The Secretary of Defense is unhappy that the Gulf states are focused on the campaign in Yemen that the U.S. has been enabling for almost nine months:

Testifying before the Senate Armed Forces Committee Wednesday, Carter urged Turkey to do more to “control its often porous border” with Syria and criticized Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states for being “pre-occupied by the conflict in Yemen” and not paying enough attention to the fight against IS.

Since the Obama administration has been encouraging the Saudis and the other Gulf states in their “preoccupation” in the form of fuel, weapons, and intelligence for most of the year, it is rather odd for a top administration official to start complaining about it now. If the administration didn’t want the Gulf states to be “preoccupied” with an intervention in Yemen, it could withhold its military assistance, stop making excuses for the coalition, and stop lending their campaign diplomatic and political support. Instead, the administration has unstintingly backed the Saudi-led war from the start even as it became obvious months ago that the Gulf clients were diverting their resources away from the campaign against ISIS. The U.S. is eager to “reassure” clients that are just as determined to show how useless to the U.S. they can be.

The Saudis and the other Gulf states have made clear that they would prefer to pummel and starve one of their neighbors because of exaggerated fears of Iran rather than assist in fighting ISIS. At the very least, the U.S. shouldn’t be helping them to do it. They have also made clear in their Syria policies that combating Assad is a much higher priority for them than combating jihadists is, and they have no problem supporting or at least tacitly encouraging jihadist groups as long as the jihadists are fighting elsewhere. Our Gulf clients don’t have the same priorities that the U.S. does, and our interests are diverging more and more all the time. The clients seem to know this, but Washington still doesn’t understand it.