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

“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.

Watch the clip:

“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.”

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek: Jonathan Schanzer, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Jonathan Schanzer: Pleasure to be with you.

Mr. Jekielek: We’ve all been following the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, especially since October 7th. The role of Qatar in all of this is not well known, and you wrote an article recently that directly addresses this. Qatar was the key state involved in the hostage negotiations, but we know that they actually fund Hamas and other groups. How does this work? Please explain this to us.

Mr. Schanzer: I’m not sure how it works. 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, and 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 percent of the world’s energy from the natural gas that it pulls out of the gas field that it shares with Iran, so it has built up this immense wealth over time.

You may recall that after 9/11 the Saudis grew uncomfortable with having the United States based in Saudi Arabia. The Emiratis also took a pass on this. The Qataris were the ones who said, “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.

Down the street from this Al Udeid Air Base is Hamas, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda financiers, and ISIS financiers. It is a truly bizarre arrangement. The Qataris have been able to sustain it with a massive amount of lobby money and investment here in the United States. Some of its biggest supporters 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 October 7th happened.

That’s when it became 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 a headquarters in Doha, Qatar. 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, we all have realized that they are first and foremost advocating for Hamas.

Mr. Jekielek: Before we continue, please tell us about yourself. You’re the Head of Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies [FDD], so tell us a little bit about the think tank as well. It has a certain perspective on this situation.

Mr. Schanzer: I’m originally from Philadelphia, and studied at Emory University in Atlanta. I went on to get a master’s degree at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where I studied Arabic and Hebrew. I then went on to study Arabic at the American University in Cairo after my master’s was over, and I’ve got a PhD from King’s College, London. 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 and lived in Israel, I had several brushes with Hamas terrorists that were just a few blocks away. They were carrying out terrorist attacks very close by. I was just struck by how common these attacks had become. By the time I was ready to write my master’s thesis, I had no doubt it was going to be about various terrorist movements. I finished that master’s thesis just in time for 9/11.

I have 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 Hamas finance in particular. That was one of my portfolios, and that’s been keeping me quite busy lately. I don’t quite know how I’ve become the swamp creature that I am, but I’ve been in Washington now for more than 20 years. For the last 13 years I’ve been at FDD, a think tank where we now have about 65 people.

We cover everything from China, to Russia, to cyberattacks, to Iran, to Hezbollah, and to Hamas, so it’s full service. We earned a reputation some time ago for being Right-wing, which I fully disagree with. We are tough when it comes to matters of national security affairs. We 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 and giving money to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism was going to backfire. We took our lumps for having taken that position. We were obviously opposed to the White House at the time.

We are opposed to this White House now in terms of its attempts to get back into an arrangement with the Iranians. We have emerged from all of this in a way where we feel very justified. When you look at what’s happened, October 7th was unfortunately the result of the regime getting money from the international community in the form of sanctions relief, cash, benefits and perks.

That money found its way to the coffers of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and 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. There is an attempt to cast all of this as, “We’re trying to prevent a standoff with the Iranians. We’re trying to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon.”

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. Maybe some of it can still be undone, but it explains in large part where we are today.

Mr. Jekielek: Lee Smith, who has been on this show, has made the case that the purpose of the Iran deal was the opposite of the stated purpose, and actually was to facilitate Iran getting the bomb. Iran is probably the largest financial sponsor of Hamas. Who are the other financial sponsors? You mentioned a few different players.

Mr. Schanzer: 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. 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.

Mr. Jekielek: Why is that gone?

Mr. Schanzer: Because the Israelis have removed Hamas from its base of power, so they’re no longer the sovereign in Gaza. 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 largely been removed. There are some battles that remain, but they don’t control much right now. They have lost control now that the IDF [Israel Defense Force] is operating in the Gaza Strip.

They’ve lost a significant chunk of the territory that they controlled, and also the financial perks that come with being the government. Then from there, one of the patrons is Iran. When we talk about Iran’s patronage, we’re talking about not just the cash that has rolled in, but also the weapons and 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 are at roughly $200 million a year. The Turks are an important jurisdiction for Hamas support. The Turks have actually allowed for Hamas to establish a headquarters in Istanbul. There are isolated reports that have not really been verified, but we believe that there is money coming from that 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 US-led financial system. That means they are able to access American banks through the correspondent relationships that we have with them. That’s not good, because the Turks have some sort of protected status and they are NATO members. They’re treated as responsible members of 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 the wild west of the banking system in Kuwait.

