Vice President JD Vance touched on something real in his three-hour sit-down with Joe Rogan: The United States has a problem with foreign governments trying to influence our government to make decisions in their own best interests rather than ours. The country the vice president picked to illustrate his point was Israel, our ally in an ongoing war with Iran and the only functioning democracy in the Middle East. It was an odd example, given the tiny amount Israel expends on lobbying in the U.S. A far more obvious example would be Qatar, which has used its vast oil wealth to massively affect U.S. politics, culture, and education. And as an Islamic monarchy that hosts the Hamas terror organization and the anti-American Al Jazeera network, one would think its influence at any scale would provoke more alarm.

Qatar is a small Gulf emirate with a population of roughly 3 million people, of whom 90% are expats and often abused or exploited migrant workers. The number of actual Qatari citizens is only a few hundred thousand. Yet this tiny country maintains one of the most active foreign diplomatic and financial footprints in the United States. This includes a new pledge of a $1.2 trillion “economic exchange” on top of the $400 billion already invested in American real estate, private equity, universities, and lobbying.

Qatar spends roughly a quarter-billion dollars annually on a sprawling network of 88 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)-registered lobbying and public-relations firms. This money funds everything from congressional staffer junkets to Doha to paid influencer trips designed to launder the emirate’s disreputable image. Justice Department records document thousands of political communications by Qatari foreign agents since 2020, reaching the offices of two-thirds of Congress. Those same agents donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to the elected officials in those very offices they’re paid to influence.

Qatar is also the single largest foreign funder of American higher education.

It poured more than $1.1 billion into U.S. universities in 2025 alone, more than triple its 2024 total. A Qatari royal sits on Georgetown’s governing board. By comparison, Israel’s gifts and contracts to universities totaled just $342 million between 2014 and 2024, barely one-third of what Qatar spent in a single year. The pro-Hamas riots that swept campuses after October 7 did not happen in a vacuum. Years of Qatari money built the very departments and centers incubating this radicalism and spreading anti-Semitic propaganda.

The money is only part of the story. Doha hosted terrorist organization Hamas’s political bureau for more than a decade, and its fanatical leaders lived openly in five-star comfort through the October 7 massacre and the war that followed. When Israel struck Hamas’s negotiators in Doha in September 2025, Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, called the Israeli strike “state terrorism” and “reckless and treacherous aggression,” and demanded the international community “punish Israel.” He had no interest in punishing Hamas for its brutal terrorist attacks.

Rather than snuff out the Qatari influence operation, the administration embraces it. In May 2025, the Pentagon accepted Qatar’s “gift” of a luxury $400 million Boeing 747 to serve as an interim Air Force One. Even worse, the aircraft will transfer to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation’s private ownership once his term ends.

The United States also agreed to allow Qatar to build a dedicated training facility at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, a privilege not granted to Israel. It will host Qatari F-15s and pilots.

Why is Doha’s stock so high in this administration? Follow the payroll. Multiple cabinet-level officials (including former Attorney General Pam Bondi and current FBI Director Kash Patel) previously held consulting or lobbying roles on Qatar’s behalf. Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, took in millions of dollars from Qatar. Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund bought the Park Lane Hotel in Manhattan from Steve Witkoff’s firm in 2023. It is outrageously unacceptable self-dealing.

Qatar markets itself as an indispensable peace broker between Iran and the U.S. In reality, the Memorandum of Understanding crumbled while Iran enjoyed a month’s respite to regroup and assert control over the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. is fully capable of being its own “mediator” with Iran and should exhibit more caution in routing our diplomacy through a country that has financed, hosted, and spread propaganda for terrorists.

Anyone truly concerned about foreign influence should denounce Qatar — the country that outspends every other nation on our universities 20-to-1, gifted the president a $400 million airplane, bought its way into the portfolios of the president’s own envoys and family (Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner), and supported Hamas terrorists. Those who single out Qatar’s regional foes instead are behaving suspiciously like Qatar-firsters.

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Ali Holcomb is a national security fellow at Advancing American Freedom Foundation. Joel Griffith is a senior fellow at the Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise at Advancing American Freedom Foundation.

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Anti-American Foreign Influence Comes From Qatar Not Israel