Will Trump’s ‘Economic D-Day’ Campaign Against ‘Any Country’ That Supports Iran Include Qatar, Iran’s Ally (Not America’s)? – Part I | MEMRI

Peloni:  The answer to this question will determine a great deal about Trump’s success in the region, not just in Iran.

By: Yigal Carmon | MEMRI | Aug 20, 2026

On August 19, 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on TruthSocial:

“No one has given the Islamic Republic of Iran a greater opportunity to make a Deal than me. TRAGICALLY, for them, they have failed to take it. Therefore, today, I am announcing the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY! This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale. Their navy is gone, their air force is destroyed, their military factories are now rubble, their currency is worthless, and their country is hanging by a thread. Today, I am also announcing that ANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences. Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies – It all needs to stop NOW. You know who you are. This will be an ECONOMIC D-DAY, and we need all of our Allies to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat. These maniacs are on the ropes, and these HISTORIC MEASURES will cripple them and their ability to project terror worldwide. IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON.”[1]

President Trump’s August 19, 2026 post.

Mr. President, does this “D-Day” include your enemy – not ally – Qatar? Here are just a few examples of Qatar’s enmity to the United States and support of Iran that you and the secretary of war must know, and there are many more that we will publish in the coming weeks.[2]  

1. As a new Yorker who remembers 9/11, you should know that the mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (KSM), was a former Qatari government employee. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, he was also involved in many other attacks targeting the U.S. to which he confessed. In 1996, when KSM was working in Qatar’s Department of Water and Electricity in Doha, the FBI told only the Qatari emir that they had come to arrest KSM, and the latter disappeared within hours, clearly because the information regarding his imminent arrest was leaked him to by the Qatari government. He then went on to plan 9/11.[3] In March 2003 he was arrested in Pakistan and has been held in the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay for the past 23 years, but no justice has been served – there has been no progress in his trial. We can discern the reason – if he is put on trial, he will talk about Qatar. War Secretary Pete Hegseth should know what has been happening for 23 years in the justice system of his department concerning the games being played in preventing a clear terrorist from being put on trial relating to the biggest attack on America ever. Whether Secretary Hegseth knows about it or not, he is responsible for what is happening in his department. We are approaching the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and justice ought to be served.
2. Over the past decade, the U.S. sale of advanced aerial technologies to Qatar – a close affiliate of Iran and its proxies and the foremost sponsor of jihadi terrorism worldwide – had raised fears within the U.S. Department of Defense (now the Department of War) regarding possible leakage of such technology to adversaries of the U.S. Despite these fears, the U.S. did sell to Qatar the F-15 QA, an advanced variant of the American F-15 Strike Eagle, and the AH-64E Apache attack helicopter, and is in the process of procuring an advanced variant of the MQ-9 unmanned aircraft. These are precisely the types of aircraft have been downed or crashed while on missions over Iran and the Strait of Hormuz in the current war.[4] Qatar regularly shares military and economic information with Iran,[5] and since 2010 Qatar and Iran have had a security agreement on cooperating against “terrorism,” which for them means the United States and Israel. The agreement explicitly permits the “exchange of information concerning terrorist groups and organizations, the names of their members, elements and activities.”[6] (This is also under the purview of the secretary of war).
3. In 2021, former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that in 2012, when he was president, Qatar acted as interlocutor at his request for the release of 57 IRGC personnel captured by militants in Syria. By Ahmadinejad’s account, Qatar ended up paying $57,000,000 for the ransom and Ahmadinejad thereafter tried to have his foreign minister deliver the Qataris a check for the same amount to repay them. The foreign minister told Ahmadinejad upon his return that the Qatari emir had refused the payment, saying: “I did it for my brothers. Once something is done for a brother, you do not ask for payment… send my regards to Ahmadinejad and tell him that I did this for the friendship between our two nations, for my brothers.”[7]
4. Qatar hired the company of a former CIA officer to spy on and discredit lawmakers who oppose Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, including Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Tom Cotton (R-AR), Representative Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), and former Representative Ed Royce (R-CA).[8]
5. Qatar also undermines exactly the kind of economic campaign you wish to launch. It gives Iran a major economic lifeline by allowing the Bank Saderat Iran (BSI) to operate from Doha.[9] Qatar resumed maritime trade with Iran last month, which had been suspended for only five months amid the war.[10]

Will the countries that “face tremendous economic consequences” for providing “any type of lifeline to Iran” include Qatar?