Occupying a peninsula in the Persian Gulf, Qatar stands alone—in more ways than one. It’s a unique mediator between warring tribes. The small, energy-rich nation is home to the largest American military facility between Europe and Asia, but it also enjoys closer relations with Iran and Hamas than any of the wealthy Gulf States. Hamas leaders reside in Doha, Qatar’s capital. It’s this equipoise between America and its adversaries that puts Qatar at the center of the action in the Israel-Gaza war. A nation of fewer than three million, it helped broker the prisoners-for-hostages exchanges between Jerusalem and Gaza City. And although it’s never signed on to the Abraham Accords, the wealthy emirate has long had back channels to Israel that went dramatically public this week when a Qatari jet landed at Ben Gurion Airport for the first time. Officials from Doha worked with their Israeli counterparts to salvage the fragile truce with Gaza.
How should Americans think about Qatar? There are few better experts to ask than Patrick Theros, the U.S. ambassador in Doha during Bill Clinton’s second term. The career diplomat served in the State Department for over 35 years, was president of the Qatar Council in Washington from 2000 to 2017, and is a general partner at his D.C. firm, Theros & Theros. We spoke by phone and via email in October and November, as recently as yesterday. We discussed Qatar’s ties to Hamas, its military partnership with the United States, how it deals with Israel, the hostage deal, and its sponsorship of Al-Jazeera.
Our conversations were edited for clarity and brevity.
MC: What is your take on the Qatari-brokered hostage-prisoner exchange?
The Qataris know how important this is to the United States and will do their utmost to succeed. In addition, this is working for a good cause for the Qataris. Anything they do to stop the killing and advance a solution to the conflict would be very popular at home.
MC: What is Qatar’s relationship with Hamas?
PT: Qatar has been—at the request of the United States and with the tacit approval of Israel—providing the bulk of the humanitarian relief and reconstruction funds in Gaza. They have a lot invested in there. This has allowed Qatar to talk to Hamas. In addition, some of Hamas leadership resides in Qatar. [Qatar’s royal family, the Al-Thanis] have a long practice of keeping in contact with all the bad players in the region and the good players. Frequently, this turns out to Qatar’s advantage because they can play mediating roles as they’ve done now. They’ve been doing this for a long time. It was their mediating role to get [U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe] Bergdahl [who was held by the Taliban for five years]. At the U.S. request, the Al-Thanis took five Taliban leaders who were released from Guantanamo. They let them reside in Qatar, and this grew into the Taliban office in Doha [that was instrumental to U.S.-Taliban talks under the Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations]. Qatar has been the conduit for countries to talk to people they can’t talk to openly and officially—Hamas being one of them.
This is a role they’ve played with considerable success in Gaza, Lebanon, South Sudan, and Western Sudan. They were able to mediate the ceasefires and truces between parties. So, the Qatari see this as a way of making themselves indispensable to countries like the United States.
MC: How did they end up being the mediators in the region?
PT: It goes back to the original [1991] Gulf War before and before the [2003] invasion of Iraq. They got, if I remember correctly, bodies out of Iraq for us. They also managed to get citizens of other countries out of Iraq at the time
MC: How is their relationship with the other Gulf states? A few years ago, they were ostracized over their Iran ties.
PT: Basically, with the Saudis, it’s returned to normal. With the UAE [United Arab Emirates], it goes back to the 1867 feud between the two ruling families. [Abu Dhabi] was behind the 2017 isolation of Qatar. But that may be relaxing. Bahrain is a special case because the Bahraini ruling family also used to run Qatar. Qatar’s relations with the Omanis are very good. Their relations with Kuwait are very good.
MC: Explain Qatar’s relationship with Iran.
PT: The small states of the Gulf have feared both the Bedouin tribes of the central Arabian Peninsula and the Iranians equally. The way of dealing with this has been inviting outside powers to protect them. The Qataris were outraged that we took out Iraq because Iraq was a balancing force between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Qataris share a gas field with Iran, about two-thirds in Qatari waters and one-third in Iranian waters. So, they are always going to talk to the Iranians.
MC: The U.S. relationship with Qatar?
PT: Beginning in 1995/96, Doha made the decision that they were going to become America’s best friend of the Gulf. Since then, they’ve done everything possible to be that. They built the Al Udeid air base on spec. The Americans didn’t ask him to build Al Udeid. They did it in hopes that the Americans would tire of having an airbase in the unpleasant environment of Saudi Arabia and move. It was a gamble, and it worked.
MC: How worried are you about the Israel-Hamas war spreading to the Gulf?
PT: Two things worry me: irrationality and Israel. They are so angry. One understands the anger. But the anger in Israel is so great. And Netanyahu is in such bad trouble–the possibility for irrational actions on the part of the Israelis. The other part is that popular anger in the Gulf states is so great. But I’m not too worried about the war spreading too much. Remember, before the war, two types of normalization were going on. One was the normalization between Israel and some Arab states, and the other was the normalization between Iran and the Arab states of the Gulf. The first one is dead in the water. It may revive, but it’s going to be hard. But the other one is happening right now. Iran isn’t in sterling shape, and it’s building better relations with the Gulf states.
