It is smaller than Connecticut, with fewer inhabitants than Mongolia. Most of its diminutive territory is barren desert. It has one of the smallest militaries in the region. Yet in some ways, it has conquered a superpower.

This is the little Arab nation of Qatar. It has conquered not by guns but by gold. Thanks to its reserves of liquefied natural gas and crude oil, Qatar has the world’s 12th-largest gross domestic product per capita, and thanks to its authoritarian government, it wields the world’s ninth-largest sovereign wealth fund. That government, an absolute monarchy, has used its outsized wealth to influence politics around the world—including those who help shape the policies of United States President Donald Trump.

Background

Qatar occupies a small promontory of the Arabian Peninsula jutting northward into the Persian Gulf. It is the world’s third-largest exporter of natural gas, behind only the U.S. and Russia. This gives its leader, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, a lot of money to burn. Doha, its capital, has hosted the World Cup and other world-class events and is filled with architectural marvels imitating Venice and other European cities.

But drilling rigs, shiny buildings and major sporting events are not Qatar’s main fields of investment.

Qatar is also one of the world’s biggest sponsors of Islamic terrorism, including Hamas. As analyst Didier Billion told France24, Qatar’s “financial support of $30 million per month is proven and public. These payments are justified to pay civil servants in Gaza, and we know perfectly well that the latter are members of Hamas. Doha’s money is therefore the equivalent of direct support for this organization which has held the Palestinian enclave with an iron fist for many years.”

Qatar not only sponsors Hamas financially, it also provides it with diplomatic cover. In fact, Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh, leaders of Hamas in Gaza, lived in Qatar rather than Gaza! Doha was literally the capital of Hamas. This was true before Hamas monsters perpetrated the terrorist massacre of Oct. 7, 2023—and it is true to this day.

Qatar also sponsored al Qaeda for decades, even bankrolling Osama bin Laden in the 1990s. It hosted an office of the Afghan Taliban for more than 10 years. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, lives in Qatar. Just as most Shiite Islamist terrorists rely on Iran, many of the world’s most notorious Sunni Islamist terrorists rely on Qatar.

One would think that the United States would have imposed massive sanctions on such a country. Not so. It ignores Qatar’s sponsorship of terror and goes out of its way to actively protect Qatar.

Inroads to D.C.

For years, Qatar has hosted and financed Al Udeid Air Base, one of the U.S.’s most important military bases in the region. In 2022, President Joe Biden designated Qatar a “major non-nato ally.” This gives the nation special privileges, such as the ability to purchase uranium ammunition and discounted military equipment, opportunities for joint research projects, and more. The Walsh School of Foreign Services, which educates many top U.S. diplomats, has one of its two international campuses in Doha.

Why such close U.S. military and diplomatic links to a country that sponsors the terrorism U.S. forces and diplomacy are supposed to fight? The U.S. government has never given a clear answer.

So follow the money.

Qatar has a track record of sending large bribes to Western government officials to influence policy. In 2022, Vice President of European Parliament Eva Kailli was arrested in connection with bribery by Qatar; she has yet to be convicted. Two aides to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are under investigation for accepting Qatari bribes. The U.S. has even indicted several people in connection with Qatar bribing fifa in order to host the 2022 World Cup.

Where else does Qatari cash go? American universities. According to government records, Qatar has spent over $6.3 billion on American colleges and universities since 1986. This makes Qatar by far the largest foreign funder of American higher education. China, the largest economy in the world, spent $5.6 billion. Which institutions are getting millions from Doha? They include Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Stanford and other top schools. What are the terms of these arrangements? They are often hidden from the public.

“What does a country this tiny want with so much influence?” Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of Treasury, asked in the Washington Free Beacon. He said it is to “ensure the acceptability of terrorist groups like Hamas and the Taliban. It would also like the West to turn a blind eye to the regime’s funding, safe haven or normalization of other extremist groups ….”

Qatar’s relationship with President Trump is more complex. When his first term began in 2017, Qatar was in a quagmire. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Arab nations opposed Qatar’s terror program. They blockaded Qatar’s airspace, ports and land border. The Trump administration aligned with the Saudis and Emirates.

Sheikh Tamim’s solution, as with everything else, was to throw money at the problem. He hired American lobbyists to influence the White House.

It is a known fact that Qatar started a massive lobbying campaign to reach Mr. Trump’s inner circle. In 2017, it almost quadrupled its known lobbying expenditure to $16.3 million. By 2018, it was directly employing 23 lobbying firms. Two prominent New York lobbyists recruited by Qatar told the Wall Street Journal that Qatar had them researching 250 “Trump influencers.”

The influence campaign appeared to have worked. In April 2018, President Trump welcomed Sheikh Tamim to Washington, where he called his visitor “a valued partner and longtime friend.” That year, a congressional bill that would have officially labeled Qatar a state sponsor of terrorism—which it most certainly is—stalled. In 2021, the Trump administration brokered an end to Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Qatar.

How much influence has Qatar built since then? How much influence does it have in Washington, D.C., right now?

