Doha Attack Tests Qatar’s DC Influence

The recent attack on Hamas lead­ers in Doha is test­ing Qatar’s DC influ­ence as Israel’s strike high­lights Qatar’s decade-long lob­by­ing and diplo­mat­ic ties with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. On 12 Sep­tem­ber 2025, POLITICO report­ed that Israel’s mis­sile strike on Hamas rep­re­sen­ta­tives has sharply under­scored the depth of Qatar’s lob­by­ing and diplo­mat­ic rela­tion­ships in Wash­ing­ton, cul­ti­vat­ed over the past decade. The arti­cle begins:

With help from Daniel Lipp­man. The Trump administration’s rush to reas­sure and pla­cate Qatar fol­low­ing the Israeli strike against Hamas rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Doha is high­light­ing the tight rela­tion­ship between the two coun­tries — a rela­tion­ship that Qatar has done much to nur­ture in recent years. While Qatar has long host­ed the largest U.S. air­base in the Mid­dle East, it also has built up a siz­able oper­a­tion in Wash­ing­ton over the past decade, and court­ed Pres­i­dent DONALD TRUMP per­son­al­ly. Prime Min­is­ter Sheikh MOHAMMED BIN ABDULRAHMAN AL THANI is close with Trump, and the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion is build­ing a golf resort in the tiny Gulf coun­try. And of course there’s that infa­mous plane. Doha also has spent the last decade pay­ing dozens of lob­by­ists (includ­ing Trump appointees like Attor­ney Gen­er­al PAM BONDI), buy­ing stakes in the capital’s sports teams and invest­ing direct­ly in News­max. Now Israel’s mis­sile strike is test­ing Qatar’s cul­ti­va­tion of its U.S. ties.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2025/09/12/doha-attack-tests-qatars-dc-machine-00561906

Key Points

• Qatar has emerged as the sev­enth-largest spender on lob­by­ing in Wash­ing­ton over the past decade, invest­ing heav­i­ly in rela­tion­ships with US polit­i­cal fig­ures, includ­ing direct courtship of Pres­i­dent Trump and his fam­i­ly, as well as financ­ing promi­nent Wash­ing­ton events and media ventures.

• Fol­low­ing the Israeli strike in Doha, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion took the unusu­al step of both pri­vate­ly rep­ri­mand­ing Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Netanyahu and pub­licly sup­port­ing a Unit­ed Nations state­ment con­demn­ing the attack, high­light­ing Qatar’s abil­i­ty to elic­it a sym­pa­thet­ic US response despite host­ing Hamas leadership.

• Qatar’s diplo­mat­ic strat­e­gy includes host­ing the largest US mil­i­tary base in the Mid­dle East, facil­i­tat­ing high-pro­file busi­ness deals, and posi­tion­ing itself as a neu­tral medi­a­tor in region­al con­flicts, which has shield­ed it from harsh­er crit­i­cism in Wash­ing­ton over its ties to groups like Hamas and the Taliban.

• Despite these efforts, ana­lysts cau­tion there are lim­its to Qatar’s influ­ence, as seen in the mut­ed US reac­tion to the Doha attack and the ongo­ing scruti­ny from some Repub­li­cans, sug­gest­ing that Qatar’s lob­by­ing machine may face new chal­lenges in the wake of height­ened Mid­dle East­ern tensions.

Qatari Influence on Washington: A Long and Complex History

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.