Finally, there’s one jurisdiction that we’re watching very carefully right now where some Hamas operatives are likely to flee, as the Israelis have been threatening to carry out a Munich Olympics-style assassination campaign against some of the Hamas leaders.

There are now reports that the leaders are going to go to Algeria, and so that will be another jurisdiction that we 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.

Mr. Jekielek: In your article, you said the mask was off for Qatar. Why? What changed on October 7th for Qatar?

Mr. Schanzer: 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 can see now . The Qataris tipped him off when the United States drew close and he was able to escape. Of course, we captured him years later in Pakistan, but this was really a black mark for the Qatari regime.

In the years after that, we’ve seen Hamas operating from there with 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 violent. There were groups like Al-Qaeda in Syria, formerly the Nusra Front, that were based in Doha, Qatar, as well. No one seemed to be terribly bothered by this.

The Taliban had their embassy there, which 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. When we had our embarrassing, botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was engineered by the Qataris, and we thanked them for it.

This is a country that somehow has gotten away with supporting extremist groups and consistently weakening American and Western interests over time. My belief is that the October 7th attacks and the impossible situation where we find ourselves now, relying on Qatar, the sponsor of Hamas, to save these 240 Israelis from Hamas captivity, has made it very clear who we are dealing with. 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 why they’re not extremists and that they’re truly looking out for Western interests and trying to achieve stability. But no one is buying it. They continue to find themselves under fire, and so for that reason the mask has fallen off. I don’t believe the Qataris are able to pull this off any longer.

But they are trying their best. We have reports right now that they’re sinking hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars into the PR firms that are trying to dig them out of this hole. But as they say, the rule of holes is that when you’re in a hole, 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. Members of Congress are watching, and they do appear right now to want to hold the Qataris to account.

Mr. Jekielek: There is a Congressional amendment essentially calling on Qatar to give up the Hamas leaders, correct?

Mr. Schanzer: Yes. This is exactly what’s going to lead to the expulsion of these leaders, and right now we understand that Algeria may be their landing spot. This is very similar to what happened to the PLO in 1982. After the Israelis went in and waged war against the PLO, they were forced onto a ship and ultimately they went to Tunisia, Algeria’s next-door neighbor.

The idea was that if you pushed them further away from the center of gravity in the Middle East and got them out of the region, they would 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.

Mr. Jekielek: Israel’s stated purpose is the destruction of Hamas. What does that actually mean?

Mr. Schanzer: That’s a good question. It’s a fairly lofty war aim, I suppose. There are probably 30,000 fighters in Hamas’ military. The Israelis would like to capture or kill as many of those as possible, and they’re doing so. One gets a sense that there have been thousands of Hamas fighters that have been killed already. The Israelis have done an admirable job of uprooting the military infrastructure they have found in the Gaza Strip.

We’re talking about the massive tunnel system, or what the Israelis refer to as the metro. There was one discovered just within the last few days. It was four kilometers long, wide enough to drive a car in, with electricity, oxygen, and sewage removal. It is an unbelievable infrastructure that they have built, all with the intended goal of fighting Israel. They want to do so by surprise, using these commando tunnels beneath the ground to move heavy equipment and move rockets.

The Israelis, of course, are destroying a lot of those rockets. They’re capturing weapons and they’re capturing fighters. This is the short-term goal. Longer term is going to be harder because you can’t kill an idea. The idea of Hamas is extreme Islam and extreme Palestinian nationalism, mashed up together in a virulent form of anti-Zionism, antisemitism, and Jihadism that’s going to be a lot harder to defeat among the Palestinian population.

As I mentioned, there will be an extraterritorial assassination campaign that will likely go on for several years. Anyone that had even the vaguest role in October 7th is likely to meet their maker, but I don’t suspect that Hamas will be gone by the end of this. 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.

You mentioned Lee Smith who wrote a book called, The Strong Horse. His book argues that those that project power are those that capture the imagination of the people of the Middle East. 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.

Mr. Jekielek: There were a number of polls that were run. I don’t know how you run a poll in the Gaza Strip, but they all had a very high percentage of support, not just of Hamas, but also of what was done on October 7th. What kind of stock do you put into those polls?

