John Aziz
Quillette, May 20, 2025
“Qatari organisations have made substantial investments in American universities including Georgetown, Northwestern, Texas A&M, and Cornell, all of which have established satellite campuses in Qatar.”
Donald Trump’s recent visit to the Middle East has thrown a spotlight onto Qatar, an oil-rich emirate that punches above its weight in the geopolitical arena. While Qatar might be seen as a Western ally, especially given that it is home to the largest US military base in the entire region, it also moonlights as a chief financial sponsor and diplomatic patron of Hamas, the Islamist terror group responsible for the 7 October 2023 pogrom in southern Israel.
For more than two decades, the Qatari government, led by the Al-Thani monarchy, has provided billions in financial backing to Hamas. It has also thrown its diplomatic weight behind the terrorist group and provided luxury accommodation in the Qatari capital of Doha for Hamas leaders like Khaled Meshal, Ismail Haniyeh, and Moussa Abu Marzouk. It’s baffling—Qatar promotes itself as a modern, technological, even futuristic place, and yet it backs a mediaeval jihadist movement whose leaders have led the people of Gaza to utter ruin.
Hamas’s other main backers—chiefly the Islamic Republic of Iran, and to a lesser extent the autocratic regimes in China, Russia, and Turkey—deserve their own share of scrutiny. But Qatar’s case is unique.
During his first presidency, Donald Trump accused the Qatari leadership of funding terrorism at a “very high level” and called on them to change course. Yet on this latest trip, Trump has praised Qatar’s leadership and accepted a flurry of gifts from them including a US$400 million private jet, which is set to become the new Air Force One, as part of a broader deal that will involve more than US$243 billion worth of Qatari investment in America. Even for Trump, who is hardly known for his consistency, this is a staggeringly acrobatic flip turn. ….SOURCE