Time to end America’s toxic relationship with Qatar – opinion

Qatar supports Hamas, houses Taliban leaders, and funds antisemitism on American campuses, so why is it still America’s ‘indispensable’ Middle East partner?

By ERIC R. MANDEL | JUNE 12, 2025

President Donald J. Trump and Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani at the United Nations General Assembly.  (Photo by The White House from Washington, DC – 21687022_1434965293257866_1733024928180559512_o, Public Domain)

Why does the United States defend the mega-rich, tiny state of Qatar, a nation that supports and applauds Islamist terror, is the financial home of the Muslim Brotherhood, and uses its education-focused Qatari Foundation to sway the minds of American students beginning in kindergarten?

And how is it that on October 7, when Doha was exposed for the world to see as the champion and economic supporter of Hamas, it not only emerged unscathed in its support for a terror group that raped, beheaded, tortured, kidnapped, and incinerated innocent civilians but became an indispensable mediator?
If this is news to you, read on. If you are in a position of influence or a member of Congress, it’s time to do something to protect America and stop listening to the transparent and self-serving rationalizations that all have dollar signs behind them.

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For those who do not know, Qatar supports and has given sanctuary to the rogues gallery of Salafists, many with American blood on their hands, including the Taliban, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and ISIS. You get the picture.
An investigative report from The Free Press entitled “How Qatar Bought America” hit the nail on the head:
“How did a refuge of Islamist radicalism… manage to put itself smack-dab in the center of global diplomacy and so successfully ingratiate itself within the Trump administration? What we found is that no obstacle, no bad headline, is too big for Qatar’s money. Qatar has spent almost $100 billion to establish its legitimacy in Congress, American colleges and universities, US newsrooms, think tanks, and corporations… its lobbyists have the connections needed to open all the right doors in Washington,” it reported.

Transacting with  a state sponsor of terror

LET’S FOCUS on four topics: Why the Al Thani monarchy believes it has us over a barrel with its multi-billion dollar “gift” to America; the Al Udeid Air Base; the Qatari Foundation influencing the minds of American children, and the Al Thani controlled media giant, Al Jazeera, propagating anti-American, anti-Western, and antisemitic propaganda disguised as news to 400 million viewers daily.

For years, I chastised European nations, especially France, for wanting to do business with state sponsors of terror – most notably the Islamic Republic of Iran – for economic benefits, as well as to placate their growing Islamist population. At times, it seemed like France would sell its grandmothers for a profit.
Now, the US is following the French and other Europeans as we, too, engage in a transactional arrangement with a state sponsor of terror, Qatar, the longtime supporter of Sunni terrorists and the Muslim Brotherhood movement.
The Qataris have undermined the bedrock of American democracy, its higher institutions of learning, with tens of billions of dollars, and have now moved into indoctrinating its very impressionable K-12 students. No business deal, no matter how many trillions of dollars, should be able to buy the ability to influence the American educational system.
The US House started well, passing the DETERRENT Act in 2025, aiming to enhance transparency of foreign gifts and closing reporting loopholes. More needs to be done to protect our students and frame this Islamist influence as undermining our national security.
Democrats and Republicans who do not profit from Qatari largesse and lobbying should take aim at the Qatari Foundation, whose narratives are aligned with Qatari interests. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies found a correlation between Qatari funding and increased antisemitic incidents on campuses. Institutions receiving undisclosed funds from Qatar reportedly experienced, on average, 250% more antisemitic incidents compared to those that do not.
According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, which identifies the “spread of ideologically motivated threats and disinformation,” Qatar was the largest donor to American higher education. Meanwhile, the Qatari emir’s mother, who chairs the Qatar Foundation, publicly praised arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar on social media.

American independence – from Qatar

CONGRESS SHOULD create legislation to target the Qatar Foundation as well as the other primary nefarious influence on US education, China, to end their financial support and influence on American education.

It should also craft laws to limit the amount of money a foreign government can use to lobby Congress. Tens of millions of dollars and the employment of former congressional aides to gain access to the halls of power undermine our democracy and should be considered a serious security threat. This means updating the Foreign Agents Registration Act to ensure heightened transparency of foreign influence in US political, public opinion, and policy processes and limit its reach.
Next, the US should look to build other Middle Eastern bases besides Al Udeid. The Emirates, a much more reliable American partner not aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, is interested and would foot the bill. Wouldn’t it be nice to have another military option in a nation that is not in bed with Iran and the panoply of Sunni jihadists?
When I mentioned this to Qatari officials, they went apoplectic, as they think America owes them. Qatari animus toward the Emirates and the Saudis, who fear the Islamism that the Qatari government funds, supports, and gives sanctuary to, is well known.
Once we gain some independence from Qatar, we can focus on pressuring the emir to change the tone of his Al Jazeera network, which actively undermines the interests of the US as well as its allies from Saudi Arabia to Israel. Their claim that the media outlet is separate from the Qatari government shouldn’t be taken seriously.
If the US does not have fundamental values that we strive to live by, our experiment in democracy will be destined for the dustbin of history. Without considering allies, American ideals, or long-term security consequences, transactional relationships alone are a losing formula.
The appearance of the president’s family and associates wheeling and dealing in the Middle East is unseemly. It makes us seem corrupt and unexceptional rather than the “shining city on a hill.”
When America is perceived as strong, balancing pragmatism with principles and executing economic transactions that consider security interests, America is respected. It creates the conditions to lead and influence the world as the principal democratic superpower, fostering the conditions for freedom and stability in the world.
Without demanding fundamental change in Qatari nefarious activities, such as financially supporting Islamism or giving sanctuary to radical groups like Hamas, the administration’s strategy, based overwhelmingly on economics, leaves America without influence, respect, and aligned with terror-supporting states in future years.
The writer is the founder of the Middle East Political Information Network and the senior security editor of The Jerusalem Report. He regularly briefs members of Congress, their foreign policy aides, and the State Department.
June 12, 2025 | 5 Comments »

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  1. Ardie Geldman on FB:

    COMMENTARY MAGAZINE

    JUNE 12, 2025 DAILY NEWSLETTER

    We’re Blind to Islamism

    By Abe Greenwald

    Part of the backlash against the Iraq War and the War on Terror is that Americans stopped talking about Islamist ideology. There’s a serious problem with our public discourse when people are pontificating about Hamas or Iran without even factoring in their overarching theological motivations.

