Qatar’s massive footprint in American education is facing renewed scrutiny as watchdogs warn that the Gulf state has poured billions into U.S. universities while disclosure laws remain weak, incomplete, and unevenly enforced.
The question is no longer simply whether schools are reporting foreign gifts. Critics say the more serious issue is what the money is buying: branch campuses, endowed chairs, research centers, faculty pipelines, academic programming, and influence over how future American leaders are taught to think about Israel, terrorism, political Islam, and U.S. foreign policy.
A <a href="https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-900026">Jerusalem Post piece</a> by Dr. Charles Asher Small, founding director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, argued that Congress already has the evidence but has failed to act. He pointed to the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1048/all-info">DETERRENT Act</a>, which has passed the House twice with bipartisan support but stalled in the Senate.
The bill would lower the foreign gift reporting threshold from $250,000 to $50,000, require disclosure of gifts to individual faculty and staff, create a public database, and impose financial penalties for non-compliance.
Small compared the problem to China’s Confucius Institutes, citing a 2019 Senate investigation that found nearly 70% of U.S. schools receiving more than $250,000 from Chinese government-linked Confucius Institutes failed to properly report the money. He said ISGAP’s “Follow the Money” findings revealed billions in Middle Eastern funding, primarily from Qatar, to U.S. universities that had not been reported as required. A later Department of Education review identified more than $6.5 billion in previously unreported foreign funding at a small number of institutions.
The scale of Qatar’s influence reaches far beyond campuses. A June Foundation for Defense of Democracies report estimated that Qatar has directed at least $400 billion into the United States since 2000, or roughly $1.2 million per Qatari citizen. The report called that figure a conservative estimate and said Qatari government or White House estimates could exceed $1.2 trillion.
FDD said Qatar, a country of about 330,000 citizens, has surpassed China as the largest foreign funder of American higher education by approximately $2 billion. The report cited the Department of Education’s foreign funding dashboard showing Qatar has pumped $8.8 billion into U.S. higher education since 2001.
That money is drawing attention because Qatar is not just another foreign investor. FDD described Doha as a patron of Hamas, the Taliban, and the Muslim Brotherhood, and said the country’s state-owned Al Jazeera Media Network amplifies Islamist propaganda. A June report from JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy similarly noted that Hamas’s political bureau has operated from Doha under Qatari state protection since 2012.
Those concerns have become harder to dismiss since the anti-Israel protest wave that followed Hamas’s October 7 attack. Universities were criticized for failing to shut down radical encampments, enforce campus rules, or protect Jewish students as anti-Israel activism turned into campus occupations.
A January Middle East Forum report focused on Georgetown University, which established its Qatar campus in 2005 through a partnership with the Qatar Foundation and has extended the arrangement through 2035. According to the report, Georgetown received more than <a href="https://www.meforum.org/mef-reports/qatars-multidimensional-takeover-of-georgetown-university">$971 million</a> from Qatar over 20 years through 76 contracts.
The report said the funding supported not only Georgetown’s Doha campus, but also faculty, scholarships, research initiatives, and endowed chairs on the Washington, D.C., campus, including Qatari-funded chairs in Muslim Societies, the History of Islam, and Indian Politics.
JINSA’s June 2026 <a href="https://jinsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Qatar-Higher-Influence.pdf">report</a> reviewed nearly 900 pages of documents released by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, including framework agreements, governance charters, intellectual property provisions, confidentiality agreements, and a direct contract between Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Georgetown’s Bridge Initiative.
According to JINSA, Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed a June 13, 2024, contract with Georgetown providing a <a href="https://jinsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Qatar-Higher-Influence.pdf">$630,000 grant</a>, split into three annual installments of $210,000, to support Bridge Initiative research related to Islamophobia. The report said the agreement required conferences on the “Globalization of Islamophobia” and called for consultation with a parallel Qatar-supported initiative on sessions, themes, and speakers.
JINSA also raised concerns about Northwestern University in Qatar’s relationship with Al Jazeera. According to the report, a 2013 memorandum covered research cooperation, journalism programs, scholarships, training opportunities, employment pathways for Northwestern Qatar graduates into Al Jazeera, and training by Northwestern faculty for Al Jazeera leadership.
The money appears to have flowed into the same academic space where the post-October 7 crisis later erupted, including Middle East studies, Islamophobia research, Israel and Palestine programming, anti-colonial scholarship, and foreign policy training. These fields shape how students understand terrorism, Israel, America’s role in the world, and the language used to describe political violence.
<a href="https://isgap.org/follow-the-money/">ISGAP has also said</a> Students for Justice in Palestine and National Students for Justice in Palestine helped lead the post-October 7 explosion of campus antisemitism. The group said its prior research found <a href="https://isgap.org/follow-the-money/">SJP had a direct connection to the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood</a> and links to organizations that support or previously supported violence and terror.
Other watchdogs have raised similar concerns about the protest network. <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/students-justice-palestine-sjp">The ADL says </a>National SJP and local SJP chapters justified or glorified the Hamas-led October 7 attack and later became central organizers of the 2024 campus encampments. <a href="https://www.axios.com/local/tampa-bay/2023/10/25/desantis-shuts-down-usf-uf-pro-palestinian-groups">Axios reported</a> that Florida officials moved to deactivate university SJP chapters after citing a National SJP toolkit that framed Hamas’s attack as part of “the resistance” and told Palestinian students in exile they were “PART of this movement.”
A Jerusalem Post analysis reported that U.S. student protests against Israel were “orchestrated by Qatar-funded groups” and described the demonstrations as organized and generously funded. ISGAP has separately argued that foreign money from Qatar has had a direct effect on increasing antisemitic and anti-democratic activity at American universities.

