The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, a Pentagon agency, notified Congress on March 26 that the U.S. State Department had given initial approval to sell $1.96 billion in weapons to Qatar, including eight MQ-9B drones. The latter would position Doha as the first country in the region to buy such advanced unmanned aircraft.
Despite the Gulf state’s ties to and patronage of terrorist groups, including Hamas, Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, it has been singled out for praise in the early days of the Trump administration and in the prior government.
U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that he plans to visit Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia this month. On the same day, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered Washington’s “sincere gratitude” to Qatar “for its support of American citizens in need.”
Earlier in the month, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told a Qatari minister that Washington and Doha have a “strong partnership in addressing shared security challenges across the region, including in Syria and the Red Sea,” per the Pentagon press secretary.
In the previous administration, Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk—the former secretary of state, national security advisor and National Security council member respectively—regularly praised Qatar and designated it as a “major, non-NATO ally” on March 10, 2022.
Last week, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) raised eyebrows when he praised Qatar repeatedly and accused a witness, who testified about Doha’s terror ties, of “prejudice” against Qatar during a Senate hearing.
Many analysts believe Qatar to be the largest foreign donor to American colleges. Doha also runs the television network Al Jazeera, which both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have banned, as have other countries in the region.
The approved sale of the MQ-9B drones and related equipment to Qatar “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,” per the Pentagon.
It added that the sale would “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,” per the U.S. Defense Department. “Qatar will have no difficulty absorbing these articles and services into its armed forces.”
Michael Pregent, a former intelligence officer of nearly 30 years, told JNS that Doha has effectively bought Washington, and “suits in D.C. would not be able to pay their mortgage if they criticize Qatar.”
“Senior fellows make, at the most, $250,000, and it’s based on donations,” Pregent said. “It’s not a lot of money for the Qataris to buy the Middle East department” at otherwise-reputable think tanks, several that maintain operations in Doha, he added. “It’s not hard.”
When the Middle East departments at U.S. think tanks raise issues about Qatar, “they’re going to go into the nuanced defense of well,” he said. “The Qataris were asked to open back channels to Hamas. They were not asked to fund them. They were not asked to give them a platform on Al Jazeera. They’re protecting them.”
Pregent was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington until he was dismissed last month, he told JNS, for writing critically of Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s special envoy to the Middle East, for praising Qatar and called for an end to the U.S.-Qatari alliance. Pregent told JNS that Hudson removed the piece and a prior op-ed he wrote attacking Qatar from its website.
Witkoff called Qatar “a small country that wants to be recognized as a peacemaker” last month. He added that it is “nonsense” that critics say Doha has ulterior motives. “Qatar, like the other Gulf states, wants stability,” he said. “They want to do business with the United States. They used to be more religiously radical but today, they have moderated. There’s no doubt. They are our allies.”
Pregent told JNS that Hudson, where he had been for a decade, hadn’t told him there were issues with his work. He said that the think tank denied that his tenure ended due to his criticism of Witkoff and Qatar. He said that the think tank gave no reason, though, and that it took all his work off the website only to restore it later except for his critiques of Qatar.
“I was critical of some things that Trump was saying about exiting Syria, and it was fine. There’s no issues. Never a problem with me criticizing the Biden administration,” he said.
Joel Scanlon, executive vice president at the Hudson Institute, told JNS that the think tank doesn’t comment directly on personnel matters.
“But Hudson does not take institutional positions—on U.S.-Qatar relations or any other issue,” Scanlon said. “All of Hudson’s experts are free, and encouraged, to debate and critique policy options and to draw their own conclusions on policy matters.”
Scanlon added that “as a matter of institutional policy, Hudson does not seek or accept financial contributions from non-democratic foreign governments or groups or individuals acting on their behalf.”
JNS has sought comment repeatedly from both the Biden and Trump administrations about why the United States hasn’t applied more pressure to Doha to break its ties to terror groups.
A former high-ranking U.S. government official involved in arms transfers told JNS that the U.S.-Qatari relationship is critical for the Middle East, including Jerusalem.
The recent weapons package announcement “is to increase interoperability,” according to the official, who spoke anonymously to JNS. “We require the Qataris to have more U.S. defense articles, because it helps to contribute to our national security and regional security and therefore Israeli security.”
Despite its known ties to Iran, Qatar was part of the effort “to ensure that Israel and the United States had a wide ranging knowledge of what was coming into the airspace in the region” when Tehran attacked Israel in April and October last year, per the former U.S. official.
Qatar would inform U.S. Central Command, the military command with purview over the Middle East, which would then alert Israel, the former official told JNS.
“It is important that the United States be able to support those kinds of efforts to understand what is happening in the air, what is happening regionally,” the former official said. “This transfer is part of that effort.”
The former official, who self-admittedly has different political views than many in the Trump administration, told JNS that the Qataris “see themselves as the Switzerland of the Middle East,” echoing Witkoff’s remarks.
“They want to mediate. They want the credit for mediation. They face Iranian threats just like the rest of the region does, and they are not better off if the maritime waterways in the region are blocked because of Houthi, and therefore Iranian, obstacles,” the former official said.
“The Qataris certainly have friends that we find abhorrent, but they are looking to play the role of mediator between the West and those unsavory characters,” the former official said.
Pregent, who studies terror financing and support, told JNS that Qatar is more like the Breaking Bad character Gustavo Fring, the major narcotics distributor who pretends to support the Drug Enforcement Agency, than neutral Switzerland.
“That’s exactly what it is,” Pregent said. “But nobody gets the comparison.”