Peloni: Qatar continues to cling to its prefered position of supporting Islamist Iran, even as Iran rains down destruction on Qatar’s economic lifeline infrastructure. In a world driven by madness only rational responses are deemed to be taboo…
Screengrab via Memri.org
Since the outbreak of the war against Iran on February 28, 2026, leading Qatari media outlets, chief of them Al-Jazeera, have continued to serve as mouthpieces of the Iranian regime, despite the fact that Iran has launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Gulf states, including a few at U.S. military facilities in Qatar itself. These media outlets provide Iranian officials with an open platform, without reservation or criticism; present the Iranian narrative as fact; echo and amplify Iranian conspiracy theories; and promote pro-Iranian messaging.[1]
The pro-Iranian messaging in the Qatari media is in line with Qatar’s political stance. In the weeks leading up to the outbreak of the war against its ally Iran, Qatar sided unequivocally with Tehran—politically, diplomatically, and in the media—adopting the Iranian narrative and voicing sharp criticism of the Trump administration’s policy.[2] Since the outbreak of the war against, the emirate has strongly opposed it and called to end it.
The support for Iran in the Qatari media sparked outrage among liberal Arab journalists and commentators, who described the Qatari stance as moral “bankruptcy” and called Al-Jazeera an “Iranian channel.”
This report presents examples of Qatari media outlets acting as a propaganda mouthpiece for Iran, alongside the sharp criticism voiced across the Arab world.
Qatari Journalists And Media Outlets Disseminate Iran’s Messages
Since the beginning of the war, major Qatari media outlets have served as a platform for officials of the Iranian regime, enabling them to convey their messages directly to Arab audiences without criticism or balance. For example, on March 8 the Al-Jazeera website published, in both Arabic and English, an article by Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Esmail Baghaei, in which he called to oppose the “unjust” war “before it is too late.” He also justified his country’s attacks against regional states on the grounds that Iran had been attacked from their territory, and clarified that Iran would continue this policy.[3]
On March 17, following the assassination of Ali Larijani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Al-Jazeera’s English channel interviewed Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who said that the killing would not destabilize Iran’s political system.[4]
The London-based Qatari daily Al-Arabi Al-Jadid published a series of interviews with Iranian regime leaders, highlighting their messages in the headlines without any criticism. These messages include portraying the war on Iran as unjustified, presenting Iran as a state seeking “peaceful relations of brotherhood and cooperation” with its neighbors, and emphasizing Iran’s determination to continue fighting until “the U.S. is expelled from the region,” while depicting the U.S. bases in the Gulf states as the sole reason for Iran’s attacks on them.
Among these articles was a March 9 interview with Ebrahim Jabbari, a senior advisor to the IRGC commander, [5] and a March 15 interview with Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi. The latter offered a range of excuses for Iran’s strikes on civilian targets in the Gulf states, calling them “collateral damage” and claiming that U.S. forces had fired at Iran from their vicinity. He also advanced a conspiracy theory: that the U.S. and Israel had attacked these targets using drones that resemble Iranian ones in order to place the blame on Iran.[6] On March 16, the daily published an interview with Majlis Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, with a headline portraying Iran as a peace-seeking country.[7]
Bomb al jazeera , how many more years does this have to go on?