Qatar’s Foreign Policy: Lavish Gifts, Shadow Diplomacy, and Strategic Silence

But behind the gleaming towers of Doha and the generous endowments to universities lies a murkier dimension to Qatar’s foreign policy. It has long been accused of using its wealth to shield and promote actors aligned with Islamist ideologies, most notably Hamas, which is unequivocally labeled a terror organization by the U.S., EU, and many others. These efforts—whether via direct financial transfers or indirect legitimization—have placed Qatar at the center of complex regional geopolitics, prompting questions about how far money can go in laundering a nation’s global image.

Qatar’s foreign policy can be summarized in three words: money buys influence. Over the last two decades, Qatar has poured billions into strategic partnerships, infrastructure projects, media ventures, and institutions across the globe.

The most glaring example of Qatar’s soft power is Al Jazeera, the state-funded broadcaster launched in 1996 that is easily the most antisemitic major news source in the entire world. Billed as an independent voice in the Arab world, Al Jazeera echoes the foreign policy priorities of the Qatari government. In the wake of the Arab Spring, it was notably sympathetic to Islamist political parties, particularly those affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood—a controversial movement that Qatar has long supported even as its Gulf neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, classify it as a terrorist group.

Qatar’s ties to Hamas have been widely scrutinized and well-documented. Since at least 2012, when Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal relocated from Damascus to Doha, Qatar has played host to high-ranking Hamas officials, providing them with not only sanctuary but also political legitimacy.

This continues to this very day.

In 2014, Qatar pledged $1 billion in aid to Gaza following the war with Israel prompted by Hamas murdering three Israeli teenagers in the most gruesome manner and then showering thousands of rockets on Israeli cities. While Qatar claims these funds go toward humanitarian reconstruction and salaries for civil servants, the truth of course is that these funds are pivotal in propping  up Hamas’s governance of the Gaza Strip, thereby enabling the group to redirect other resources toward military capabilities and terrorism. Israel and even the United States have repeatedly accused Qatar of directly and indirectly financing terror, although Western diplomats have on balance never gone far enough in holding Qatar accountable for their malicious activities and influence.

As recently as the October 7th massacre of Israelis in 2023, Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and others continued to operate freely from Doha. As a Jewish American I find it positively vomitous that our Air Force runs a base of some 10,000 American service men and women – the Al Udeid Air Base, a strategic hub for American forces in the Middle East –    from a country that funds a group that carried out the brutal October 7 mass murder  that killed over 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds hostage. Though Qatar cynically condemned the violence in generic terms, it has steadfastly resisted calls to expel Hamas leaders or fully sever ties, portraying itself as a “neutral mediator.”

But neutrality is nothing but a fig leaf for complicity. As my friend former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman stated in late 2023 that “Qatar is not a neutral party. It is the lifeline of Hamas.” Similarly, Republican lawmakers introduced legislation to force the U.S. to reconsider its military presence in Qatar id its terror-funding government does not curb its support for Hamas.

While Qatar has invested heavily in real estate, sports, and airlines across the West, some of its most strategic funding targets our leading universities and intellectual institutions. Since the early 2000s, Qatar has contributed at least $1.8 billion to American universities, making it the largest foreign donor to U.S. higher education. That this has been allowed to proceed unrestricted is a terrible stain on the very integrity and reputation of our Ivy League.

Much of this funding flows through the Qatar Foundation, a nonprofit established by the ruling Al Thani family. It hosts branches of elite U.S. universities such as Georgetown, Cornell, Northwestern, and Texas A&M at its sprawling “Education City” campus in Doha. Ostensibly aimed at exporting high-quality education to the Gulf, these partnerships have raised alarm bells about academic freedom, ideological influence, and compliance with U.S. laws on foreign disclosures.

Georgetown University, for instance, which houses a School of Foreign Service branch in Doha, has received hundreds of millions in Qatari funding. Does any impartial observer seriously doubt that such financial entanglements does not temper institutional criticism of Qatar’s human rights record or its geopolitical actions? There is also concern that academic environments might avoid critical inquiry into subjects like political Islam, Hamas, or the Muslim Brotherhood, in order to maintain Qatari patronage.

A 2019 Department of Education investigation found that American universities had failed to report billions in foreign gifts, with Qatar being one of the top unreported sources. The investigation suggested that foreign funding could create “undue foreign influence,” particularly when it comes from authoritarian regimes with defined ideological agendas.

Texas A&M, which operates a full engineering campus in Qatar, faced scrutiny from lawmakers over concerns that its research—some of which is defense-related—could be indirectly accessible to a foreign government with questionable alliances.

Qatar’s gifting strategy is not limited to education. In recent years, the country has lavished European officials with perks and financial incentives, culminating in the so-called “Qatargate” scandal of 2022. European Parliament members were accused of accepting large sums of money and luxury items from Qatari intermediaries in exchange for influencing legislation favorable to Qatar. Eva Kaili, a former vice president of the European Parliament, was among those arrested.

The incident raised broader questions about how Qatar uses money not just for soft diplomacy but for potentially corrupting democratic institutions. Even amid the scandal, Qatar’s influence was felt: no sweeping sanctions followed, and Doha retained its prominent voice in European energy talks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

For now, Qatar’s strategy of influence via wealth appears to be paying off. Despite its support for actors like Hamas and its entanglement in European corruption scandals, Doha has largely avoided severe diplomatic repercussions. Astonishingly, it remains a key U.S. ally, hosts one of the largest American military bases abroad, and continues to maintain influence in global conversations about Gaza, energy security, and Middle East diplomacy.

But the winds may finally be shifting. Increasing scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers, criticism of President Trump’s plans to accept a $400 million aircraft from the Al-Thanis, and bipartisan calls to reassess military and educational ties, and the global backlash after Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel have brought new attention to the costs of tolerating Qatar’s dual policy of Western partnership and Islamist alignment.

Qatar’s foreign policy is built on wealth—not just in how it sustains its influence, but in how it evades accountability. Lavish donations –  no, let’s call it what it is, bribes – to universities, cushy relationships with foreign officials, and a carefully crafted image of diplomatic neutrality mask a reality in which Doha has enabled extremist actors and undermined liberal institutions.

I have a personal stake in this matter as it was our organization, the World values Network, that led a national effort in 2017 and 2018 to expose Qatar’s alleged bribery of leading pro-Israel voices to cynically promote Qatar as an agent of peace in the Middle East. My reward? According to a New York Times investigation, I was at the top of a list of activists whose emails Qatari intelligence targeted for hacking.

If the international community in general and the United States in particular, wants to take the fight against terrorism and authoritarian influence seriously, it must start asking tougher questions—not just about where the money is going, but what it’s buying.