In the past few weeks, Qatar has been all over the news with flashy headlines of a $400 million luxury jet that the country gifted to President Donald Trump. It symbolized their opulence and eagerness to please the U.S.
But 40 years ago, Qatar was a country with a gross domestic product (GDP) of a few billion dollars. Since the 19th century, it has been run by the Al Thani family, which can trace its roots in the region back thousands of years.
Qatar was long considered a backwater. The main industries were fishing and pearls. It was impoverished for the vast majority of its history. Its royal family was dwarfed by rivals in Saudi Arabia.
Then everything changed. It turned out that the largest liquified natural gas field was sitting just off the coast of Qatar. And with the help of American energy giants like ExxonMobil, Qatar began exporting LNG in 1997.
In a few decades, Qatar’s GDP grew exponentially. Today it’s over $200 billion. Qatar hosts the main air base for American forces in the Middle East. It hosted the World Cup in 2022. And it’s embarking on a series of business and military deals with the U.S.—earmarked at $1.2 trillion.
There are a lot of petro-states in the region. Some, like Saudi Arabia, exceed Qatar’s wealth by hundreds of billions. But what Qatar has chosen to do with its money—morality aside—is farsighted. Qatar has chosen to focus a huge amount of money and resources on influence.
In the past 15 years, Qatar has developed a sophisticated apparatus to embed itself into American society in a way that would shock most Americans. They’ve done it by investing in our politicians, universities, newsrooms, think tanks, lobbying firms, and corporations—all on an unprecedented scale.
In all, the tiny Gulf nation has spent almost $100 billion to establish this influence.
So what’s the problem? Well, Qatar’s push to buy influence has made their connection to the Muslim Brotherhood ever more alarming and apparent.
Frannie Block and Jay Solomon published a massive investigative report on Qatar’s seismic influence strategy for The Free Press. It’s called “How Qatar Bought America.”
Today on Honestly, I ask Jay and Frannie how Qatar built this ecosystem, what they want in return, and what it has already gotten them.
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