American Thought Leaders - How a Tiny Gulf Nation Is Waging a Massive Information War on the West: Jonathan Schanzer

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

“Qataris were the ones who said, ‘Here, come to our country, we'll host you.’ So, now it is home to the largest American airbase in the Middle East, where we conduct our war on terrorism. And then down the street from this Al Udeid Air Base is Hamas, the Taliban, al Qaeda financiers, ISIS financiers … it is a truly bizarre arrangement.”Dr. Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He’s also a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Treasury Department, and the author of several books on Islamic extremism.“The Muslim Brotherhood is one of the largest, if not the largest, grassroots political and religious organizations in the Middle East, and it is the cornerstone for just about every radical ideology that we have seen and faced over the last two decades since the 9/11 attacks,” says Dr. Schanzer.We discuss the role that Qatar has played in international geopolitics, commanding vast influence campaigns in the West and funding an array of terrorist outfits in the East.“The Qataris have been able to sustain it with a massive amount of lobby money and investment here in the United States, and so some of its greatest proponents are the Pentagon and the State Department. And they’ve gotten to the point where it’s almost as if they can do no wrong—until 10/7. That’s when it, I think, began to become clear to the average American that the Qataris are playing both arsonist and firefighter. They spend $200 million a year propping up Hamas in the Gaza Strip. They give Hamas headquarters in Doha. And then as soon as the crisis hits, they are trying to negotiate between the United States and Israel and Hamas, pretending to be a good-faith actor. But at the end of the day, I think we all have realized that they are advocating first and foremost for Hamas.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Qataris are playing both arsonist and firefighter. It is home to the largest American air base in the Middle East where we conduct our war on terrorism. And then down the street is Hamas, the Taliban, Al Qaeda financiers, ISIS financiers. It is a truly bizarre arrangement. They spend $200 million a year propping up Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Jonathan Shanzer is senior vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He's also a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Treasury Department and author of several books on Islamist extremism.

The Muslim Brotherhood is one of the largest, if not the largest, grassroots political and religious organizations in the Middle East and the cornerstone for just about every radical ideology that we have seen and faced over the last two decades since the 9-11 attacks. Somehow, the Al Jazeera reporters always seemed to know when American troops were about to be attacked, and they had their cameras ready. This is American Thought Leaders, and'm Jan Jekielek. Jonathan Shanzer, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Pleasure to be with you. We've been following the Palestinian-Israeli conflict especially since October 7th, since those events. And one of the things that isn't very well known is the role of Qatar in all of this. And you had an article recently that addresses this directly. So it's kind of a curiosity because Qatar has been involved in basically the hostage negotiations. They were like the key kind of state involved in that. On the other hand, we know that they actually fund Hamas and other groups, in fact, and you speak to this. So how does this work? Explain this to me. I'm not sure how it works. I mean, this is really one of

the more curious foreign policies embraced by the United States. Maybe it's important to back up. Most people couldn't find Qatar on a map. It's a country of 300,000 citizens total. There's 2 million people in the country. 1.7 million of them are the help. This is a country that has more money than it knows what to do with. It produces 11% of the world's energy, the natural gas that it pulls out of the gas field that it shares with Iran. And so it has built up this immense wealth over time. After 9-11, you may recall, the Saudis grew uncomfortable

with having the United States based in Saudi Arabia. The Emiratis took a pass. The Qataris were the ones who said, here, come to our country. We'll host you. So now it is home to the largest American air base in the Middle East where we conduct our war on terrorism. And then down the street from this Al Udeid air base is Hamas, the Taliban, Al Qaeda financiers, ISIS financiers. It is a truly bizarre arrangement. I think the Qataris have been able to sustain it with a massive amount of lobby money and investment here in the United States.

