One Move That Will Bolster America's Standing In The World: Relocate The CENTCOM Base Out Of Qatar – Part I

Former President Trump's September 22, 2024 hosting of the Emir of Qatar at Mar-a-Lago, and his misguided diplomatic praise for Qatar as seeking peace in the Middle East and worldwide, underlines the hopelessness of any change in the quagmire of the Middle East in a potential Trump administration.

As president, Trump may act against Iran, but at the same time, he will embrace other enemies of America – primarily Qatar and Turkey, which go hand in hand – instead of Iran and its proxies, which were embraced by Democratic administrations.

It is a tragedy that what is common knowledge for any vegetable vendor or taxi driver in the Arab and Muslim world eludes American (as well as Israeli) intelligence leaders – that is, Qatar's anti-U.S. and terror-supporting role in the Arab and Muslim world as well as in the West.

Trump's meeting also underlines that Qatar's story is not a Gulf story, nor an Arab story. It is a story that impacts the whole West and its ability to counter its enemies.

This document will detail Qatar's role and the consequences of an American embrace of it, and the devastating effects this has on America's true allies, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). By embracing Qatar, the U.S. is alienating and abandoning KSA and UAE their enemies, who are also America's own enemies. Under these circumstances, KSA and UAE have no choice but to distance themselves from America and drift towards China and Russia.

Many who would agree that Qatar is an enemy of the U.S., not an ally, may still say that America must embrace Qatar because of the CENTCOM base located there. The truth is the opposite. First of all, America can move the base at any time to the UAE, Bahrain, or KSA. In fact, these countries had requested it, but America turned them down.

Second, Qatar holds CENTCOM in its territory not as a favor to the U.S. but as security and protection for itself. Without the American base, the Aal Thani family's rule of Qatar would likely be ended by its neighbors. It is Qatar that is beholden to the U.S. for maintaining the base on its soil. Given that the Aal Thani family owes its very survival to the base's location in Qatar, any U.S. administration could have pressured Qatar into a pro-U.S. policy instead of its pro-terrorist and pro-Iran one. Unfortunately, none have done it.[1] 

Successive U.S. administrations have acted as if they somehow owe Qatar for hosting the base. This is as much a tragedy as it is an inexplicable strategic blunder that begs explanation – because this American approach cannot be explained by any strategic considerations. But there may be other considerations in play, such as Qatar's immense wealth, that are impacting the policies of many countries, including the U.S.

The Origin Of The American Administrations' Global Blunder With Regard To Qatar

With the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989, and the Soviet Union's chaotic era that concluded in its total demise, the U.S., as Charles Krauthammer wrote in January 1990,[2] enjoyed "a unipolar moment." Two countries rose up to challenge the U.S. and its Western global hegemony (alongside the great powers of Russia and China). They were Qatar and Iran, who launched a decades-long and exceedingly joint effort to create the Islamist anti-U.S. pole.

With their growing cooperation over the years, Iran and Qatar formed a de facto and informal alliance, as Qatar managed to play a double game vis-à-vis the West: the arsonist masquerading as firefighter. While it pretended to be primarily an ally of America and the West, its leaders claimed to be (in their own words) 18th-century Wahhabis,[3] and today they are the foremost supporters of Islamist movements, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood, and terrorist organizations.[4]

A special document focusing on the Qatar-Iran alliance and cooperation will be published soon by MEMRI.

In creating the Islamist pole, Iran has used its ideology of "exporting the revolution" through its military might and by creating, and supporting over the years, several proxies – Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, Lebanese, and later Yemeni – the so-called "axis of resistance."

With regard to Qatar, it is promoting the Islamist pole with its immense wealth, buying entry, impact and influence in the Western economic, political, educational and media institutions. It is operating the most influential media tool – Al-Jazeera TV and network, owned and operated by the government and aimed at promoting Qatar's political, religious, and ideological goals.[5]

Despite its small size – 200,000-300,000 citizens, with the rest foreign workers with few rights – Qatar has also used violent coercion by supporting and using Islamist terrorist organizations as proxies. Two of these, the Taliban and Hamas, were even granted safe haven in the capital, Doha, from where they were allowed to continue their terrorist activity (including against the U.S. itself, for example 9/11, see below).[6]

Qatar's Sponsorship Of Islamist Terrorist Organizations

Qatar is the world's foremost state sponsor of Islamic terrorist organizations and movements, backing a wide range of them, both Sunni and Shi'ite. They include the Islamic State (ISIS), Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbullah, the Houthis, the Taliban, Jabhat Al-Nusra, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, see below) and even Islamist militias in northern Mali.[7]

Qatar is responsible for 9/11 – the worst of all anti-U.S. Islamist terror operations. It was also involved in many others (see comprehensive MEMRI report Qatar Is Responsible For Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's 2,977 Murders On 9/11 – At The World Trade Center And The Pentagon, And On Two Other Hijacked Flights – That Are Only Some Of 31 Attacks And Plots That He Outlined In His Own Confession, September 13, 2024).

Qatar hosts the financiers of terrorism, according to the United Nations and to former U.S. Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen.[8]

The September 2012 murder of U.S. Ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens in Benghazi was perpetrated by the Qatar-supported Al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar Al-Sharia.[9]

In 2021, Qatar succeeded in replacing the democratically elected and secular Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani with the Taliban, whom it sustained for years with headquarters in Doha. It is also to blame for the 13 American soldiers killed during the Taliban's violent takeover in August 2021.

Qatar provided Hamas with billions of dollars, which ended up financing the murder of over 30 Americans and the taking of 11 Americans as hostages to Gaza in its October 7 attack on Israel.[10]

Additionally, in 2007 in Gaza, it was thanks to their general support to Hamas as an organization that Hamas was able to take over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority.