MC: This rapprochement with the Saudis and Israelis. Just on pause from where you sit? Or dead?
PT: Somewhere between a pause and a funeral home.
MC: A coma.
PT: Israelis have got two options. One is to go full-fledged—kill 100,000 people, lose 10,000 troops, occupy Gaza, and then not know what to do with it. Or option two: Bomb the bejesus out of Gaza, kill maybe 20,000 to 30,000 people, and then declare victory and go back to the status quo. Neither one offers a future. We have to start thinking about what happens afterward. We can’t keep doing this.
MC: Perhaps there’s hope, post-Hamas and post-Bibi Netanyahu?
PT: I don’t see how you get post-Hamas.
MC: You think the Israeli goal of neutralizing or eliminating Hamas is impossible?
PT: It’s not analogous to Isis. You’re trying to fight a battle across Manhattan with a population that hates you, and you’re going to make them hate you even more. Whatever unhappiness the Gazan population has with Hamas—and there’s a lot of it—pales by comparison to their hatred for the Israelis. Even if they kill the senior leadership of Hamas, something even more lethal will be growing in the rubble.
MC: What should the U.S. be doing now?
PT: Washington is literally the only place where somebody can sit down, take a long breath, and start saying, “We got to think about how this ends.”
It’s going to end badly if either of the two scenarios I outlined takes place. We’re not even back where we started from. We’re in a much worse situation than where we started from.
MC: Because the Arab world would be much more radicalized? Gaza would be much more radicalized?
PT: Exactly. I mean, when you kill that many people on both sides, you can’t expect rationality.
MC: A lot of people are angry at Qatar, charging they’re a Hamas ally. What do you say to them?
PT: Everything Qatar has done is either at the American request or with American approval.
MC: Interesting, because The Washington Post ran a piece saying Washington and Doha agreed to have a serious reassessment of the Qatar-Hamas relationship at a later date, saying the U.S. was now demanding that. Did you see that piece?
PT: I saw that piece.
MC: How did you read that?
PT: I read that as there’s a lot of people attacking Qatar, and [Secretary of State Anthony] Blinken had to say something. Hamas is there [in Qatar] because we want them there.
MC: Right. We don’t want them in Iran.
PT: In 2012, Hamas was in Damascus, and Hamas was trying to stay neutral in the Syrian civil war. The Iranians were pressuring them to support [Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad], and Hamas didn’t want to do that. So, at that point, it was clear Hamas would have to leave or just be coopted by the Syrians, perhaps violently. There are three places that were considered: Turkey, Iran or Qatar. The Turks said they weren’t going to do it. And we would have gone ballistic if [Hamas had] gone to Iran because then we would have lost all ability to communicate with them. They would have become a tool to the Iranians. And the truth is, we have no other way to negotiate hostages or anything.
MC: Because it’s just too important to have Hamas where it can be reached.
PT: Because they’re doing it at our request.
MC: Israel’s relationships with Qatar?
PT: [The Hamas-Qatar lines of communication] are just as valuable and probably even more valuable to the Israelis. I mean, Qatar kept the lid on in Gaza at the cost of about half a billion dollars a year for years. Every dime that Qatar spent in Gaza was approved by the Americans, who presumably checked it out with the Israelis, who might have ended up having to foot the bill themselves under the laws of war. Gaza is still occupied Israeli territory, even though the Israelis have kept a distance from it. The occupying power bears full responsibility for the welfare of the population.
MC: I know it’s early, but after this war, what could happen?
PT: Six months from now, we will be amid a quagmire with thousands and tens of thousands of people dying—or at some point in the relatively near future, leaders decide to cut their losses and declare victory.
MC: How should Americans think about Qatar and Al Jazeera?
PT: Since I arrived as ambassador [in 1995]. Qatar is trying very hard to be America’s best friend in the Gulf. Now, they may interpret it in certain ways. But one of the things that they have adopted, for example, is the concept of a free press. If I remember correctly, CNN has never criticized Ted Turner, and Fox has never criticized the Murdochs. In the same way, you shouldn’t expect Al-Jazeera to criticize Qatar.
It’s a news channel in the Middle East that has credibility among Arabs. I would compare it to Fox in the sense that it has gone off the deep end at times. But would I trust Al-Jazeera’s reporting during the fighting? I listen to the BBC every morning, and they’ve been less objective.
Qatar hosts the most important airbase we have between Europe and the Far East. It allows us the freedom to use it any way we want, even when they have to grit their teeth when we do something that they don’t like. But they’ve made up their minds that they are going to become invaluable to the United States.
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