And so some of its greatest proponents are the Pentagon and the State Department. And they've gotten to the point where it's almost as if they can do no wrong until 10-7. That's when it, I think, began to become clear to the average American that the Qataris are playing both arsonist and firefighter. They spend $200 million a year propping up Hamas in the Gaza Strip. They give Hamas headquarters in Doha. And then as soon as the crisis hits, they are trying to negotiate between the United States and Israel and Hamas, pretending to be a good faith actor. But at the end of the day, I think we all have realized that they are advocating first and foremost for Hamas. Before we continue, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Of course, you're the head of research at Foundation for Dependent Democracies. It would be great if you could tell me a little bit about the think tank as well, because there's how you view it, and there's all sorts of perspectives out there. But maybe with your own background, let's start there. Sure.

Well, I'm originally from Philadelphia. Studied at Emory University in Atlanta. I went on to get a master's degree at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I studied Arabic and Hebrew. Went on to study Arabic a little bit more at the American University in Cairo after my master's was over. I've got a PhD from King's College London, and I've been studying the Middle East and terrorism for my entire adult life. I can't really tell you exactly why I've done it. I got a sense in the 1990s that terrorism was the thing that was disrupting the peace process when I was an undergrad. When I lived in Israel, I had several brushes with

Hamas terrorists that were, you know, just a few blocks away carrying out terrorist attacks, very close to where I was. And I was just struck by how common these attacks had become. And so by the time I was ready to write my master's thesis, I had no doubt it was going to be on various terrorist movements. And when I finished that master's thesis, it was just in time for 9-11. And so I have sort of fallen into this field. I've worked for a number of different think tanks. I worked for the Treasury Department for a number of years tracking terror finance, and in particular, Hamas finance. That was one of my portfolios, and that's been keeping me quite busy lately.

But, yeah, I don't quite know how I've become the swamp creature that I am, but I've been here now for more than 20 years in Washington. And for the last 13 years, I've been at FDD. And FDD is a think tank that we're about 65 people now. We cover everything from China to Russia to cyber attacks to Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas. So sort of full service. I think we we earned a reputation some time ago for being right-wing, which I actually fully disagree with. We are tough when it comes to matters of national security affairs, and we, I think, really were branded as right-wing when we took a strong position against the Iran nuclear deal of 2015.

We believed that it amounted to appeasement. Of course, not all of us think exactly the same way, but I would say the center of gravity was such that we believed that it was a terrible plan. Giving money to the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism was going to backfire. And so we took our lumps for having taken that position. We were obviously opposed to the White House at the time. We're opposed to this White House now in terms of its attempts to get back into an arrangement with the Iranians. But I think we've emerged from all of this in a way where we feel very justified, because when you look at what's happened, 10-7 was unfortunately the result of the regime

getting money from the international community, sanctions, relief, cash, benefits and perks. That money found its way to the coffers of Hamas and to Hezbollah and to the Houthis and to the Shiite militias that are attacking American forces in Iraq and Syria. This is what happens when you don't think through the consequences of your financial actions. And there is an attempt, I think, to cast all of this as, well, we're trying to prevent a standoff with the Iranians. We're trying to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon. Well, you may have done that temporarily, but in the meantime, look at all of these different terrorist groups that you

have empowered with the cash that America has provided. This is unfortunate, and maybe some of it can still be undone, but I think it explains in large part how we are, where we are today. Lee Smith, who has been on this show a number of times, he has made the case that the purpose of the Iran deal was actually the opposite of the stated purpose, i.e. was to facilitate Iran getting the bomb, which is almost unthinkable. You mentioned Iran. Iran, of course, is a financial sponsor of Hamas, probably the largest, if I understand it correctly. Who are all the different financial sponsors? You mentioned a few different players. Sure. Up until now, one of the most important revenue streams for Hamas

was taxes that it derived from its own population of 2.2 million people in Gaza. That's gone. So that's good. And that may have been a billion dollars or perhaps even more. It's not as if they were settling up at Ernst & Young every year and declaring their budget. But why is that gone? Well, because the Israelis have removed Hamas from its base of power, so they're no longer the sovereign. I mean, I think they're hanging on for dear life right now in southern Gaza, but in northern Gaza they've been removed.

