What Qatar wants, Qatar gets

OPINION:

Lots of people have been duped by the Qataris. I was one of them.

For years, I watched as the Qataris spent billions of dollars in the Gaza Strip, a territory from which the Israelis had withdrawn in 2005 and which Hamas, a designated terrorist organization committed to the extermination of Israel, took over two years later.

However, I reasoned, surely the Qataris don’t want their expensive buildings ruined, and if their investments improve life for Gaza residents, couldn’t that diminish Hamas’ enthusiasm for jihad? Won’t the Qataris counsel Hamas not to start wars likely to end catastrophically for Gaza residents?

I was naive.

I suspect a similar naivety explains why President Biden officially designated Qatar as a Major Non-NATO Ally three years ago. What had the Qataris done to deserve that honor, trust and responsibility?

True, they had spent a lot of money on Al Udeid Air Base, which the U.S. military has used since late 2001. Last year, however, the Qataris forbade use of the facility for “attacks or wars against countries in the region or beyond.” This raises the question: Is the purpose of this base to project American power or to defend Qatar?

Hamas’ invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and its barbaric pogrom that followed presented Qataris with an opportunity to demonstrate that they deserved their Major Non-NATO Ally stripes.

Senior Hamas officials were living in the Qatari capital of Doha as guests of the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. He could have said to them: “Order the release of the American hostages immediately. In fact, tell your men in Gaza to release all the hostages, because abducting and torturing civilians is a serious war crime. You have one other option: It’s a short ride from the five-star hotel where you’ve been living to our very best prison.”

The emir did no such thing.

Why not? I think there’s a clue in the fact that after Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, was killed in a clash with Israeli soldiers in October, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the emir’s mother, posted on social media: “The name Yahya means the one who lives. … He will live on and [Israel] will be gone.”

Last week, President Trump was welcomed with great pomp and circumstance in three wealthy Arab Gulf states.

Saudi Arabia is effectively ruled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who aims to transform the kingdom into a great international center of commerce, culture and Islamic heritage.

The United Arab Emirates joined the Abraham Accords, which Mr. Trump forged during his first term. The UAE practices and promotes religious tolerance.

In 2017, the Saudis and the Emiratis, along with Bahrain and Egypt, severed diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar because they knew it was supporting terrorist and extremist groups, including Hamas, Tehran-backed militias and the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Saudis and the Emiratis have since banned. The Brotherhood is a transnational Islamist supremacist organization intent on establishing a global caliphate.

Four years later, relations were restored, but because of American pressure on the Saudis and the Emiratis, Qatari policies did not significantly change.

Qatar has only about 330,000 citizens, about the same population as Pittsburgh. The other 3 million residents are expatriates and workers from countries such as India, Bangladesh and the Philippines.

Those Qataris possess more than 12% of the world’s proven natural gas reserves.

For more than a quarter century, they have been using this extraordinary source of wealth to win friends and influence people.

In 1996, the regime founded the media network Al Jazeera, which soon became a force in the Middle East and well beyond.

“Day in and day out,” scholar Fouad Ajami wrote in The New York Times in November 2001, “Al Jazeera deliberately fans the flames of Muslim outrage.” He added that the satellite television station “may not officially be the Osama bin Laden Channel, but he is clearly its star.”

For years, Al Jazeera featured Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a prominent Muslim Brotherhood ideologue. Among those he praised: Imad Mughniyah, the terrorist mastermind behind the 1983 suicide bombings in Beirut in which 241 U.S. Marines were killed.

During the Iraq War, he issued a fatwa saying that the “abduction and killing of Americans in Iraq is a [religious] duty.”

Fast-forward to 2022, when Belgian authorities arrested several current and former members of the European Parliament on charges of having accepted money or gifts from Qatar in exchange for influencing European Union decisions. The investigation into “Qatargate” has revealed more than 300 alleged attempts to sway parliamentary actions.

Earlier this year, former Sen. Robert Menendez was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for accepting bribes from Qatar in exchange for using his political influence to benefit Doha.

As they used to say on late-night infomercials: “But wait! There’s more!”

In the May issue of Commentary magazine, my colleague Jonathan Schanzer writes that Qatar “has gifted anywhere from $7 billion to $20 billion” to American universities. These investments have helped transform Middle East studies departments into Muslim Brotherhood indoctrination centers.

Last week, Frannie Block and Jay Solomon published an expose in The Free Press titled “How Qatar Bought America.”

Their in-depth investigation reveals that “Qatar has spent almost $100 billion to establish its legitimacy in Congress, universities, newsrooms, think tanks and corporations.”

They conclude: “What does Qatar want in return? A seat at the table. A shield from criticism. A U.S. foreign policy that serves Doha.”

Duped no more, I now understand that implies a foreign policy that serves the Muslim Brotherhood. I’m confident our Saudi and Emirati friends would agree.

• Clifford D. May is the founder and president of Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.