Let's Talk about Qatar

The Gulf state of Qatar is in the news these days for a number of reasons. One is that cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump is about to visit the country. Another is that Qatar offered to provide Trump with a free luxury Boeing 747 valued at around $400 million. Beyond that, Qatar has recently become something of a public enemy number 1 in Israel. Given the multiple controversies surrounding the country, I thought it might be useful to take a closer look at it.

On the face of it, Qatar seems like a fairly quiet, unassuming country about which most people probably rarely hear anything. I doubt that even 1% of Americans can correctly name the country's ruler (full disclosure, while I knew the Emir's last name, I had to look up his first name). Qatar hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, Al Udeid Air Base, which serves as the forward command post for the U.S. Central Command. Qatar also has oil and gas. A lot of it. As a result, it boasts the fourth highest GDP per capita in the world. The country also hosts the Al Jazeera Media Network, which has been hugely influential in the Middle East and beyond.

In recent years, what Qatar has really come to be known for is buying influence, or less charitably, bribery. Back in 2010, Qatar was awarded the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Almost immediately, the country became embroiled in allegations of bribery and corruption linked to the award. While a number of individuals would later be indicted, and most of them would either plead guilty or be convicted, Qatar was cleared of the allegations. More recently, an aviation deal between Qatar and the European Union has been challenged due to allegations that an official involved in negotiating the deal has been provided expensive gifts and vacations by Qatar. Qatar's alleged involvement in bribery generally casts the country as the payer of bribes. However, in a recent case, RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon) agreed to pay more than $950 million to resolve allegations that it had bribed high-ranking Qatari officials in return for military contracts.

It is not a joke that Wikipedia is forced to maintain a disambiguation page for "Qatargate" because there are multiple scandals with that name. The first involves allegations that Qatar bribed members and officials of the European Parliament. The goal of the bribes is said to have been to influence voting in the Parliament to favor Qatar. A number of individuals have been arrested in connection with the case, which is ongoing. For its part, the government of Qatar denies the allegations.

The second "Qatargate" involves Israel. Qatar is often criticized in both Israel and the United States due to its financial support for Hamas. What is less often discussed is that this support was done in coordination with Israel and the U.S., even at the explicit behest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to CNN, "Israel approved the deal in a security cabinet meeting in August 2018" when Netanyahu was serving as Prime Minister. Netanyahu believed that strengthening Hamas would help counter the Palestinian Authority, which holds power in the West Bank, and the division between the two groups would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. Similarly, while Qatar has been criticized for hosting Hamas, this base was established at the direct request of former U.S. President Barack Obama who believed that it would aid in negotiations with the group. While all of this might be scandalous, or not, it is not what is meant by "Qatargate".

Israeli reporter Tamar Uriel-Beeri dates the beginning of Qatargate to July 2024 when the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) published leaked documents showing that $50 million would be transferred from Qatar to Netanyahu. While Netanyahu's spokesperson strongly denied the allegation, members of Netanyahu's media team soon became embroiled in allegations linking them to Qatar. One of those individuals, Eli Feldstein, is particularly interesting. Shortly after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Netanyahu appointed Feldstein as his spokesman for military affairs. However, Feldstein failed a security investigation and could not be formally employed by the Prime Minister's office. Nevertheless, Netanyahu continued to keep Feldstein around, and Feldstein was photographed attending numerous events with Netanyahu. In November 2024, Feldstein was arrested with two other suspects on charges of leaking classified documents to the media. In March 2025, Feldstein was arrested again, this time due to his involvement in Qatargate. Feldstein is accused of taking payments from Qatar in exchange for helping to improve the country's image in the Israeli media.

It is worth reviewing the document leak scandal even though that did not involve Qatar. The documents in question had allegedly been seized from Hamas during Israel's invasion of Gaza. At the time, Netanyahu was being criticized for not pursuing hostage exchanges with Hamas. The documents that Feldstein is accused of leaking to the media showed that Yahya Sinwar, who was then Hamas' military leader in Gaza, was not interested in an exchange of hostages. This appeared to exonerate Netanyahu. However, it later turned out that the incriminating part of the document had been altered and, in fact, the original document showed that Sinwar was actually very interested in an exchange.

It was bad enough for Netanyahu that several of his close associates were accused of leaking classified documents (and ones altered to support Netanyahu's position at that), but then came the additional allegations involving Qatar. In this case, several of Netanyahu's top staffers were accused of being on the payroll of a foreign state during a time of war. Netanyahu's reaction was to attempt to fire the head of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, which was conducting the investigation. However, Israeli law doesn't allow such a firing, and Netanyahu's action has sparked a legal crisis within Israel. Currently, the investigation is continuing, as is the legal struggle between Netanyahu and Ronen Bar, the head of Shin Bet.

It is with this background that Qatar decided to offer Trump a free airplane valued at $400 million. A country with a history of alleged bribery, including potentially the Prime Minister of Israel, seems to have believed that providing Trump a free replacement for Air Force One would be seen as nothing more than a generous gesture. It is evidence of both Trump's corruption and his lack of intelligence that he accepted it. The U.S. Constitution is not a particularly long document, yet it mentions emoluments three times. In one case, the Constitution explicitly prohibits officeholders from accepting "any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." The language of this passage is a bit dated, but even so, Trump still managed to find a foreign state led by a prince to provide him with an emolument. The only way Trump's violation of the Constitution could be any more clear is if it had said "orange-skinned men cannot accept free 747s from Arab shaykhs." Nevertheless, Trump claims that the gift is legal due to an opinion written by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi is, wait for it, a former lobbyist for Qatar who used to be paid $115,000 a month by the country to help improve its image.

The constitutional issues may seem quaint these days, but the Qatari aircraft would also present a number of security issues. Who knows what may have been done to the airplane that might impact security and privacy? What is the likelihood that the aircraft has been modified to meet the security requirements of Air Force One, and what are the possibilities of retrofitting those features? As a jokester in one of my social media feeds put it, Trump is acting like the leader of Troy accepting the gift of a giant wooden horse from the Greeks.

Qatar often gets a bad rap. The country has been accused of supporting terrorism due to its funding of Hamas and for providing a base for the Hamas leadership. Yet, those actions were taken in coordination with, if not the direct request of, the United States and Israel. Qatar has undoubtedly played a key role in negotiations regarding the Gaza war, including talks that have led to the freedom of many hostages. Qatar has been key to many other international negotiations as well, including those that led to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The country is sometimes criticized because it is the home of Al Jazeera. Yet, as someone who values the free press, I am personally thankful for Al Jazeera's voice. But Qatar has an inescapable history of being associated with bribery. It's one thing to allegedly win the rights to a soccer tournament due to payoffs, but it is quite another to bribe the Prime Minister of Israel (in a time of war no less). But now Qatar seems to be on the brink of its most audacious achievement to date: bribery of a U.S. President. Having already provoked a crisis of government in Israel, Qatar may be on the brink of spurring a constitutional crisis in the U.S. But, in Qatar's favor is the fact that the country may have already bought off anyone who might be in a position to do anything about it.