October 7

For years, the two major sponsors of Hamas have been Iran and Qatar. Iran is openly working to destroy Israel through Hamas, Hezbollah and other proxies. Their “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” chants are basically statements of Iranian foreign policy.

Qatar, conversely, has cultivated an image as a moderate state open to dialogue with every side. It is one of the few countries Israel has permitted to openly send money to Hamas in Gaza. Therefore, Qatar is arguably an even more important sponsor of Hamas than Iran is.

Without the millions of dollars Qatar has provided Hamas every month, the mass torture, rape and butchery of Israeli families on Oct. 7, 2023, probably would never have happened. Without political and diplomatic support from the Qataris, the blight on humanity that is Hamas probably would have been eradicated long ago.

“All Qatar had to do was to summon the Hamas leaders in Doha and give them an ultimatum to release all the hostages immediately or face deportation from the Gulf state,” Khaled Abu Toameh wrote for the Gatestone Institute. “It is hard to see how the Hamas leaders would have been able to say no to their major political and financial patrons and backers. There was a lot the Biden administration could have done to pressure Qatar. … The Biden administration, however, chose to ignore Qatar’s role in supporting Islamist terrorism. The Qataris were never under the slightest pressure.”

These facts are not in dispute. Even after one of the most horrific street-by-street, home-by-home, bedroom by bedroom butchering of innocent civilians, Qatar did not punish Hamas.

And the U.S. did not punish Qatar!

Influence in the Inner Circle

Qatar’s influence and preferential treatment is a point of fact. And for all the positive things being done by President Trump, Qatari influence inside his administration is also a point of fact.

Steve Witkoff is the most prominent example of a conflict of interest. A real estate mogul and longtime associate of the Trump family, he had no diplomatic experience before President Trump named him special envoy to the Middle East. But he did have experience working with Qatar.

In fact, the Qataris bailed him out of a failing business. When one of his co-owners of the Park Lane Hotel in New York was indicted and fled to China, Witkoff was left in financial trouble—until the Qatar Investment Authority bought out him and his other partners for $623 million.

Before pressuring Israel in January to accept the ceasefire deal that benefited Hamas, Witkoff was in Qatar preparing the deal. Right before the ceasefire was approved, Witkoff said in a Fox News interview that Qatar was “really doing God’s work.”

Pam Bondi is the U.S. attorney general. She did more than accept gifts from Qatar. She worked as a Qatari lobbyist, earning $115,000 a month. Her nomination documents for Senate confirmation did not mention this. She has largely avoided answering questions about it. Once, when asked how she felt about receiving money from a country that also funds Hamas, she said, “I am very proud of the work that I did. It was a short time, and I wish that it had been longer, for Qatar.”

On her first day, Bondi disbanded the fbi’s Foreign Influence Task Force and narrowed enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act—exempting lobbyists paid by a foreign government.

Mike Huckabee is President Trump’s ambassador to Israel. In 2017, a Qatari lobbyist paid Huckabee $50,000 as an honorarium for a visit to the country. Huckabee later described Qatar as “surprisingly beautiful, modern and hospitable.”

Susie Wiles is President Trump’s chief of staff. In 2022-2023 she was a co-chair of the Washington, D.C., and Florida offices of the lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs. One the firm’s clients was the Embassy of Qatar.

Kash Patel is President Trump’s fbi director. The Embassy of Qatar paid him for “consulting services” up until November 2024. Neither the sums paid nor the exact services are publicly known, and Patel is tight-lipped about it. Analyst Mitchell Bard speculated in Jewish News Syndicate that Patel may have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Lee Zeldin is the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, a cabinet-level position. His financial disclosure forms acknowledge that he received “compensation exceeding $5,000” from Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim, a member of the Qatari royal family. Zeldin has not explained what he did to receive this compensation.

Lindsey Graham is a four-term U.S. senator and an unofficial foreign policy adviser to President Trump. Qatar has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in his state, South Carolina, including a $11.7 billion aircraft order from Boeing in 2016. Two months after Hamas’s October 7 terror attack, Senator Graham went to Qatar and gave a lecture at the Doha Forum, saying, “I want to thank you for what you’ve done for my country. You get some criticism. Hamas is here. But I know why they’re here. They’re here so they can be talked to. You do things for the world that sometimes are not so popular. But I just want you to know that I appreciate what you do.”

Remember, this is Qatar, a nondemocratic, absolute monarchy that has sponsored and protected al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood and others, and is actively protecting Hamas!

Qatar has abysmal work conditions for foreign laborers, which have allegedly included slave labor and thousands of deaths. In 2019, in response to media coverage of these conditions by journalists and human rights groups, one Qatari royal made a $50 million investment in Newsmax, a popular pro-Trump media company. In 2024, current and former employees told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that “before and after the investment, senior newsroom leaders urged Newsmax staff to soften coverage of Qatar.” “We were not allowed to criticize Qatar,” one employee said. “We were told very clearly from the top down, ‘No touching this.’”

