Why Is the Trump Administration Selling Weapons to the World’s Leading State Sponsor of Terrorism?

by Robert Williams  •  Gatestone Institute  •  May 30, 2025 at 5:00 am

By N509FZ – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

• While it is understandable that President Donald Trump is eager to bring business deals to America, since when has Qatar been “a friendly country that continues to be an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East”? The answer is: Never.

• “Qatar is the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world, more than Iran.” — Dr. Udi Levy, a former senior official of Israel’s Mossad spy agency who dealt with economic warfare against terrorist organizations, Ynet News, April 18, 2024.
• There is hardly an Islamic terrorist group, in fact, that Qatar does not support. Meanwhile, it acts as both the arsonist and the firefighter.
• “Qatar has been playing a deadly double game with the U.S. for many years. It supports all Islamist terrorist organizations (ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, and Hezbollah). Worst of all, in 1996, it hid future 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) in Doha, and when the FBI came to arrest him, informing only the Qatari Emir, KSM disappeared within hours.” — Yigal Carmon, MEMRI, November 15, 2023.
• The Muslim Brotherhood’s “Explanatory Memorandum” explicitly states: “The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
• Qatar’s media empire, Al Jazeera, is the mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood. It is this Arabic-language television network that has spread the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout much of the world. Even Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which agree on virtually nothing, both banned Al Jazeera – as have Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Bahrain.
• When the US sells advanced weapons to Qatar, it is literally arming an organization that openly funds terrorism, spreads radical Islamic ideology and straightforwardly seeks to undermine America, Israel and the West.
• The Trump administration, in seeking to make America great again, was supposed to move away from the policies of the Obama and Biden administrations, which appeased terrorist and rogue states such as Iran and Russia. But regarding Qatar, the Trump administration appears to be pursuing effectively the same extremely dangerous policies that endanger not only US allies in the Middle East such as Israel, but the United States itself.
• “[US] colleges and universities have accepted $6.25 billion from Qatar since 2001. However, Qatar’s total spending likely exceeds that figure… Qatar is a major exporter of Islamist ideology, which it amplifies on the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera network. By pumping money into the American higher education system and across the United States, Qatar avoids scrutiny as it advances hostile ideologies.” — Natalie Ecanow, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, in testimony to the Texas Legislature House Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety & Veterans’ Affairs, April 2, 2025.
• A good place to start would be not to sell weapons to Qatar and not to pretend they are a friendly ally. Instead, the US should start looking for an alternate place, such as the United Arab Emirates, to relocate American forces from Qatar’s Al-Udeid Air Base.

The Trump administration will apparently sell Qatar a large weapons package, including eight long-range maritime surveillance drones and hundreds of missiles and bombs worth around $2 billion. A document from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, notifying Congress of the initially approved sale, stated:

“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that continues to be an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East.

“The proposed sale will improve Qatar’s capability to meet current and future threats by providing timely intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, target acquisition, counter-land, and counter-surface sea capabilities for its security and defense. This capability is a deterrent to regional threats and will primarily be used to strengthen its homeland defense.”

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