Mr. Schanzer: I don’t put a lot of stock in Palestinian polls. 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 free speech and diversion of opinion. You get a call from a pollster saying, “Do you support Hamas?” The answer is always, “Yes, 100 percent, yes,” and then you hang up as quickly as possible.

There was an election that the United States imposed upon the Palestinian people in 2006, 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. Then they could go about building a democracy and building a freer society. There were polls 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 are in today. Hamas refused to relinquish power and ultimately took over the Gaza Strip by force in a brutal civil war in 2007. Ever since then, it has been one war after another; 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, and now in 2023. We could actually blame Hamas’ entrenchment in the Gaza Strip on that election in 2006.

Mr. Jekielek: Hamas then proceeded to eliminate the rival political party.

Mr. Schanzer: 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 arms and legs 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, and Hamas took over completely. In the West Bank today, it’s still the case that the Palestinian Authority is clinging to power, while Hamas runs the Gaza Strip.

Mr. Jekielek: Let’s go back to Qatar. I’m specifically interested in the hundreds of millions of dollars heading into DC. How has Qatar managed to play both sides in the way that you have described?

Mr. Schanzer: Money talks. 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 right outside of Doha, where they have Texas A&M, Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, and Northwestern. They bought the brands of these universities to create satellite locations.

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 they make a very compelling case that Qatari illicit-financing purchased those games.

Mr. Jekielek: To be fair, they also make the case that the soccer authorities indicated that it was for sale in the first place.

Mr. Schanzer: That’s right. But this is what I mean—money talks. This money has been sloshing around in world capitals and in the halls of power for quite some time now. The Qataris have dozens of lobby firms, white shoe law firms, and PR firms on retainer. 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 CityCenterDC for high-end retail. You can’t go for more than a few blocks here in this town without seeing some Qatari influence. It’s a regular thing. We can see that the Qataris are sponsoring lots of different things.

They’ve got a lot of money to spend, and they do, and it buys them influence. They’ve got a lot of different actors conflicted out. But no investment has been more lucrative for the Qataris than the Al Udeid Air Base, that large air base that we have over there, which they built to our specifications.

It is for us to use in perpetuity, and it gives them security, because no one will trifle with them when a U.S. military is 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. Again, I do get a sense that this is now all boiling to a head, and that Americans are more aware of this as a result of October 7th.

Mr. Jekielek: Why is the funding of the university so important in your mind?

Mr. Schanzer: 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 over the way that some of the schools responded to the spike in pro-Hamas sentiment, or even antisemitic sentiment. Some of the presidents of these schools were brought before Congress to answer to the public. The Qataris seem to understand that working with these schools, investing in these schools, and using the brands of these schools, buys the Qataris some bonafides. It gives them a certain amount of additional respect, and it has helped build their brand.

Mr. Jekielek: We’re talking about this hearing where the presidents of UPenn, Harvard, and MIT were before Congress saying astonishing and outrageous things.

Representative Elise Stefanik: At MIT, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT’s code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?

Dr. Sally Kornbluth: If a targeted individual is not making public statements.

Rep. Stefanik: Yes or no? Calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute bullying and harassment?

Dr. Kornbluth: I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus.

Rep. Stefanik: But you’ve heard the chants for intifada.

Dr. Kornbluth: I’ve heard chants which can be antisemitic, depending on the context, when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people.

Rep. Stefanik: Those would not be according to MIT’s code of conduct or rules?

Dr. Kornbluth: That would be investigated as harassment if pervasive and severe.

Rep. Stefanik: Ms. Magill, at UPenn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate UPenn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?

Dr. Liz Magill: If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment. Yes.

Rep. Stefanik: I am asking specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?

Dr. Magill: If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment.

Rep. Stefanik: So, the answer is yes.

Dr. Magill: It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.

Rep. Stefanik: 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. Magill. Is your testimony that you will not answer yes?

Dr. Magill: If the speech becomes-

Rep. Stefanik: Yes or no.

Dr. Magill: If the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment, yes.

Rep. Stefanik: Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide. The speech is not harassment. This is unacceptable, Ms. Magill, 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?

Dr. Magill: It can be harassment.

Rep. Stefanik: The answer is yes. Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?

Dr. Claudine Gay: It can be, depending on the context.

