Until the late 1990s, Qatar was little more than a speck on the Middle East map that some Americans had never heard of. Today, this tiny, militarily frail Gulf state is on the tip of everyone’s tongue, and has reinvented itself as a key power broker in the Gulf region.
How did this former backwater achieve such a stunning reversal of its fortunes in the space of a mere generation? Even with a rational explanation, something about the country’s transformation from total obscurity to mega-rich regional force is so bizarre, it seems the stuff of fiction.
Part II
Qatar is ruled by an Islamic regime which has for decades been deeply embedded with the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic network spanning continents that seeks to subjugate and ultimately rule over the West.
But its leaders have perfected a double game: funding anti-American Islamist causes abroad while currying favor with Washington to ensure U.S. protection from hostile neighbors such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
In its latest bid to ingratiate itself with Washington, the Al Thani dynasty seized the prestigious role of U.S. “mediator” between Israel and Hamas—even as the same regime bankrolls and orchestrates Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood’s global network.
Awash in fantastic wealth and the soft power it garners, this two-faced regime postures as Washington’s favored “peace broker” while pumping billions of dollars into movements bent on the West’s destruction.
The brutal irony is that Qatar is the state-sponsor of terrorism that ordered Hamas to keep the hostages starved, tortured and languishing in Gaza’s dungeons. For the regime to posture as peacemakers is like the arsonist wanting to take credit for putting out the fire he himself lit and continues to fuel.
Playing mediator between Hamas and Israel is what allowed Qatar to mask its collusion with terrorists and keep them alive.
President Trump announced his intention last week to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet, critics say Qatar’s success in playing up to Washington—and the fact that so many government officials are financially and politically entangled with the Gulf state—has the potential to derail the administration’s plans regarding the Brotherhood.
Critics cite the military base the Qatari regime built for the United States in 2000 on its territory, and for which Doha foots the entire maintenance bill, as a prime example of Qatar’s shrewd campaign to make itself useful, if not indispensable to the United States.
Since 2013, Qatar’s Al Udeid—the largest U.S. military base abroad—has been the launch point for countless U.S. strikes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond. It has become central to projecting American power in the Persian Gulf, which became all the more vital after Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Costing more than $1 billion, Al Udeid was part of Qatar’s plan to lure the U.S. away from the air base in Saudi Arabia, where it had been stationed for more than a decade. The facility can house thousands of American troops and is also a regional base for Britain’s Royal Air Force.
The game plan was enormously successful, as President Trump himself testified.
“You’ve been a great ally, and you’ve helped us with a magnificent military installation and military airport, the likes of which people haven’t seen in a long while,” Trump told the Emir of Qatar at a dinner at the Treasury Department in 2019.
Al Jazeera Correspondents Doubled as Hamas Operatives
At the same time as it poses as a U.S. ally, Qatar continues to disseminate Islamist propaganda through its media giant, Al Jazeera. This network propagates Anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda disguised as “news” to 400 million viewers daily.
Al Jazeera has been exposed as more than just a Qatar-controlled news outlet. In Gaza, Israeli troops uncovered documents indicating coordination between Hamas and Al Jazeera on how to hype up Gaza casualties and cast Israel as the brutal occupier, reports Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
The Israeli military has also released captured materials showing that Al Jazeera correspondents doubled as operatives in Hamas’ military ranks, with several accompanying Hamas terrorists into Israel during the October 7 massacre.
Qatar made no attempt to hide its support for Hamas, even declaring solidarity with the terrorists who murdered, tortured, kidnapped, and incinerated innocent civilians on Oct. 7. This exposed the regime for all the world to see as the champions of barbarians and mass murderers.
Yet, Qatar not only emerged untarnished by its support for Hamas savagery but became an indispensable mediator.
Why does the United States ally itself with a nation that supports and celebrates Islamist terror, serving as the financial home of the Muslim Brotherhood?
Gas Riches Transformed Qatar
The mystery unravels as one turns back history’s pages to 1997 when Qatar suddenly found itself sitting atop a virtual goldmine—the world’s largest natural gas field. American and European energy giants, such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, quickly developed the technology to exploit liquefied natural gas (LNG) (a process making gas more compact and easier to transport.)
Pipelines were laid, and LNG exports to Asia began, sending Qatar’s economic fortunes soaring far beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.
“Money gave the Al Thani ruling family an opportunity to follow the playbook long used by Persian Gulf rulers: seeking a foreign patron to guarantee their security. Instead of the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain, Qatar turned toward Washington,” writes the Free Press in a landmark report entitled, How Qatar Bought America, by Frannie Block and Jay Solomon.
It would hard to find a modern parallel for the influence Qatar has built in the United States. Through lavish spending on Western education and politics, a state with barely 300,000 citizens has learned to sway U.S. and global opinion even as it propagates Islamist ideology throughout society.
