The insanity of America’s supporting Qatar

The article below appeared a few days ago in MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute), written by MEMRI’s founder and director Yigal Carmon. Carmon is an e-friend whom I met in Israel, and who, you might recall, predicted in the summer of 2023 that Israel would go to war with Gaza in September or October (see the prediction here). Now Yigal is not always correct, but his organization, tasked with listening to everything they can get from the Arab world and translating it into English, Hebrew, and other languages , has been essential for many countries’ intelligence.

Although Wikipedia accuses MEMRI of being “a strongly pro-Israel advocacy group,” that’s pretty much irrelevant, because its main job is translating what comes out of the Arab world (and yes, much of that is done in the cause of educating Israelis), but I am not aware of MEMRI ever having mistranslated anything. Isn’t more information better than less information, no matter who that information serves?  You may say that the article below, which advocates the US moving its military base out of Qatar, is “strongly pro-Israel,” but so what? If doing that helps dampen the terrorism strongly supported by Qatar, that’s all to the good.

There are other parts to come, so keep your eyes on the MEMRI site.

Carmon’s thesis, which is documented with extensive references, is that Qatar is a pervasive and wealthy sponsor of terrorism and Islamism (nobody really denies this), yet the US has graced it with the status as an ally, having taken an old Qatari military base and turned it into a U.S, CENTCOM base. Al Udeid Air Base harbors several thousand American troops and about 400 RAF troops (the Aussies used to have a few planes there, too, but wisely moved them to the United Arab Emirates).  That base is essential to Qatar because without it, it’s likely that the terrorism-sponsoring countryu would simply be taken over by the UAE or Saudi Arabia.

Qatar also funds terrorism big time. It has supported Hamas with gazillions of dollars and gives refuge to its members (and storage of its money) along with members of the Taliban. As Carmon writes (I’ve left the reference numbers in):

Qatar is the world’s foremost state sponsor of Islamic terrorist organizations and movements, backing a wide range of them, both Sunni and Shi’ite. They include the Islamic State (ISIS), Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbullah, the Houthis, the Taliban, Jabhat Al-Nusra, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, see below) and even Islamist militias in northern Mali.[7]

Carmon argues that the U.S. should get its tuches out of Qatar, which will give us both credibility in the eyes of the world (why on Earth are we there when other and friendlier Arab countries have offered us a base?), or, alternatively, the opportunity to use leverage against Qatar by threatening to withdraw its base, which scares the bejeezus out of Qatar since its enemies would take over the tiny but oil-rich country.

But I digress. You can read the article for yourself by clicking above. I’ll give a few quotes, grouped under bold headings that I’ve created.

The situation. 

It is a tragedy that what is common knowledge for any vegetable vendor or taxi driver in the Arab and Muslim world eludes American (as well as Israeli) intelligence leaders – that is, Qatar’s anti-U.S. and terror-supporting role in the Arab and Muslim world as well as in the West.

Trump’s meeting also underlines that Qatar’s story is not a Gulf story, nor an Arab story. It is a story that impacts the whole West and its ability to counter its enemies.

This document will detail Qatar’s role and the consequences of an American embrace of it, and the devastating effects this has on America’s true allies, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). By embracing Qatar, the U.S. is alienating and abandoning its true allies, KSA and UAE, in favor of Qatar, which is their enemy and the enemy of the United States as well. Under these circumstances, KSA and UAE have no choice but to distance themselves from America and drift towards China and Russia.

Many who would agree that Qatar is an enemy of the U.S., not an ally, may still say that America must embrace Qatar because of the CENTCOM base located there. The truth is the opposite. First of all, America can move the base at any time to the UAE, Bahrain, or KSA. In fact, these countries had requested it, but America turned them down.

Second, Qatar holds CENTCOM in its territory not as a favor to the U.S. but as security and protection for itself. Without the American base, the Aal Thani family’s rule of Qatar would likely be ended by its neighbors. It is Qatar that is beholden to the U.S. for maintaining the base on its soil. Given that the Aal Thani family owes its very survival to the base’s location in Qatar, any U.S. administration could have pressured Qatar into a pro-U.S. policy instead of its pro-terrorist and pro-Iran one. Unfortunately, none have done it.[1]

Successive U.S. administrations have acted as if they somehow owe Qatar for hosting the base. This is as much a tragedy as it is an inexplicable strategic blunder that begs explanation – because this American approach cannot be explained by any strategic considerations. But there may be other considerations in play, such as Qatar’s immense wealth, that are impacting the policies of many countries, including the U.S.

Qatar’s double role as a U.S. “ally” as well as a sponsor of terrorism (see quote above as well):

Qatar is responsible for 9/11 – the worst of all anti-U.S. Islamist terror operations. It was also involved in many others (see comprehensive MEMRI report Qatar Is Responsible For Khalid Sheikh Mohammad’s 2,977 Murders On 9/11 – At The World Trade Center And The Pentagon, And On Two Other Hijacked Flights – That Are Only Some Of 31 Attacks And Plots That He Outlined In His Own Confession, September 13, 2024).