Rep. Stefanik: What’s the context?

Dr. Gay: Targeted as an individual, targeted at an individual.

Rep. Stefanik: 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?

Dr. Gay: Antisemitic rhetoric-

Rep. Stefanik: And is it antisemitic rhetoric-

Dr. Gay: Antisemitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, and intimidation is actionable conduct and we do take action.

Rep. Stefanik: So, the answer is yes. Calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct, correct?

Dr. Gay: Again, it depends on the context.

Rep. Stefanik: 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.

Mr. Jekielek: Woke, illiberal ideology has infected these schools, and these presidents are reflecting that in their statements. But you’re saying that there is also foreign funding possibly influencing their positions.

Mr. Schanzer: Which I think is problematic, at the end of the day. These are American universities that should be serving the American people, raising up the 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 raw power. If they’re doing that through our universities, there is a price that we might have to pay.

Mr. Jekielek: Everything you said applies equally to communist China in terms of influence and of buying raw power. That’s at a whole different scale, correct?

Mr. Schanzer: But it’s actually really similar. With the Confucius Institutes that have been established in schools across the country, I see very little difference between them and what the Qataris are doing. The Confucius Institutes have a role in picking the teachers that are being brought in and that are indoctrinating the students on the history of China.

I don’t know if the Qataris 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 be troubling to anyone that has their eyes open.

Mr. Jekielek: There is also this element of real estate investment. You mentioned CityCenterDC here in Washington. What is the significance of that?

Mr. Schanzer: It means gaining a foothold in the city to include in their 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 when you’ve got bottomless wealth, 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? What are the dividends?

The Qataris are doing this, and it’s twofold. They’re looking at ways to gain influence in world capitals. There is a strategic logic to their investment. I wouldn’t have a problem with CityCenterDC 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.

It is part of a broader strategy, which I’m concerned about. It certainly looks like the U.S. government has given up on trying to change the behavior of the Qataris as it relates to sponsoring terrorist groups. 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. We have given the Qataris a sense of impunity.

Mr. Jekielek: Some of the school textbooks in Qatar are rife with antisemitic content. I wonder if that makes its way into American textbooks.

Mr. Schanzer: When discussing 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, and 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. However, it’s still got a long way to go.

You may recall the Saudis had a falling out with the other Gulf states and the Qataris back in 2017. They had essentially come to the conclusion that the Qatari were too radical even for the Gulf. The Kuwaitis and the Saudis and the Emiratis said, “We’ve had our problems in the past, but these guys, this is a bridge too far.”

Their beef with the Qataris is that they are probably the number one proponent for the Muslim Brotherhood. 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, Al-Qaeda, or ISIS. They’re all built from the same core principles embraced by Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood back in 1928.

Today, the Qataris remain the top proponent of the Brotherhood ideology. It’s not only the spread of textbooks. It’s the sermons at mosques, and it’s the Madrasas, the schools where people are taught Islamic texts and Islamic teachings. This is a broader problem.

The Muslim Brotherhood is one of the largest, grassroots political and religious organizations in the Middle East. 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.

Mr. Jekielek: That is so different from everything we’ve been led to believe about the Qataris.

Mr. Schanzer: Yes. This is a country working with investment bankers and buying Harrods and hosting the World Cup. You don’t think about them like some kind of Taliban-like regime, because they’re not. They’re far more genteel and sophisticated. They’re taught in British and American schools, but yet they’re promoting an ideology that seeks to undermine the Western-led world order.

That’s so bizarre about our air base. We’re on the edge of the world trying to defend American values with a military base in a country that is actually trying to erode them, while we are still living by the rules that we created. It’s a truly bizarre thing to watch.

Mr. Jekielek: You mentioned the Saudis, and I remember the horrific murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Early on, we didn’t hear that Khashoggi may have been a Qatari agent. But I’m not in any way justifying what the Saudis did to him.

Mr. Schanzer: No, it was not justifiable, obviously.

Mr. Jekielek: There is a dimension to the story that may have been missing. Are you familiar with this?

Mr. Schanzer: I’m familiar with it. There are organizations that to this day are dedicated to the promotion of Khashoggi’s legacy or his memory that appear to be funded by the Qataris. Al Jazeera, which is the flagship television station owned by the Qataris, continues to make this a huge issue.

