Arizona Tribune - Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) President Authors Memo to President Trump on Middle East Crisis

The full memo is below:

Dear Mr. President,

As you are faced with the Middle East crisis in the first days of your second term in office, I would like to present to you two videos of your own speeches from your previous term. I do this humbly as former counterterror advisor to two Israeli prime ministers.

One speech of yours, in June 2017, focused on Qatar and its support for terrorist organizations - support that you emphasized in your speech must stop. Qatar did not stop, instead doubling down on its policy of sponsoring terrorist organizations and Islamist movements.

In a second speech, in Riyadh in May 2017, you reminded Arab and Muslim governments of their duty to fight Islamist terrorism, which, as you described in no uncertain terms, endangers not only the West but the Muslim world itself. Unfortunately, since then the world has suffered repeated defeats at the hands of Islamist terrorism. These defeats range from the historically shameful debacle in Afghanistan in 2021 - when a secular pro-U.S. democratically elected government was brought down by the terrorist Taliban organization that Qatar had sustained and helped for years - to Gaza, from Yemen to Syria, and all across the Arab and Muslim world, where Qatar supports Islamic terrorist organizations and movements in accordance with its Wahhabi ideology, the most extreme jihadi movement in the Sunni Muslim world since the 18th century.

This truth of Qatar and its role was confirmed by its past Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Aal Thani, who vowed allegiance to Wahhabism in 2011 with the inauguration of the Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab mosque in Doha. Compare this with the Abrahamic Family House, opened in February 2023 in the UAE. That compound features a synagogue, a mosque, and a church side by side, demonstrating interfaith understanding, respect, and diversity.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Muhammed bin Abdulrahman Aal Thani frequently reiterates that it was the U.S. that asked Qatar to keep open its lines of communication with terrorist organizations. This is typical of Qatar's deception - it not only maintained that communication, it also made its capital Doha available for the Taliban, Hamas, and other terrorist organizations to establish their headquarters there, extensively supporting them both politically and financially.

The Biden administration hailed Qatar as a non-NATO ally. This is both an outrage and a disgrace. Qatar is even responsible for 9/11, according to U.S. government officials and documents, and according to the admission of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), a former Qatari government employee who is still awaiting trial at Guantanamo Bay. His trial will inevitably reveal Qatar's role in 9/11 as well as in many other attacks on American targets. A plea deal that will prevent exposure of this role should not be allowed, for the sake of the nearly 3,000 victims of 9/11 and their families.

Beside Qatar's support for Islamist terrorist organizations, there is its involvement in every single Muslim country where secularism and Islamism clash. Qatar always stands by the Islamists. Its anti-U.S. activities reach into the U.S. itself, for example, by hiring a former CIA official to spy on your party's lawmakers who oppose Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and by ignoring the 2020 Department of Justice order to register its Al-Jazeera media network as a foreign agent in accordance with Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) laws.

Even the violent protests at American universities since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel benefited from Qatari funding of the universities, which is estimated at $4.7 billion or more between 2001 and 2021. Qatar is also an ally of Iran, as demonstrated yet again just days ago by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who said in Doha that Iran coordinates extensively with Qatar.

Mr. President, your entire foreign policy effort depends on being able to discern friend from foe (IFF). Tragically, the heads of American intelligence in the Biden administration did not know what every vegetable vendor and taxi driver in the Arab and Muslim world knew about Qatar's identity and role.

Qatar styles itself as a friend. It is an arsonist pretending to be a firefighter. Indeed, the CENTCOM base is located in Qatar - but this is no favor to America. On the contrary, the base's existence there guarantees the very survival of that state's criminal ruling family. Without CENTCOM, the ruling family would be wiped out within a week. Qatar is indebted to the U.S. for situating the base there - but acts as if it owes America nothing and freely acts against it through deception. Yet, Mr. President, your true allies, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, offered to host the base - but were turned down.

The whole Muslim and Arab world knows the truth of Qatar and its role. The Biden administration showed that it was totally clueless about it, and swallowed all of Qatar's deceptions. Neutralizing Qatar's ability to damage the U.S. and its interests worldwide is a precondition for your being able to make America great again internationally - not just in the Middle East - because all of America's adversaries, such as Russia, China, and North Korea, are watching to see whether America understands who its allies are and whether it stands by them and are not taken in by Qatari lies.

ABOUT MEMRI

Exploring the Middle East and South Asia through their media, MEMRI bridges the language gap between the West and the Middle East and South Asia, providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, Urdu-Pashtu, Dari, Turkish, Russian, and Chinese media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends.

Founded in February 1998 to inform the debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East, MEMRI is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)3 organization. MEMRI's main office is in Washington, DC, with branch offices in various world capitals. MEMRI research is translated into English, French, Polish, Japanese, Spanish, and Hebrew.

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SOURCE: Middle East Media Research Institute

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire

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