In central Gaza they've been largely removed. So there are some battles that remain, but they don't control much right now. They have lost control now that the IDF is operating in the Gaza Strip. So they've lost a significant chunk of the territory that they controlled, but then also the financial perks that come with being the government. But then from there, the patrons are Iran. And when we talk about Iran's patronage, we're talking about not just the cash that has rolled in, but also the weapons, the training.

This is a multi-billion dollar effort over the course of several decades. But it's not just Iran. The Qataris we mentioned, they are roughly $200 million a year. The Turks are an important jurisdiction for Hamas support. The Turks have actually also allowed for Hamas to establish a headquarters in Istanbul. There are reports, isolated reports, that have not really been justified at this point or verified. But we believe that there's money that's coming from the regime. In fact, there was a recent article in the New York Times suggesting that Turkey is the

epicenter of the Hamas business portfolio. And of course, the Turkish banks are plugged into the U.S.-led financial system. That means that they're being able to access American banks through the correspondent relationships that we have with them. That's all not very good because the Turks, again, they have some sort of protected status. They're NATO members. They're treated as responsible members in the international community. So Hamas has been able to leverage that.

They have a base of operations in Malaysia. In fact, the Israeli Mossad has assassinated a number of Hamas operatives that have been operating there. Kuwait is a jurisdiction of illicit finance concern as it relates to Hamas finance. It's kind of the Wild West of the banking system in Kuwait. And then finally, I think there's one jurisdiction that we're watching very carefully right now, which is where I think some Hamas operatives are likely to flee. As the Israelis have been threatening to carry out a post-Munich Olympic-style assassination campaign against some of the Hamas leaders, there are now reports that the leaders are going to go to Algeria. And so this will be another jurisdiction that we're going to need to watch as it relates to how Hamas moves its money

around the world. But I suspect that might be a few weeks or even months from now as that transition takes place. In your article, you said the mask was off for Qatar. And why? What is it that changed over October 7th for Qatar? You know, it's interesting, but the Qataris have been able to evade responsibility for the various terrorist groups that they've supported over the years. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the planner of the 9-11 attacks, was based in Qatar after 9-11. And he lived there with some protection from what we now can see.

And the Qataris tipped him off when the United States drew close and he was able to escape. We of course captured him years later in Pakistan, but this was I think really like a black mark for the Qatari regime. Over the years after that, we've seen Hamas operating from there with really total impunity. No one seemed to be interested in stopping this. The Muslim Brotherhood was active there during the Arab Spring and some of these groups were in fact this. The Muslim Brotherhood was active there during the Arab Spring and some of these groups were in fact violent. There were groups like Al-Qaeda in Syria, formerly the Nusra Front. They were based in Doha as well. No one seemed to be terribly bothered by this. The Taliban had their embassy there. It was created by the Qataris with the idea that it would ultimately legitimize Taliban rule in Afghanistan

as the U.S. took its lumps year after year and ultimately wanted to get out of Afghanistan. It was the Qataris that helped negotiate our surrender, if you will. And when we had our embarrassing withdrawal, our botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was engineered by the Qataris. And we thank them for it. This is a country that somehow has gotten away with supporting extremist groups and weakening American interests, Western interests, consistently over time. My belief is that the 10-7 attacks and the impossible situation where we find ourselves now relying on the sponsor of Hamas to save these 240 Israelis from Hamas captivity, it's made it exactly clear who

we're dealing with. And you can begin to see that the Qataris are sweating this. The ambassador came out with an article in the Wall Street Journal trying to justify Qatari policy. Qatari diplomats are traveling to New York and meeting with hedge fund investors trying to explain to them why it is that they're not extremists and that they're truly looking out for Western interests and trying to achieve stability. No one's buying it. They continue to find themselves under fire. And so it's for that reason that I believe the mask has fallen.