Qatar hosts the financiers of terrorism, according to the United Nations and to former U.S. Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen.[8]

The September 2012 murder of U.S. Ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens in Benghazi was perpetrated by the Qatar-supported Al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar Al-Sharia.[9]

In 2021, Qatar succeeded in replacing the democratically elected and secular Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani with the Taliban, whom it sustained for years with headquarters in Doha. It is also to blame for the 13 American soldiers killed during the Taliban’s violent takeover in August 2021.

Qatar provided Hamas with billions of dollars, which ended up financing the murder of over 30 Americans and the taking of 11 Americans as hostages to Gaza in its October 7 attack on Israel.[10]

Additionally, in 2007 in Gaza, it was thanks to their general support to Hamas as an organization that Hamas was able to take over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority.

Qatar also finances Hizbullah and Iran’s IRGC.[11]

Carmon documents Qatar’s support for Islamist movements, and notes this:

Qatar’s activity in the US, some of which is illegal:

Recently, it was revealed that Qatar even dared to bribe a leading Democratic senator, Robert Menendez, who was subsequently convicted of political corruption. Another striking example of this is Qatar’s contracting of a former CIA official to spy on Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Ed Royce (former R-CA and House Foreign Affairs Committee chair), who are all opposed to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.[19]

Qatar brazenly ignored the order by the U.S. Department of Justice to register Al-Jazeera as a foreign agent.[20]

Qatar  has funded American universities to the tune of $4.7 billion, which is evident now in the wave of pro-Hamas protests sweeping American universities.[21]

Other and friendlier Arab countires have offered the U.S. military bases.  (Bolding below is mine)

In 1995, when the major Arab countries objected to the coup of the previous Emir (Hamad bin Khalifa) against his father (Khalifa bin Hamad Aal Thani), the new emir sought out the Americans to provide him with additional protection. Shrewdly, he offered them Al-Udeid airbase to serve the U.S. military. With that move, this base came to guarantee the safety of the dictatorial Aal-Thani family.

Threatened by Qatar’s Islamist activities, and striving for Westernization and socioeconomic progress, the regimes of the UAE and KSA offered the U.S. their territory for the CENTCOM base, but the U.S. turned them down. Under the Obama administration, America made it clear that it prefers its enemies, Iran and Qatar, to its natural allies – KSA, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Jordan – who were also subject to constant attacks by the Qatar-supported Muslim Brotherhood.[22]

In 2017, KSA, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt declared a total boycott on Qatar, in order to bring down the ruling Aal-Thani family. They set out the conditions for lifting the boycott: Qatar must stop supporting Iran and terrorism.[23]

It was again the U.S., alongside Iran and other anti-U.S. countries, that came to Qatar’s rescue to survive the boycott and the political pressure.

What lesson were KSA, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt to learn from this? That the U.S. is completely blind to the role of Qatar as an anti-U.S. state sponsor of global Islamist terrorism and ally of Iran, and that it prefers its enemies to its allies. It is no wonder that over the years, in the face of this abandonment by the American administration, KSA and UAE have gradually drifted away from America and towards America’s adversaries and enemies – BRICS, Russia, and China.

Conclusion: the US should relocate its forces out of Qatar. (Or perhaps use the threat of that removal to get Qatar to stop sponsoring terrorism. A threat that works could end the war between Hamas and Gaza.  But of course Carmon realizes that this relocation is “unlikely”.)

One relatively simple move  could change America’s weak standing in the world into a strong one, and even prevent a looming world war, possibly resulting from the tensions created by Qatar worldwide – and that is moving the CENTCOM base from Qatar to the UAE or KSA. This would be a new approach by America – preferring its allies over its enemies in the Arab and Muslim world, fighting Islamism rather than embracing it, cutting off the flow of cash dollars for anti-Americanism, creating a real bloc against Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, denying the Iranian ayatollahs’ regime a major ally worldwide, and ushering in a sane strategy of strengthening Western civilization over those who seek to destroy it.

Without the American airbase in Qatar, Qatar’s ruling family could be toppled by its neighbors as they tried to do in 2017, with no one in the Arab and Muslim world missing it except the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, and other terrorist organizations.

Tragically, it is unlikely that any American administration will do this, not even a Republican one. The Arab and Muslim world, and particularly the countries that are considered the collective West that have been deserted by America, will all have to learn to live in a world without American and Western hegemony.

It is a complete mystery to me why the U.S. maintains a military presence in a country that is such a strong sponsor of terrorism. It can’t be for strategic reasons because both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have offered us locations for U.S. based—and we turned them down. We’re also in the position to stop Qatar from sponsoring terrorism, but aren’t doing it.

Now there’s one fly in the ointment that Carmon neglects, which is that now Turkey has a base in Qatar as well, which may have as many as 5,000 troops.  Moreover, Turkey is a member of NATO, which means that if the UAE or another country attacks Qatar, other NATO members are obliged to come in on the side of Turkey. I’ve written Yigal about this, as in my view it could scupper his whole argument.  I’ll report on his reply or perhaps he’ll leave a comment.