Is Qatar’s Time in the Spotlight Over?

The End of Qatar’s Moment?

Michael Rubin | The ME Forum

On July 12, 2026, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani passed away. In 1995, while his father, Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani, was in Geneva, Hamad staged a bloodless coup, though he subsequently demanded Interpol arrest his father and return him to Qatar to be executed for treason. Khalifa spent nine years in exile in France, before Hamad allowed him to return.

Under Khalifa, Qatar was a sleepy port and a shadow of Dubai. Arriving in 1994, the main airport terminal was little more than a large warehouse with counters and fluorescent lights, not the wonder of architecture and indoor landscaping it is today. On weekends, the few permanent expats would gather at the Ramada, one of only five international hotels in the city, to socialize at its brunch; for foreigners, it was one of the few sources of entertainment in the country.

Hamad modernized the city and transformed it into an international hub. He used Qatar’s huge gas wealth to reclaim land, entice investment, and expand Qatari soft power in education and the arts.

His second wife, Sheikha Moza, the mother of the current king, founded the Qatar Foundation and remains one of the driving forces behind Qatar’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood and other more extreme Islamic movements. On June 25, 2013, in a surprise move, Hamad abdicated in favor of his and Moza’s son Tamim in a televised speech.

Tamim continued the vision of his father and the politics of his mother. Under Tamim, Qatar increased its support of Western universities, think tanks, and the media. While Qatar-funded media like Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye spread conspiracy about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Jewish money, Qatar spends around eight times more per year to influence U.S. politicians and professors than does AIPAC.

Tamim and Moza’s strategy has been simple: state capture. With its trillions of dollars, Qatar has managed to co-opt institutions and individuals. Qatari officials will argue that altruism motivates their charity, but there are enough examples to show that Doha maintains a quid pro quo with its donors and partners; it seldom, if ever, funds or continues to fund those universities and think tanks or professors and scholars who do not toe its line.

Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, September 12, 2025. Photo: diwan.gov.qa

Tamim, however, may be the modern-day Icarus. Qatari officials believed they could spend and co-opt without consequence, culminating in the gift of a $400 million aircraft to President Donald Trump. Qatar likewise gifted use of Al-Udeid Air Base to U.S. Central Command.

Doha, like Ankara, understands that hosting a U.S. base can give the host government a “Get Out of Jail Free” card to sidestep accountability for terror support and other malfeasance. Simultaneously, Tamim—like his father before him—believed he could pay off countries like Iran and its proxies to give Qatar peace and access. A decade ago, Qatar famously paid a $1 billion ransom to an Iraqi Shi‘i militia to release Qataris on a hunting expedition in Iraq; that money went straight into militia and perhaps even Qods Force coffers.

The problem with acquiescing to extortion is that it incentivizes more extortion; never does it bring peace or resolve a problem. Qatari diplomats defended their Iranian counterparts, but today they realize Iranian leaders never care. Money can buy flatterers, but it never purchases true friends.

Disrupted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz disproportionately impacts Kuwait and Qatar, as they are the only two Arab Gulf states that do not have alternative means of export. Bahrain, too, has no Red Sea or Arabian Sea coastline, but its oil was always little more than a subsidy from Saudi Arabia.

Now, the data are in. In the second quarter of 2026, from April 1 through June 30, Qatar’s deficit was 21.2 billion Qatari rials ($5.8 billion) on nominal gross domestic product of 170.5 billion, equivalent to a bit more than 12.4 percent of gross domestic product.

JP Morgan puts the figure percentage deficit closer to 11.4 percent, but it is still Qatar’s largest quarterly shortfall on record. If the second-quarter pace continues with little, if any, liquified natural gas flowing, the 2026 deficit could be 12 percent of the gross domestic product. While the World Bank again takes a more measured approach, it still finds a contraction of 7.1 percent.

Iranian officials signal their intent to continue hardball over the freedom of navigation.

Reza Pahlavi, Crown Prince of Iran, January 7, 2026. Photo: iKurd.net/Reza Pahlavi video/X

On September 1, 2026, Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref said that Iran’s approach likely would be “neither war, nor peace” for the next two years.

That bodes poorly for Qatar, as its second-quarter oil and gas revenue was only 874 million Qatari rials ($240 million), down 97 percent from the previous year. Qatari officials realize they have a problem. Second-quarter spending fell 23 percent year-on-year, with operating expenditures cur 30 percent.

Recovery will not be easy. Iranian strikes have taken out 17 percent of liquified natural gas capacity, costing Qatar about $20 billion per year in revenue, equal to about 20 Georgetown University gifts. While Qatari officials say non-hydrocarbon exports have risen, this is doubtful; the private‑sector Purchasing Managers’ Index has suffered seven straight months of contraction. The Qatari stock market closed at its lowest point in six years. Tourism continues to plummet.

As a state, of course, Qatar is going nowhere. But the soft power its leaders have wielded with arrogance will dissipate. For many in Washington, accepting either Qatari cash or, for that matter, Saudi or Emirati money, was always disqualifying, but many in Washington viewed Qatari gifts as absent stigma. “Qatar Force One” was a turning point, a mistake that associated Qatari largesse with corruption in the public mind. From chief of staff Susie Wiles to envoy Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration is thoroughly compromised by Qatari links and funds.

The question in Washington as control of the Senate and House may shift is whether Qatari investment in Democrats is as vast—it likely is—and whether Democratic recipients will work to hide their past compromise. Flaunting Qatari gifts likely will tie too many in the public mind to Trump. After all, when most Americans view Congress, they do not see angels and demons, but rather, cynical self-dealing across the political spectrum.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, with his mother Sheikha Moza bint Nasser at Roland-Garros, Paris, France, 2025. Photo: video/instagram

Qatari influence will persist in civil society for some time. Moza’s Qatar Foundation is opaque, it still has hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue, which imbues it with influence.

But an inability to replenish its funds, combined with domestic demands to maintain standards, will put increasing demands on its principal. Qatar’s enemies—and, it has more than perhaps its diplomats realize—will smell blood in the water and, as during the Arab Quartet blockade in 2017, will seek advantage.

Americans go through waves of panic about undue foreign influence. During the 1973–74 oil crisis and embargo, a sharp wave of anti-Arab, and especially anti-Saudi, sentiment swept the United States. Saudis still resent their depiction in political cartoons of the era.

In the 1980s, a wave of anti-Japanese sentiment rolled across the United States as fears grew that Japanese companies were preying on the carcass of American industry, laying off Americans and treating workers as automatons. Films such as Ron Howard’s Gung Ho were briefly popular.

In the first decade or two of the 21^st century, suspicion of China rose, especially as Chinese firms sought to capture media, prime real estate, and universities through organizations such as the Confucius Institutes. Such suspicion was warranted, but congressional regulation and stigma helped roll back the Chinese presence and, at a minimum, created a reputational cost for taking Chinese money.

With Qatar reeling from the Iran war, its ability to pay off critics declining, and questions about its abetment of corruption during the Trump era rising, the question now looms about whether Qatar can ever truly recover, or whether its moment is over.

Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. He is author of “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter, 2014). He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute AEI. His major research area is the Middle East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdish society.

The article first published at meforum.org.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.