I don't believe the Qataris are able to pull this off any longer. And they're doing their best. There are reports right now that they're sinking hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars into the PR firms that are going to try to dig them out of this hole. But as they say, the rule of holes is when you're in one maybe stop digging i do believe that the more the qataris dig the more guilty they look and the more compromised they're going to be here in the united states and members of congress are watching and they do appear right now to want to hold the qataris to account i'm saying qatar and q. I should, which is it? I say Qatar.

Yeah. That's how I think they pronounce it. I picked it up from you but I've been I've been saying Qatar earlier on. I just don't want to confuse our audience. No worries. Yeah. But both both are acceptable. Absolutely. Right. So there's this there's this amendment essentially calling on Qatar to basically, I guess, give up the Hamas leaders, right? Yeah, and this is, I think, exactly what's going to lead to the expulsion of these leaders, and we understand right now that Algeria may be their landing spot. And, you know, this is very similar to what the PLO had happen to them in 1982 after the Israelis went in and waged war against the PLO.

They were forced onto a ship and ultimately went to Tunisia, Algeria's next-door neighbor. And the idea was that you push them further away from the center of gravity in the Middle East, get them out of the region. They'll be in exile. They will probably still exist in some shape or form. But one does get the sense that they will be a lot weaker when this episode is finished. Well, and of course, Israel's stated purpose is the destruction of Hamas. What does that actually mean?

So it's a good question. It's a fairly lofty war aim, I suppose. There's probably 30,000 fighters or so in Hamas's military, so to speak. I think the Israelis would like to kill as many of those as possible or capture them. And they're doing so. And one gets a sense that there have been thousands of Hamas fighters that have already been killed. And one gets a sense that there have been thousands of Hamas fighters that have already been killed. And the Israelis, I think, have done an admirable job of uprooting the military infrastructure

that they have found in the Gaza Strip. So here we're talking about the massive tunnel system, or what the Israelis refer to as the metro. And there was one discovered just within the last few days, four kilometers long and wide enough to drive a car, electricity, oxygen, sewage, unbelievable infrastructure that they've built all with the intended goal of fighting Israel and to be able to do so by surprise using these commando tunnels beneath the ground moving heavy equipment moving rockets and the Israelis of course are destroying a lot

of those rockets they're capturing weapons they're capturing fighters this is I think the short-term goaler term is going to be harder, because you can't kill an idea. So the idea of Hamas, which is extreme Islam and extreme Palestinian nationalism mashed up together in a virulent form of anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, jihadism, that's going to be a lot harder to defeat among the Palestinian population. There will, as I mentioned, I think there will be an

extraterritorial assassination campaign that will likely go on for, I'm guessing, several years. Anyone that had even the vaguest role in 10-7 is likely to meet their maker. But I don't suspect that Hamas will be gone by all of this. I think maybe it's instructive to look at what we did here in the United States against al-Qaeda and ISIS. They still exist, but they're a shadow of themselves. And it was a military campaign that ultimately defeated them. And I think maybe one last point, and actually you mentioned Lee Smith. He wrote a book called The Strong Horse. And his book basically argues that those that project power are those that capture the imagination of the people of the Middle East.

And so if Hamas ultimately ends up getting defeated soundly on the battlefield, it may come to pass that the people of the Gaza Strip and even the West Bank may give up on the group after having seen its weakness. There were a number of polls, now that I think about it, that were run. I don't even know how you run a poll in the Gaza Strip, but they all kind of said something similar, like a very high percentage support, not just of Hamas, but also of what was done on October 7th. What kind of stock do you put into those? I don't put a lot of stock in Palestinian polls. I mean, there were polls that were canvassing Gaza citizens before Hamas was removed from power by the Israeli military. But just imagine you're living in a territory run by

a brutal terrorist organization that does not allow for diversion of opinion, free speech. So you get a call from a pollster saying, do you support Hamas? The answer is always yes, 100% yes, and then you hang up as quickly as possible, right? There was an election that the United States imposed upon the Palestinian people in 2006. It was part of the George W. Bush democracy agenda. The idea was that if the Palestinians would elect their leader, then the leader would be more legitimate, and then we could go about building a democracy and building a freer society. The polls were taken in the weeks and months leading up to the election and the polls showed that the leading faction within the Palestinian Authority,