One of the crowning touches of this campaign was its gift of a $400 million Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet to be refurbished for President Trump’s use as Air Force One (and then transferred to his presidential library.) “I think it’s a great gesture from Qatar. I appreciate it very much,” the president said about the Qatari jet. “A free, very expensive airplane—why would anybody turn it down?” But of course nothing is free. All gifts come with strings attached. The “palace in the sky” is no exception.
The airplane deal was signed off by Attorney General Pam Bondi. She used to work at a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm that received $115,000 a month from Qatar to fight human trafficking, according to a 2019 contract quoted by The Free Press. Others in the Trump administration also have business ties to Qatar, the investigative report found. President Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, led lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs when it represented Qatar’s embassy in Washington. FBI Director Kash Patel worked as a consultant for Qatar.“ And then there is Steve Witkoff, president Trump’s longtime friend and senior adviser and Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. Witkoff is also a beneficiary of Qatar’s seemingly endless wealth,” the Free Press document attests. “The Gulf State’s sovereign wealth fund bought out Witkoff’s faltering investment in New York’s Park Lane Hotel for $623 million,”
The influence-buying operation in Washington targets congressmen on both sides of the aisle.
In one example, during a Senate subcommittee hearing on anti-Semitism in late March, Roger Marshall, a GOP senator from Kansas, lashed out at Charles Asher Small of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP).
Small had criticized Qatar for its support of Hamas and its ties to Iran and Afghanistan, sparking an inflammatory retort from Sen. Marshall.
“It’s interesting, the prejudice that I hear coming out of your mouth,” Marshall fumed. “Of the 120,000 people evacuated from Afghanistan. . . 60,000 of them came through Qatar. Without Qatar, we would have had thousands more deaths.” Compare that statement with an earlier pronouncement from Marshall in 2019, in which he slammed Qatar’s “blind eye” with regard to terrorism, saying that Doha’s willful blindness undermines American security. Marshall called into question the long-term wisdom of keeping the U.S.-operated base in the Gulf country. What changed the senator’s mind about Qatar?
As documented by the Free Press using lobbying records, lobbyists for Qatar began contacting Marshall’s office starting in 2022, and invited him to visit Qatar. The lobbyists helped pay for Marshall’s meeting with Qatar’s ruler in 2023, at which officials emphasized to the senator Qatar’s benevolent role in helping to evacuate Americans caught in Afghanistan.
Is it any wonder that this relentless lobbying produced a desirable outcome for the Qatari regime?
Hundreds of Millions for Image-Laundering
Another incident illustrates the extravagant amounts of money Qatar tosses around in order to launder its image in the wake of recent scandals threatening to blow the lid off the regime’s corruption.
One of these involved foreign workers in Qatar, who comprise about 90 percent of the population. The regime drew scathing criticism for exploiting migrant workers involved in building soccer stadiums for the 2022 World Cup hosted by the country, and keeping them in appalling living conditions.
Human-rights groups and European media equated the mistreatment of migrant workers with slave labor, alleging that thousands had died building the stadium. The scandal, exposed by the Washington Post, captured international headlines, deeply embarrassing the Qatari regime.
Doha poured millions into U.S newsrooms around this time to clean up its muddied name. In one example, the Al Thani family gave $50 million to the conservative news site Newsmax. The paper’s news anchors and writers were instructed to soften their coverage of Qatar, reports Block and Solomon in “How Qatar Bought America.” Qatar’s image laundering operation kicked in again following the October 7 Hamas atrocities, after headlines reported Hamas leaders were being sheltered in Qatar, enjoying luxury accommodations, and that senior members of Qatar’s royal family expressed their support for the marauding terrorists.
Facing damaging press coverage, the Qatari regime scrambled to burnish its image as a loyal American ally—masking the reality that it was sheltering Hamas leaders and emboldening them to keep the hostages in captivity.
Millions of dollars from Qatar poured into America’s newsroom during this time. Federal records, reviewed by the Free Press, show that Doha invested about $570,000 in “digital advertising aimed at positive messaging” of Qatar.
$170,000 went to The New York Times; $110,000 to The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, $60,000 to Google and Meta, and more than $70,000 to NJI Media, a Virginia-based ad agency tasked with influencing public perception of the mini Gulf State. One of Qatar’s newest lobbyists is Washington Reporter co-founder Garrett Ventry, who was getting paid $80,000 a month to “promote a positive image” of Qatar. As per The Free Press, the paper is funded by more than $1 million from prominent backers, including Omeed Malik, the financier of Tucker Carlson’s new media venture.