The Qataris and the Saudis have had this long standing grudge match. They’re in competition with one another. The Emiratis and the Qataris are also in a lot of competition. But yes, Khashoggi was believed to have been associated with the Qataris in some way, and that may have put him on the hit list. Of course, this does not justify anything that the Saudis did, but it’s part of that tension that has existed in the Gulf for some time.

Mr. Jekielek: Let’s talk about Al Jazeera. Is it really Qatari state media?

Mr. Schanzer: Yes, the Qataris say they don’t control it, but they own the controlling stake and they created it. They’ve tried to distance themselves from it, primarily because it’s just so fiercely anti-Western, anti-Israeli, anti-Saudi, and anti-liberal. The Qataris have come under fire for being the patron.

Mr. Jekielek: This is the Arabic language channel, correct?

Mr. Schanzer: It’s in Arabic, but they also have something called AJ+, which is their youth channel. That 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. There are people who to this day still say that Al Jazeera, the flagship channel, also needs to be registered here.

You can look at the role that Al Jazeera played during the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war. I remember talking to officials from the Bush administration and they were apoplectic over the influence of Al Jazeera and how it was radicalizing the Arab world against the United States. From a PR perspective, they were stacking the deck against the U.S.

The same thing happened in Afghanistan. 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. They had their cameras ready when the attacks would take place. It was amazing. When bin Laden was in hiding and wanted to release new statements to the world they were aired on Al Jazeera.

When wars break out between Hamas and Israel, Hamas gets a great amount of access. Of course, they have two dozen senior operatives that are based in Qatar, so they just need to walk down the street to the studio. You get a sense of how cozy the Qataris have been with a range of nasty actors and how that plays out on Al Jazeera’s programming.

Mr. Jekielek: What about post-October 7th?

Mr. Schanzer: It has been vitriolic. I try to track the Israeli media and the Arabic media. In my view, the stuff that I see on Al Jazeera is really Hamas TV. You can’t really distinguish it from what Hamas would air if it had full control over the station. It would be almost one and the same.

Mr. Jekielek: That is astonishing.

Mr. Schanzer: Not really. Not when you are 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? It is not surprising to me. Maybe I’ve been watching this for too long. But yes, that’s what Al Jazeera does. That’s their role.

Mr. Jekielek: I’m mainly familiar with Al Jazeera English, which doesn’t seem to be that way.

Mr. Schanzer: It’s not as vitriolic, but it certainly leans a certain way. What’s interesting though is that the Qataris and the Al Jazeera executives will say, “Look, we allow Israelis to come on.” There was a time when people said, “At least they are giving Israelis a voice.” But I would say it’s a small percentage of the voices that come on. Most of them are pro-Hamas, pro-violence against Israel, seeking the destruction of Israel, and looking to change the map.

Mr. Jekielek: You’re seeing a shift in the perception of Qatar, in terms of this proposed Congressional amendment. Please tell us more about that in terms of actual policy changes. What is happening and what do you think should happen?

Mr. Schanzer: The fact that we’re talking about Qatar right now is a testament to the awakening that is 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 said about it, and certainly not a lot done about it. Who is going to look at Qatar, other than terror-finance watchers that are concerned about their influence. That is a very small percentage of Washington.

But yes, it feels like a different discussion right now, and I hope it doesn’t go away. I’m not saying that 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 out our air base and we put them into exile.

I don’t think that’s going to happen, but I do think that the contract can and should be revised. 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, then they should be identified as a Hamas sponsor by the State Department.

We continued to look the other way and turn a blind eye. But now, Congress is looking into this, the media is looking into this, and think tanks are writing about it. By the way, with all the influence that the Qataris have bought, they have also funded think tanks here in town, which stopped just a few years ago.

Maybe this shift was caused by the World Cup. They may have gone too big there and put themselves front and center in ways that maybe a country that small shouldn’t have. With the kind of vulnerabilities they have, maybe it wasn’t their smartest move. They stuck their necks out a little too far.

But at any rate, you see a conversation happening now that wasn’t happening before. That is very healthy for Washington right now, especially as we look to counter foreign finance and foreign information operations. That is a Chinese Communist Party issue, but it is increasingly a Qatari issue as well.

Mr. Jekielek: Jonathan Schanzer, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Mr. Schanzer: Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here.

Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Jonathan Schanzer and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

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