the Fatah faction, was going to win. Except when the election took place, it was Hamas that won, which put us in the position that we're in today, where Hamas refused to relinquish power and ultimately took over the Gaza Strip by force in a brutal civil war in 2007. That has actually, ever since then, it's been one war after another, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, and now 2023. It was Hamas's entrenchment in the Gaza Strip, which in many ways we could actually blame on that poll from 2006. And of course they then proceeded to eliminate the rival political party physically, I mean completely. Correct. It was a brutal civil war in Gaza.

People were pushed off of tall buildings to a certain death. People were shot in the legs and arms to ensure permanent disability. But at the end of the day, the Palestinian Authority, the recognized government of the Palestinians, was run out of town. Hamas took over completely and absolutely. And in the West Bank, it's still the case today that the Palestinian Authority is clinging to power while Hamas has run the Gaza Strip.

Let's go back to Qatar. I'm specifically interested in huge amounts of money, possibly hundreds of millions of dollars in this town, heading towards that building behind you there. How has Qatar managed to, like you said, play both sides the way that you described? Money talks. I think it's hard to ignore that money. The Qataris have bought the rights to the names of a number of American schools. They created something called Education City in Doha, or right outside of Doha, where they have Texas A&M and Georgetown and Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern. They bought the brands of these universities to create

satellites. They've sunk huge amounts of money into the university system here in the United States. They bought the World Cup through bribes, according to two British journalists who wrote a fascinating book called The Ugly Game, where I think they make a very compelling case for Qatari illicit finance purchasing those games. Well, I mean, they also, to be fair, though, they also make the case that the authorities, the soccer authorities actually indicated that it is for sale in the first place. That's right. But this is what I mean, though, by money talks, right? I mean, the money has been sloshing around in world capitals and the halls of power for quite some time now.

There are dozens of lobby firms and white-shoe law firms and PR firms that are on retainer here for the Qataris. They sponsor the congressional baseball game every year. They kept the metro open when the capitals were on their Stanley Cup run. The money is enormous. They bought a city block here called City Center, high-end retail. I mean, you can't go for more than a few blocks here in this town without seeing some semblance of Qatari influence. I just want to sponsor the congressional baseball game. I went for the first time last year or this year, but I had no idea yeah you'll see I mean it's astonishing

yeah and it's a regular thing we see the Qataris they're sponsoring lots of different things they've got a lot of money to spend and they do and it buys them influence and they've got a lot of different actors conflicted out. But I think no investment has been more lucrative for the Qataris than the Al Udeid Air Base, that large air base that we have over there. I mean, they built it to our specifications. It is for us to use in perpetuity. And it gives them security because no one will trifle with them when the U.S. military is stationed there. But as they've built up this sense of security over time, they've also had all of these bad actors based there as well. And again, I do

get a sense that this is now all kind of boiling to a head and Americans are more aware of this as a result of 10-7. Why is the funding of the university so important in your mind? You focused on that a little bit earlier. We place a lot of value in the top schools that we have in the United States. It's one of the reasons why there was so much outrage, I think, over the way that some of the schools responded to the spike in pro-Hamas sentiment or even anti-Semitic sentiment.

Some of the presidents of these schools were brought before Congress to answer to the public. And I think the Qataris seem to understand that working with these schools, investing in these schools, using the brands of these schools, this buys the Qataris some bona fides. It gives them a certain amount of additional respect. And I think it's helped build their brand. I do. Well, you're suggesting something interesting because we're talking about this hearing where the presidents of Penn and Harvard and MIT

were before Congress and just kind of saying outrageous, astonishing things, right? At MIT, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT's code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment, yes or no? If targeted at individuals, not making public statements. Yes or no? Calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute bullying and harassment?

