QATAR'S TIES TO TRUMP AND HIS ADMINISTRATION

Qatar is now the deep state in the Trump administration

Doha has long exerted influence on administrations behind the scenes. 

 

By Mitchell Bard

 

JNS

Feb 12, 2025 

 

 

Doha, Qatar

 

In a column titled “Qatar is Hamas, and Hamas is Qatar,” Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh quoted Yigal Carmon, president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI): “Any Arab who hears American officials say that Qatar is America’s ally would burst into laughter. … Ask Egypt, not just the rulers, but the people and journalists. Ask the Emirates, the government and people. Ask Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan. They all know that for decades Qatar has been promoting Islamist and terrorist organizations.”

Toameh added: “The Trump administration needs to understand what Arabs have known for years: that Qatar’s support for Hamas and other extremist Islamist groups is the main reason thousands of Israelis and Palestinians have died over the past few years.”

Jewish conservatives have long railed against Qatar’s malign influence, especially during the Biden administration, pointing to its funding of Islamist extremism and its staggering $6 billion in largely unaccounted donations to U.S. colleges.

Yet when it comes to Donald Trump, their hypocrisy is boundless, as exemplified by the Qatar issue.

After the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, conservatives excoriated former President Joe Biden for failing to pressure Qatar to expel Hamas officials living lavishly in Doha. By early November 2024, after pressure from U.S. officials, those leaders were gone.

A few weeks later, President-elect Trump’s aides told Qatar to bring the Hamas leaders back to Doha.

The reaction from the right? Silence.

Had Biden appointed former Qatari lobbyists or businesspeople entangled with Doha’s ruling elite, Jewish conservatives would have been in an uproar. The Washington Free Beacon would have run exposés on how such officials posed a national security threat. Yet when Trump does it? Crickets.

There was a brief outcry when conservative Jews tried to absolve Trump of responsibility for pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to surrender to Hamas and accept a ceasefire that just 24 hours earlier he considered a threat to Israel’s existence. They made the preposterous argument that Trump knew nothing about the negotiations, and it was all conducted by a rogue mediator with business interests in Qatar.

That mediator, Steve Witkoff, is Trump’s point person for Middle East issues, seemingly usurping the role of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The Qatari connections do not stop with Witkoff.

The new attorney general, Pam Bondi, was a lobbyist for Qatar. Did any MAGA Jews question her appointment?

She failed to disclose her work for Qatar in official nomination documents and refused to answer why. When she was asked about taking money from a government that funds Hamas and other radical Islamists, Bondi said, “I am very proud of the work that I did. It was a short time, and I wish that it had been longer, for Qatar.”

Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, also didn’t register his consulting work for Qatar, potentially violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The embassy of Qatar paid Patel an unspecified amount of money to provide it with “consulting services” until November 2024—that is, during the time Israelis were still being held hostage. Patel has not revealed what services he provided.

Former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, did disclose that he was paid consulting fees by an investor who is a member of the Qatari royal family. Heritage Advisors, Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim Al Thani’s London-based venture capital firm, paid Zeldin “compensation exceeding $5,000” from April of 2023 through December of that year. He did not explain what he did for the sheik.

Given their relations with Qatar, these officials have potential conflicts of interest and could pose security threats. So, while Trump is executing a Stalinesque purge of enemies (minus the executions) in what he considers the “deep state,” he is hiring people who could allow Qatar to replace it. Zeldin began his work after he published a Newsweek column about the role of think tanks in influencing legislators and the impact of foreign funding on them. “What happens when the ‘experts’ filling these roles are effectively paid agents of foreign governments like China, Russia, Iran and Qatar?”

So, Mr. Zeldin, what happens when members of the Trump administration have been paid agents of Qatar?

Qatar has long exerted influence on administrations quietly behind the scenes. Now, it has former agents in key positions close to the president. How likely is it that Trump will now ask Qatar to throw out Hamas and other Islamists based there or pressure the emir to end its support for terror and its alliance with Iran? Will he demand that Qatar take in Palestinians to fulfill his dream of turning Gaza into a “Riviera in the Middle East”?

If any Democrat were in such a potentially compromising position, you can be sure the Jewish conservatives would be in high dudgeon. But Trump gets another pass, once again proving that their outrage is about politics, not principle.