“Qatar’s rulers may drape themselves in the costume of “mediators” and “moderates,” but the mask has slipped, writes a Jerusalem Post op-ed. “They are ideological fanatics whose loyalty lies with the Brotherhood, whose alliances include Iran, and whose money fuels Hamas. They are not partners—they are patrons of terror and destabilization.”
“Qatar’s billions are not harmless investments. They are weapons,” the author, Jose Lev Alvarez, writes. They have already bought silence from academics, politicians, and cultural elites.”
These shrewd politicians are laying the groundwork, he said, for a future where Qatari interests—not Western values—dominate our democracies.
“Doha should be treated not as a privileged ally but as what it truly is: the financier of Islamist terror and the greatest Trojan horse in the West.”
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Fatal Flaw May Doom Plan to Defang Muslim Brotherhood
President Trump’s move to designate certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as terrorist entities suffers from what critics believe is a critical weakness: the failure to address the role of the Brotherhood’s main supporters—Qatar and Turkey.
Both countries have remained solid backers of Hamas even after Oct. 7, and their broadcasting apparatus, especially Qatar’s, pro-Hamas and pro-Brotherhood views.
The president last week instructed the secretaries of state and treasury to deliver a report within 30 days addressing whether any “Muslim Brotherhood chapters or subdivisions” meet the legal criteria for designation as terrorist groups, with a final decision to follow within 45 days. The order specifically requires evaluation of the movement’s branches in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. Glaringly, it omits Qatar and Turkey as key sponsors of the organization.
The question left unaddressed by Trump’s planned executive order is how to stop these governments from funding terrorist groups aligned with the Brotherhood. Critics argue that without confronting Qatar’s longstanding financial and ideological support for the Brotherhood, the administration’s new strategy risks being toothless and ineffective.
The problem is, Washington continues to believe in the ‘carrot and stick approach.’ Crack down on the jihadists while offering them economic prosperity. Yet the belief that prosperity can moderate jihadist ideology seriously misses the mark, writes JNS editor Jonathan Tobin.
“The assumption is that if you offer Islamists economic opportunity, a chance at a better life, they will drop their commitment to holy war and join the ‘family of nations,’ he writes.
“This is wishful thinking. The jihadists of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran do not prioritize prosperity. They want victory. They want the destruction of Israel and the submission of the West.”
Passion for Jihad Overrides All
A recent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) poll of Gazans, cited by JNS, showed that an overwhelming majority do not want Hamas to lay down its weapons to end the war, even after months of suffering the ravages of war.
To the Western mind, this is incomprehensible. If Hamas disarms, Gazans could finally liberate themselves from a barbaric regime, rebuild and attain a better life. But Gazans overwhelmingly choose continued conflict over economic revival, because the passion for jihadist dogma apparently outweighs the longing for economic wellbeing. “This same misunderstanding of [jihadist psychology] underlies U.S. policy toward Iran,” writes Tobin. “When President Donald Trump said that he would allow Tehran to continue selling oil to China ‘to rebuild its economy’ after the 12-day war with Israel, he seemed to believe that the regime’s priority was infrastructure and jobs.”
“In reality, Iran has used the proceeds to buy new fighter jets and air-defense systems, and to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah.” The notion that jihadists can be lured by money into moderation is a dangerous fantasy, the writer maintains. “Their ambitions are religious, not economic. Until the West absorbs this truth, it will continue to enable jihadist regimes.”
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Are America’s Education Departments for Sale?
By some accounts, Qatar has poured over $600 billion into academia, in essence purchasing the Middle East studies departments at many prominent universities.
Harvard, Georgetown, Cornell, Texas A&M, Northwestern, and Carnegie Mellon—each has received tens or even hundreds of millions from Doha,” attests The Free Press. These are not “gifts” in the usual sense; they are essentially bribes dressed as endowments, shaping curricula, ensuring that these schools are bastions of anti-Israel hostility, as well as purveyors of anti-American and anti-Western dogma.
Even young children are targeted. Qatar Foundation International (QFI), the U.S. arm of the Qatar Foundation, has given out tens of millions of grants to K–12 public schools to fund Arabic language and culture programs from New Haven, Connecticut, and Amherst, Massachusetts, to Arizona and California, write Block and Solomon in their landmark investigative report “How Qatar Bought America.” “QFI gave nearly half a million dollars to the Minneapolis Public School District to fund salaries for Arabic teachers. The contracts often stipulate that teachers must attend QFI professional-development training as part of the grant,” the report detailed.
QFI donated more than $1 million to the New York City Department of Education from 2019 to 2022, including support for an elementary school in Brooklyn to teach young students Arabic through art, the report continued.
The classroom hung a map of the “Arab world,” which excluded Israel. The map was removed only after The Free Press published its article exposing this brazen Islamist propaganda.
