This is John Batchel, speaking to new colleague Natalie Icaro from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy about Qatar,

as Natalie puts it straightforwardly playing both sides, doing the bidding of the United States, hosting the Taliban and Hamas, among other rascals in the region, but also at this point, persecuting

religions that are not in the persuasion that is of the moment for Qatar.

And there's one more detail, money.

Follow the money.

Money from where? money to whom?

Natalie explains much more of this tonight.

Qatar.

An ally, no.

An enemy know.

What's in between?

More later.

Yeah, I mean, this is something that I've been watching here at FDD for a while.

It's a super interesting dynamic where we have, on the one hand, the Qataris, like you mentioned, hosting Hamas, hosting the Taliban, promoting the Muslim Brotherhood.

And then on the other hand, you have them being major non-NATO allies, being mediators not only in Gaza, but in conflicts around the world.

The Qataris got a security assurance from the United States last fall.

So it's this really interesting dynamic where they really are playing both sides.

One footnote to that is the Qatari's will argue in the case of Hamas and the Taliban

that the only reason they host those two groups is because the United States asked them to.

I haven't seen any public documents to suggest that that is the case.

And in the case of Hamas, specifically, the Israelis actually have found documents in Gaza while fighting that allegedly show that the Qataris were funneling money straight to Hamas leadership, independent from

these sort of above-board channels that the Americans and also the Israelis were aware of.

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