Protest Against Anti Semitism and NSJP Conference At UCLA

Qatar’s Billions Raise New Questions About Foreign Influence On Campus

Education

Israel

Qatar

President Trump&#8217;s America First is about America being strong at home and abroad.
President Trump remains America First. He spent his weekend warning Iran not to screw with the United States or our allies, or there would be consequences. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spent his weekend working the phones to help destroy the Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance spent the weekend looking weak in front of the Qataris, the Pakistanis, and most of all, the Iranians. I&#8217;ve never seen a weaker look from a Republican politician. It is not peace through strength. It is war through weakness.
Get the amateurs back on the bench and the professionals back in the game.
President Trump spent the weekend trying to reestablish U.S. deterrence: &#8220;Peace through strength,&#8221; which he&#8217;s been pushing for literally decades. Rubio spent the weekend trying to end the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah over in Lebanon, because that&#8217;s part of peace through strength. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/the-ben-shapiro-show-episode-2450?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
I want the war in Iran to end. I&#8217;ve said for months that it is not worth waging war if you don&#8217;t win it. The ends were spelled out by the administration from the outset: No nuclear enrichment, no ballistic missiles, no support of terrorism, and the Strait of Hormuz open.
Those were the goals. Those are still the goals. Even if we pretend those are not the goals, those are still the goals.
The administration wants oil prices to go down because of the economic impact of high prices heading into the midterms. The only way to keep the Strait of Hormuz durably open is through strength, because otherwise the Iranians will jerk us around, as they have been doing for 50 years.
Over the weekend, President Trump appeared to know that.
Vance, not so much.
For America’s sake, I would love for the vice president to do well abroad. I would love the whole administration to do well. I would love every administration and every politician in every administration to do well by representing American power with peace through strength.
But the lack of American strength in the room in Switzerland over the weekend was devastating. When America has the most dominant military on the entire globe, there is simply no excuse for American weakness.
Over the weekend, the president became highly annoyed with the Iranians. Why? Because they keep threatening to shut the Strait of Hormuz, and because they keep activating their friends in the terrorist group Hezbollah to attack Israeli troops.
As I have said, the goal for Iran — sensing weakness in the United States — is to ratchet up conflict in Lebanon by activating its terror group, Hezbollah, to attack the Israelis in the hope that the Israelis would then retaliate. And then Iran would say they&#8217;re shutting the Strait of Hormuz, and it&#8217;s all the Israelis&#8217; fault. They would hope that President Trump would then yell at the Israelis.
That&#8217;s a win-win for the Iranians, because either they end up with Israel taking casualties in Lebanon and in Israel, or they end up with the administration pressuring the Israelis, the Israelis refusing, and then alienation between the United States and Israel, which is what Iran wants. That is the entire game for them.
It&#8217;s not a complex game. It&#8217;s a very simple game. But the president had had enough of it over the weekend. On Sunday, according to Fox News, President Trump said in an interview that he had spoken with Iranian officials on Saturday night and warned them not to close the strait. “You close it and you won&#8217;t have a country,” he warned. “You won&#8217;t even make it back to your f*cking country if you close the Strait.”
The president wrote on Truth Social, “Iran must immediately stop their highly paid proxies in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don&#8217;t, we&#8217;ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder.”
This is a Trumpian foreign policy. If you screw with us, if you screw with our allies, you get hit. If you interfere with American interests in the Strait of Hormuz, you get hit. We&#8217;re not going to just hand you things.
Marco Rubio has been very quiet. I think he&#8217;s been quiet about the memorandum of understanding because it is poorly written and because the vice president did a bad job of negotiating it. Rubio is actively managing the situation in Lebanon, attempting to put together a coalition against Hezbollah between Israel and the Lebanese, while not including Syria. Rubio is a pro.
But there is one member of the administration who did something that was pretty humiliating for the United States over the weekend. And that was the vice president.
Quick hypothetical coming up in a moment.
Let me be clear: I don&#8217;t care about the names in these situations. I just care about the policy. I want America to be strong. I want America to show greater interest in the Middle East. I want an open Strait of Hormuz. I want Iran defenestrated as an actual military threat to the United States.
So I don&#8217;t care who the person is who&#8217;s doing the dumb thing. If they&#8217;re doing a dumb thing, they should be called out for doing a dumb and weak thing.
Here&#8217;s the hypothetical: I&#8217;m just going to switch the names. Vice President Kamala Harris heads over to Switzerland for negotiations with Iran. There, she says that she loves Pakistan.
She then takes a picture, being given orders by an Iranian cutout. Then she emerges from negotiations with a deconfliction agreement that actually doesn&#8217;t de-escalate anything and doesn&#8217;t include any of the parties to the actual conflict.
But hey, at least she also got stiffed on camera by a bunch of foreign politicians.
Okay, so that didn&#8217;t happen to Kamala Harris. (Although it wouldn&#8217;t be surprising if it did.)
It did happen, but to Vice President JD Vance, which makes it like a thousand times worse. Why? Because it would not be surprising if Kamala Harris were weak. It would not be surprising if Kamala Harris looked as though she were being given the runaround by America&#8217;s enemies.
But I would not expect this from Donald Trump&#8217;s vice president.
You would also expect this kind of weakness from Democrats desperate to avoid any sort of conflict with the Iranians. But we just spent months destroying Iran&#8217;s air force, navy, ballistic missile facilities, nuclear facilities, and army.
This is like going to a meeting with the Japanese and bowing before them between Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We already clocked the hell out of them. What are we doing here?
Vance spent the weekend getting dunked on.
First of all, the Iranian delegation refused a joint photo with the United States team. We should have refused a joint photo with them. They are murderers. But it was the United States that apparently wanted a joint photo.
Normally, when it comes to protocol, the people who want it more show up early. The people who are the big dogs show up late. The United States was there waiting around. The vice president was waiting around for the Iranians to show up, and they stiffed him on a photo op.
And then they showed up late.
The negotiators from Qatar walked right by Vance, but they greeted their Pakistani friends.
It got worse. Qatar is a cutout for Iran and works hand-in-glove with it; they share oil fields with Iran. Thus, they feel indebted to the Iranians and are constantly doing their work. That is the reason why Hamas was stationed in Qatar for literally a decade.
Qatar is one party. Pakistan is another party, an Islamist state with nuclear weapons, allied with the Chinese government. You had a Chinese cutout, an Iranian cutout, and the Iranians there, and the vice president holding a press conference in which he bragged about how Pakistan was awesome.
If the Democrats had done this, there would be screaming. Not a single word Vance said for the entire weekend would have been foreign coming out of the mouth of Barack Obama.
Peace through strength is what President Trump stands for.
And he didn’t get it.