    Much of this began with Barack Obama. He deliberately tried to eradicate Islamism from any conversation about U.S. foreign policy. It’s one of his more enduring successes. Obama prided himself on pragmatism, and he treated Iran as if all it wanted was a little more respect from U.S. Thus began the formation of a great blind spot.

    Fast forward to the present, and you’ll see that accepting this blind spot has become a default institutional position in the West. This is from an explainer article titled “What’s behind Iran’s long tussle with the United States?” and published today by Reuters:

    When Iranians overthrew the Shah in 1979, the Islamic revolutionaries who took over accused the CIA of having trained the Shah’s secret police and vowed to battle Western imperialism in the region, branding America “the Great Satan.”

    Revolutionary students seized the American embassy and took dozens of diplomats and other staff hostage for more than a year, ending a strategic alliance that had shaped the region for decades.

    As if Ayatollah Khomeini had been some kind of sociology professor whose chief motivation was anti-imperialism and whose primary complaint against the United States was the alleged actions of the CIA. And his students, I suppose, rose up in an act of anti-colonial solidarity.

    The article never touches on religion.

    It is true that the Islamic Republic of Iran branded America “the Great Satan” because of imperialism—Iranian imperialism, which is driven by religious doctrine. It’s the same doctrine behind the regime’s establishing sharia in the country—its ban on women showing their hair, its morality police force, its hanging of gay Iranians from cranes, its fatwa on Salman Rushdie—and its vow to wipe Israel off the map.

    Iran hates America because Iran is a fanatical theocracy that exists to create a global Islamic revolution. Khomeini was, in fact, a teacher. He was a revered teacher of theology before he became the leader of Shi’ite Islam.

    His anti-imperialist rhetoric was part of a very deliberate effort to appeal to non-Islamist enemies of the shah and the West. Here’s Walter Laqueur, in the March 1979 issue of COMMENTARY.

    Fundamentalist Islam, like all fundamentalist religion, has always been xenophobic and intolerant toward infidels; thus, by a stretch of the imagination, it could pass as “anti-imperialist.” The fact that Khomeini and his colleagues wanted to replace the Shah’s system by another autocracy, that they envisaged a state dominated by the clergy and run according to the principles of the Shariet, the Islamic law, was of course a little inconvenient for their Western sympathizers. In other countries a movement of this kind would have been branded as “clericofascist,” but in Iran in the 1970’s it became an important, if somewhat unreliable and capricious, ally of the Left.

    The regime has kept up that effort ever since. Meanwhile, Iran has become the greatest—almost the only—imperialist power of the present age. It took effective control of, or set up outposts in, a handful of Middle Eastern countries and is contesting for control of others.

    One of the many frustrations of the post–October 7 world is that alleged voices of authority have no idea what they’re talking about. This is in part because they’re not talking about Islamism.

    Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.

  2. I would go one step further.
    It is high time for China, Russia and the West to force Genocidal Islam to reform willingly or unwillingly!
    Qatar owns most of what is worth in France and probably in GB and Belgium! Even the EU Congress is corrupt by Qatar.

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  3. It is curious to me why Trump has at least 3 registered foreign agents in his administration.

    If one were to ask the question as to why the deep state has faced zero accountability under Trump, it’s likely important to realize that the attorney general and the head of the FBI are both registered foreign agents to Qatar. Pamela Bondi and Kash Patel are both foreign agents to Qatar.

    Susie Wiles is also a registered foreign agent. She worked for Pfizer and Ballard Partners. Who else worked for Ballard Partners? Pamela Bondi.

    Who created the smear that took Matt Gaetz down?
    Who decided to replace him with Pamela Bondi?

    Given the article above, and the details of Qatar’s malign influence on the US, its normalization of Jew hatred, isn’t it odd that President Trump, someone supposedly friendly to Israel, would hire two people who are registered foreign agents for Qatar? In addition, if Trump were serious about accountability, which he seemed to be on the campaign trail and in many texts messages since he got elected, why would he hire people on the payroll of a country that spends billions of dollars on anti-American propaganda and on destroying America in secret?

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    • Lutnick is a World Economic Forum member. Lee Zeldin and Witkoff who was bailed out of a hotel sale by Qatar are also connected. And there are now two terrorists in his religious group headed by Christian heretic Paula White.

      Two former US jihadists, one trained at Lashkar-e-Taiba’s terror camp in Pakistan, have been appointed to the White House Advisory Board of Lay Leaders under Donald Trump. Ismail Royer, convicted for supporting terror activities including attacks in Kashmir, and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, co-founder of a US Muslim college, face criticism for alleged extremist links. Lara Loomer, a Trump ally, condemned their appointments as “insane,” citing their jihadi pasts and affiliations with groups like al-Qaida, Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas.

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