I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus. But you've heard chants for intifada. I've heard chants, which can be anti-Semitic, depending on the context, when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people. So those would not be according to the MIT's code of conduct or rules? That would be investigated as harassment,

if pervasive and severe. Ms. McGill, at Penn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's rules or code of conduct, yes or no? If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment. Yes. I am asking specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment? If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment.

So the answer is yes. It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman. It's a context-dependent decision. That's your testimony today, calling for the genocide of Jews is depending upon the context. That is not bullying or harassment? This is the easiest question to answer yes, Ms. McGill. So is your testimony that you will not answer yes?

If it is, if the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment, yes. Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide? The speech is not harassment? This is unacceptable, Ms. McGill. I'm going to give you one more opportunity for the world to see your answer. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment?

Yes or no? It can be harassment. The answer is yes. And Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no? It can be, depending on the context. What's the context?

Targeted as an individual. Targeted as an individual. Targeted at an individual. It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them? Do you understand that dehumanization is part of antisemitism? I will ask you one more time. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?

Antisemitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct, and we do take action. So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard Code of Conduct, correct? Again, it depends on the context. It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes, and this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board.

Woke illiberal ideology has infected these schools, and these presidents are reflecting that in what they're saying. But you're saying that there's also foreign funding possibly influencing their positions. Which I think is problematic at the end of the day. These are American universities that should be serving the American people, raising up a next generation of American students who will one day be American leaders. It's a problem when you're looking at an authoritarian government of 300,000 people that is answering to no one. Their values are not our values. They don't have freedom of religion. They don't have freedom of

speech. They are interested in buying power, raw power. And if they're doing that through our universities, I think there is a price that we might pay. And of course, everything you said applies equally to communist China in terms of influence, in terms of buying raw power, in terms of, and of course, that's a whole different scale, right? But it's actually really similar. The Confucius Institutes that have been established on schools across the country. I see very little difference between them and what the Qataris are doing.

Now of course, the Confucius Institutes, they have a role in picking the teachers that are out there indoctrinating the students on the history of China and they're the language professors that are being brought in I Don't know if the Qatari's have that kind of influence with the arrangements that they've made But at the end of the day we are talking about two illiberal systems of government that have somehow nestled into the heart of our education system that should should be troubling to anyone, put their eyes open. Incredibly, if I may say. And frankly, they're not even the only ones.

Correct. Right. Correct. Right. A topic for another sit down, I suppose. There's also this element of buying real estate. You discussed this city block. Again, I wasn't aware of the city block. What is the significance of that? It's just real estate. You discussed this city block. Again, I wasn't aware of the city block. What is the significance of that? It's just real estate, right? It's gaining a foothold in the city. It's the broader portfolio.

They have Harrods department stores in London. They have soccer teams in Europe. We talked about the World Cup. One gets a sense that, you know, when you've got bottomless wealth, you know, of course you're going to spend it, but are you spending it for the exertion of influence? Are you spending it so that you can make additional money, right? What are the dividends?

I think the Qataris are doing it, it's two money, right? What are the dividends? I think the Qataris are doing it twofold, right? They're looking at ways to gain influence in capitals. I think there is a strategic logic to their investment. And, you know, I wouldn't have a problem with city center if I didn't see the congressional baseball game and the lobby firms and the white shoe law firms and the PR firms and everything else. I see it as part of a broader strategy, which I'm concerned about because it certainly

looks like, at least from my vantage point, that the U.S. government has given up on trying to change the behavior of the Qataris as it relates to sponsoring terrorist groups or even, I mean, we don't even try to hold the Qataris to account. Look at the number of people who died under horrific conditions building the stadiums for the World Cup. They never paid a price for it. I believe we've given the Qataris a sense of impunity. I do know that in Qatar, some of the school textbooks,

they're rife with anti-Semitic content, very overtly, I mean very blatantly. And you can't help but wonder if that somehow doesn't make its way into American textbooks. When we look at the Qataris, I'm often asked, why are they doing this? What is motivating this sparsely populated country? Why are they out there supporting Hamas and the Taliban and al-Qaeda and ISIS and all these other bad actors. They are a Wahhabi country. We used to only associate that word with the Saudis.

