours with its maverick foreign policy. They accuse it of harbouring their opponents and giving them a platform on its Al Jazeera satellite channel, especially political Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which is viewed as a particular threat by the absolute monarchies. The White House has called the tempest a "family issue", but it's not happening in a teapot; with US Mideast military assets spread out among the Gulf States, it can't avoid getting drawn in. America's al-Udeid air base in Qatar is not only the headquarters for the air war against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, but important for its ability to project power into the Indian Ocean. And the feud has thrown a spanner into the works of US Mideast policy, shattering a unified Arab front aimed at countering terrorism and confronting Iran. "This is not a local regional thing," says Hussein Ibish of the Arab Gulf States Institute. "This is not a game." This week Washington was crowded with Gulf foreign ministers making their case, and Mr Tillerson's been in the eye of the storm. His intensive engagement has the backing of the White House, an administration official insisted. "What gets the attention are the tweets and public statements," he said, but on the underlying policy, the "White House and State Department are on the same page." At times, though, it has seemed as if they weren't even reading the same book. Mr Tillerson was reportedly blind-sided and infuriated by President Trump's Rose Garden denunciation of Qatar, delivered just hours after the secretary of state had called for an end to the blockade. His aides were apparently convinced that the true author of Mr Trump's statement was the UAE ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba, a close friend of Mr Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to Mark Perry of the American Conservative. Qatari communications, on the other hand, have been channelled
summary: Rex Tillerson is facing his biggest test as secretary of state over the crisis involving the tiny nation of Qatar.