Qatar also finances Hizbullah and Iran's IRGC.[11]

Qatar's Support For Islamist Movements

In every country in the Arab and Muslim world where there is struggle between Islamists and non-Islamists, Qatar supports the Islamist side. It backs Hizbullah in Lebanon as well as the Muslim Brotherhood movement in various political or armed struggles in Tunisia, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, and Morocco. It even supports Islamist movements in northern Mali (see MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 10986, The Raven Project Leaks: Qatar Reportedly Paid $15 Million To Islamist Movements In Northern Mali And The Sahel In 2011, November 29, 2023).

In Libya, Qatar sided with the Islamists in Tripoli, with Turkey's military assistance, against the secular authoritarian Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar in Benghazi. According to documents found by Haftar's people in Libya, members of Hamas Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades were supporting the Islamist side.[12]

In Tunisia, Qatar supports the Muslim Brotherhood Ennahda party leader Rashed Ghannoushi against secular authoritarian president Kais Sayed.[13]

In Sudan, Qatar is supporting the Muslim Brotherhood-connected SAF Gen. Abd Al-Fattah Al-Burhan against his rival, the secular Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (nicknamed "Hemedti").[14]

In Jordan, the Hashemite Kingdom is struggling against the Qatar-backed Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas movement for fomenting chaos.[15]

Qatar turned the Arab Spring into a Muslim Brotherhood Spring, particularly in Egypt, where it succeeded, via Al Jazeera TV, in inciting a popular revolution and replacing President Mubarak with the Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammad Morsi.[16]

Qatar hosted the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradawi, who was known for his support of suicide attacks and was banned from entering the U.S. and Britain. When he fled Egypt, he was embraced by the Qatari regime and granted safe haven, Qatari citizenship, and a weekly program on Al-Jazeera – a podium from which he incited the Arab and Muslim masses.[17]  

In a speech aired by Al-Jazeera TV, Al-Qaradawi  promised that the next Holocaust would, "Allah willing," be "at the hands of the believers" – the Muslims.[18]

Qatar's Illegal And Anti-U.S. Activity In The U.S.

Recently, it was revealed that Qatar even dared to bribe a leading Democratic senator, Robert Menendez, who was subsequently convicted of political corruption. Another striking example of this is Qatar's contracting of a former CIA official to spy on Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Ed Royce (former R-CA and House Foreign Affairs Committee chair), who are all opposed to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.[19]  

Qatar brazenly ignored the order by the U.S. Department of Justice to register Al-Jazeera as a foreign agent.[20]

Qatar  has funded American universities to the tune of $4.7 billion, which is evident now in the wave of pro-Hamas protests sweeping American universities.[21]

Qatar And Its Regional Enemies

In 1995, when the major Arab countries objected to the coup of the previous Emir (Hamad bin Khalifa) against his father (Khalifa bin Hamad Aal Thani), the new emir sought out the Americans to provide him with additional protection. Shrewdly, he offered them Al-Udeid airbase to serve the U.S. military. With that move, this base came to guarantee the safety of the dictatorial Aal-Thani family.

Threatened by Qatar's Islamist activities, and striving for Westernization and socioeconomic progress, the regimes of the UAE and KSA offered the U.S. their territory for the CENTCOM base, but the U.S. turned them down. Under the Obama administration, America made it clear that it prefers its enemies, Iran and Qatar, to its natural allies – KSA, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Jordan – who were also subject to constant attacks by the Qatar-supported Muslim Brotherhood.[22]

In 2017, KSA, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt declared a total boycott on Qatar, in order to bring down the ruling Aal-Thani family. They set out the conditions for lifting the boycott: Qatar must stop supporting Iran and terrorism.[23]

It was again the U.S., alongside Iran and other anti-U.S. countries, that came to Qatar's rescue to survive the boycott and the political pressure.

What lesson were KSA, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt to learn from this? That the U.S. is completely blind to the role of Qatar as an anti-U.S. state sponsor of global Islamist terrorism and ally of Iran, and that it prefers its enemies to its allies. It is no wonder that over the years, in the face of this abandonment by the American administration, KSA and UAE have gradually drifted away from America and towards America's adversaries and enemies – BRICS, Russia, and China.   

In recent years, the misguided U.S. policy has gone so far as to dub Qatar "a major non-NATO ally," and to say that "Qatar's security is America's security."[24] The CIA even gave a top award to the head of Qatari intelligence, for enhancing intelligence cooperation between Doha and Washington despite its responsibility for terrorist attacks against the U.S.[25]

Conclusion: Relocating CENTCOM Is The One Move That Will Change America's Weak Standing In The Middle East And Worldwide

One relatively simple move  could change America's weak standing in the world into a strong one, and even prevent a looming world war, possibly resulting from the tensions created by Qatar worldwide – and that is moving the CENTCOM base from Qatar to the UAE or KSA. This would be a new approach by America – preferring its allies over its enemies in the Arab and Muslim world, fighting Islamism rather than embracing it, cutting off the flow of cash dollars for anti-Americanism, creating a real bloc against Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, denying the Iranian ayatollahs' regime a major ally worldwide, and ushering in a sane strategy of strengthening Western civilization over those who seek to destroy it.

Without the American airbase in Qatar, Qatar's ruling family could be toppled by its neighbors as they tried to do in 2017, with no one in the Arab and Muslim world missing it except the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, and other terrorist organizations.

Tragically, it is unlikely that any American administration will do this, not even a Republican one. The Arab and Muslim world, and particularly the countries that are considered the collective West that have been deserted by America, will all have to learn to live in a world without American and Western hegemony. This is precisely what Iran, Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, Cuba, China, Qatar, and North Korea are working towards, and what the Iranian regime has envisioned for decades – as in the following video from 2004:  

* Yigal Carmon is Founder and President of MEMRI.