It's interesting. The Saudis have actually undergone a significant process of reform. I've been to that country several times over the last several years, and I'm astounded by some of the changes that have happened. It's got a long way to go, but it's just interesting because you may recall there was a falling out with the other Gulf states and the Qataris back in 2017. they had essentially come to the conclusion that the Qataris were too radical, even for the Gulf. So we're talking about the Kuwaitis and the Saudis and the Emiratis saying, you know what, we've had our problems in the past, but these guys, this is a bridge too far.

And really, their beef with the Qataris is that they are probably the number one proponent for the Muslim Brotherhood. Now the Muslim Brotherhood for the uninitiated is the cornerstone of every radical Islamist ideology that we've seen come out of the Middle East, whether it's Hamas, whether it's Al-Qaeda, ISIS. They're all built from the same sort of core principles embraced by a guy named Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood back in 1928. They today, the Qataris, remain the top proponents of the Brotherhood ideology. And so when you talk about the possible spread of textbooks, it's not just that. It's the sermons at mosques. It's at the madrasas, the schools where people are taught

Islamic texts and Islamic teachings. This is, I think, a broader problem. The Muslim Brotherhood is one of the largest, if not the largest, grassroots religious, political and religious organizations in the Middle East. And it is, again, the cornerstone for just about every radical ideology that we have seen and faced over the last two decades since the 9-11 attacks. Yeah, I mean, that's so different from everything I think we've been led to believe. Taliban-like regime, because they're not, right? They are far more genteel. They're much more sophisticated. They're taught in British and American schools, but yet they are promoting an ideology that seeks to undermine the Western-led world order. And that's what's so bizarre about

our air base. We're on the edge of the world, so to speak, trying to defend American values with a base in a country that is trying to erode them while simultaneously living by the rules that we created. It's a truly bizarre thing to watch. You mentioned Saudi, and I just remembered back to this horrific, I guess, murder of Jamal Khashoggi, right? But the thing that we didn't hear about early on, Khashoggi may have been a Qatari agent, in fact. So I'm not in any way justifying what the Saudis did to him. No, it was not justifiable, obviously. But there's a dimension to the story that may have been missing.

Are you familiar with this? No, I'm familiar with it. And there are organizations that I think are, to this day, dedicated to the promotion of Khashoggi's legacy or his memory that appear to be funded by the Qataris. Al Jazeera, which is, you know, the flagship television station owned by the Qataris, continues to make this a huge issue. What's actually really interesting is the Qataris and the Saudis have had this long-standing grudge match. They're in competition with one another. The Emiratis, too, and the Qataris, a lot of competition. But yeah, Khashoggi was believed to have been associated with the Qataris in some shape or form, and that actually may have put them on the hit list.

And this, of course, does not justify anything that the Saudis did, but it's part of that kind of tension that has existed in the Gulf for some time. So let's talk about Al Jazeera a little bit. Is it Qatari state media? Yeah, the Qataris say they don't control it, but they own the controlling stake. They created it. They've tried to distance themselves a little bit from it, primarily because it's just so fiercely anti-Western, anti-Israeli, anti-Israeli, anti-Saudi, anti-liberal. And I think the, you know, the Saudis have come under, or the, sorry, the Qataris have come under fire for being the patron. And this is in Arabic, you mean? It's in Arabic, but they have something called AJ+, which is the sort of youth channel.

That, by the way, was identified by the Department of Justice several years ago as an entity that needed to register as a foreign agent for the Qataris. The Qataris have refused. And there are people who still say to this day that Al Jazeera, the flagship, that that channel also needs to be registered here. But you look at the role that Al Jazeera played during the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War. I mean, the frustration. I remember talking to officials from the Bush administration. They were apoplectic over the influence of Al Jazeera and how it was radicalizing the Arab world against the United States, stacking the deck against the U.S. from a PR perspective.