These examples of Qatari influence in the president’s circle are extremely concerning. Bondi was President Trump’s personal lawyer and is now the most powerful attorney in the nation. Wiles was the co-chair of President Trump’s 2024 campaign and now largely controls who has access to him. Witkoff has been one of Trump’s closest associates for decades and now speaks for him in the Middle East, as well as in Russia and elsewhere. Some of the president’s closest confidants have been bankrolled by the same organization that has bankrolled and protected al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas!

Has this impacted America’s foreign policy?

Saving Hamas

For most of the war with Hamas, Netanyahu had to battle pressure from President Biden to limit his ground invasion of Gaza, to forego an invasion against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to declare a ceasefire that would let Hamas survive and remain in control of Gaza.

It looked like Netanyahu was holding out for a Trump victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The first Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, negotiated the Abraham Accords between Israel and four Arab states, and showed other favor toward its one and only democratic ally in the Middle East. Netanyahu was likely relieved when the 2024 vote brought Donald Trump back to the presidency.

Yet even before he was even inaugurated, Mr. Trump sent Witkoff to pressure Netanyahu to accept Biden’s ceasefire. Witkoff flew to Doha first to coordinate with the Qataris. Then he made an impromptu visit to Jerusalem on the Sabbath, even though Mr. Netanyahu asked to postpone the meeting until after the Sabbath concluded at sunset. Witkoff pressured Israel to stop destroying Hamas in Gaza and to release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including terrorists guilty of horrific murders. Israel announced its acceptance of the deal on January 16. (Request your free copy of January 16—God’s Miracle Day, by Gerald Flurry.)

“Israel had made tremendous progress eliminating the threat from Hamas,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in our March issue. “But with this deal, about everything Israel achieved in its war was quickly reversed! Israel was so close to victory—and now, suddenly, it has lost. It had nearly destroyed Hamas’s terrorists, and now, instead, it has emboldened them. … The reality is, with this deal, President Trump betrayed Israel.”

In November 2024, the Biden administration finally pressured Qatar to eject Hamas’s leadership. By this point, it was too little, too late: The damage to Israel had been done, much of Hamas’s leadership was already assassinated, and Biden’s term in office was about up. Hamas maintained an office in Doha but relocated its “capital” to Istanbul, Turkey. Yet a few weeks later, aides for President-elect Trump informed Qatar that Hamas could move back to Doha.

The Future

The links between Qatar and Hamas are unmistakable. Qatar sponsored the organization well before, leading up to, during and after its demonic October 7 massacre. It is unlikely to drop that support, especially when the U.S. isn’t even applying any pressure on it to do so. With so many high-level Trump administration officials connected to Qatari cash, it appears that Doha will keep its hotline with Washington.

Based on Bible prophecy, Mr. Flurry has made accurate forecasts regarding Mr. Trump’s political career. He prophesied Mr. Trump would regain the White House and in doing so expose the radical-leftists trying to destroy him and the United States. And he said Trump’s return would herald blessings for the American people.

These forecasts are based on a prophecy in 2 Kings 14:26-28, which refers to an Israelite king, Jeroboam ii, whom God sent to relieve Israel from “bitter affliction” and forces trying to “blot out the name of Israel from under heaven.” “Israel,” in this case, is a prophetic reference to the United States. Mr. Flurry has written much on Donald Trump fulfilling this prophecy about Jeroboam. (To learn more, request your free copy of America Under Attack.)

“Jeroboam was ‘a mighty man of valour’ and ‘industrious’ (1 Kings 11:28),” Mr. Flurry writes in Great Again. “But he ended up being a disaster for Israel, turning the people away from God by institutionalizing false religion (1 Kings 12). …

“The modern-day Jeroboam commits the same sin that Jeroboam did anciently. There is a reason God uses Jeroboam as the last warning to the nations of Israel. The original Jeroboam committed a great sin, and the modern-day Jeroboam is committing the identical sin again.”

As Great Again explains, the main sin is spiritual and relates to specific domestic choices. But the point is that this is the Bible’s general verdict on the effect of Jeroboam.

In the months President Trump has been in office, he has done much good for America. He has ended the radical left’s stranglehold on American politics. He has largely secured the border, exposed corruption, and is confronting America’s spending crisis. But his administration is compromising with evil.

God cannot continue blessing a man who lets Sheikh Tamim and other terrorizers and destroyers of Israel whisper foreign policy in his ear.

Blessings

“Anyone who sincerely admires this country wants to see America made great again,” Mr. Flurry writes in Great Again. “The Bible has a lot to say about the state of America today. It explains the inspiring reason why this nation was so great in the first place. And why it has been so richly blessed.”

But Mr. Flurry continues, “The Bible also prophesies that these blessings would be removed in our day. America’s problems are spiritual—and solving them requires spiritual solutions.”

Until American leaders—and Americans—acknowledge this fact, any resurgence in America will be temporary. No man, President Trump included, can solve America’s problems without acknowledging this reality and turning to God. His administration’s foreign policy in cozying up to Qatar is a case in point. But even as national curses afflict America, God has a plan to make the nation great again. All prophecy, even the one about a sinful Jeroboam, plays into that. Americans have vital lessons to learn first before this happens. But once they do, God promises to take America—and the State of Israel—and the world—to heights they could never have dreamed of.