The same in Afghanistan. And actually, the thing that is so troubling about the role of Al Jazeera during both of those wars is somehow the Al Jazeera reporters always seemed to know when American troops were about to be attacked, and they had their cameras ready for when the attacks would take place. Amazing. When bin Laden wanted to release new statements to the world when he was in hiding, they invariably were aired on Al Jazeera when wars break out between Israel and Hamas.

The amount of access that Hamas gets, of course, they have two dozen operatives, senior people that are based in Qatar, so they just need to walk down the street to the studio. So you just get a sense of how cozy the Qataris have been with a range of nasty actors and how that may play out on Al Jazeera's programming. And what about post-October 7th? Oh, it's been vitriolic. I try to track the Israeli media and the Arabic media, and the stuff that I see on Al Jazeera is Hamas TV, in my view. You can't really distinguish it from what Hamas would air if it had full control over the station.

I think it would be almost one and the same. It's astonishing. Not really, not when you're the patron of Hamas and you've been giving them $200 million a year and you're allowing them to operate on your soil. Is it really a shock that the television station would embrace the same ideologies? Not surprising to me. Maybe I've been watching this for too long. But yeah, that's what Al Jazeera does. That's their role. I guess I'm mainly familiar with Al Jazeera English, which doesn't seem to be that way. It's not as vitriolic. I think it certainly leans a certain way.

What's interesting, though, is the Qataris and Al Jazeera executives will say, well, look, we allow Israelis to come on. And there was a time, I think, where people said, well, they're giving Israelis at least a voice. But I'd say it's a small percentage of the voices that come on, and most of them are pro-Hamas, pro-violence against Israel, seeking the destruction of Israel, looking to change the map. So you're just saying that there's some sort of shift happening. You're seeing it in terms of perception of Qatar, in terms of policy. We were talking about this amendment. Maybe you can tell me a little bit more about that in terms of actual policy changes. What is actively happening and what do you think should happen?

Look, I'll just say this. changes, what is actively happening and what do you think should happen? Look, I'll just say this. The fact that we're talking about Qatar right now is, I think, a testament to the awakening that appears to be happening in Washington. For a long time, people were aware of the money that was sloshing around. They were aware of the influence. But there was not a lot done, certainly not a lot said. I mean, who's going to actively bring up Qatar other than terror finance watchers that are concerned about their influence? It's a small percentage of Washington. So, yeah, I mean, I think that there is a, it feels like the beginning of a different discussion right now. I hope it doesn't go away. I'm not saying that I think it's going to end perfectly.

This will probably not be some kind of John Grisham ending where the Qataris are designated as state sponsors of terrorism and we pull up our air base and we put them into sort of exile. I don't think that's going to happen. But I do think that the contract can and should be revised. That if we're going to have our air base there, we need to have the terrorist groups out. If they're going to sponsor Hamas, well, then they should be identified as a Hamas sponsor by the State Department. We've continued to just look the other way,

turn a blind eye. You get a sense now with Congress looking into this, with the media looking into this, with think tanks writing about it. It's interesting, by the way, with all the influence that the Qataris have bought, they've also funded think tanks here in town. That stopped a few years ago. And so you just get a sense that slowly but surely, maybe it was from the World Cup, they may have gone a little bit too big there, put themselves front and center in ways that maybe a country that small with the kind of vulnerabilities that it has, maybe that wasn't their smartest move, stuck their necks out a little too far.

But at any rate, you see a conversation happening that wasn't happening before. And I think that is very healthy in Washington right now, especially as we look to counter foreign finance, foreign information operations. It's a Chinese Communist Party issue, but it's, I think, increasingly a Qatari issue as well. Well, Jonathan Shanzer, it's such a pleasure to have had you on the show. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Thank you all for joining Jonathan Shanzer, it's such a pleasure to have had you on the show. Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Thank you all for joining Jonathan Shanzer and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.