The Inauguration Of Donald J. Trump As The 47th President

Replace Vance With Kamala And Read It Again

Ben Shapiro

China

Iran

Iran Nuclear Deal

JD Vance

Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)

Opinion

Pakistan

Peace negotiations

Trump Administration

For years, Qatar&#8217;s billions flowed into some of America&#8217;s most prestigious universities. Now, a new report argues the Islamic monarchy gained more than a foothold in American higher education in return, turning elite academic institutions into vehicles for Islamist propaganda.
Qatar used “complex contractual designs” with Northwestern University and Georgetown University to gain influence and borrow the universities’ prestige to advance “Islamist movements hostile to the United States and its allies,” according to a new <a href="https://jinsa.org/jinsa_report/qatar-higher-influence/">report</a> by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).  
The findings add to growing concerns about Qatari influence in American higher education. Despite having just over 350,000 citizens, Qatar has spent more than $8.8 billion between 2001 and 2021 on U.S. educational institutions. It is the largest foreign donor to U.S. universities, according to the <a href="https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2026/06/03/mapping-qatars-400-billion-footprint-in-the-united-states/">Foundation for Defense of Democracies</a>. 
JINSA’s Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, drawing on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s 900 pages of contractual and institutional documentation on Qatari funding, said complex contractual designs approved by the university&#8217;s senior leadership allowed Qatar to acquire access to “intellectual property, governance deliberation, academic credentialing, and institutional reputation.” The funding structures enabled Qatar to acquire such partnerships to advance its national security interests, according to Mansour.
Mansour argues that Qatar&#8217;s Islamist agenda is reflected in its longstanding support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, including hosting their leaders, providing financial backing, and amplifying their messaging through the state-funded Al Jazeera network.
While Qatar is a key U.S. partner that hosts the Al-Udeid Air Base and often acts as a regional mediator, critics contend it has also cultivated relationships with Islamist movements. In 2024, Georgetown University&#8217;s Qatar conference was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/georgetown-qatar-conference-will-feature-terrorist-linked-speakers">exposed</a> for hosting speakers linked to Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), both designated terrorist organizations by the United States.
While the contracts between Qatar and the American universities are not illegal, they bind “intellectual output of American academic institutions, including output generated with American taxpayer funding, to the development strategy of a foreign state,” Mansour said.
Mansour argues that Qatar masks its involvement through the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development, which presents itself as an educational nonprofit but functions as an extension of the Qatari state. The organization is headed by Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of the reigning Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and senior leadership is “drawn from the ruling family and its institutional extensions.”
The agreements establish joint advisory boards at both universities made up of university representatives and Qatar Foundation appointees. These boards review budgets, curriculum offerings, faculty and staff development, and reviews and comments on dean candidates. 
While the agreements describe the boards as &#8220;advisory and non-binding,&#8221; Mansour argues that their lack of formal authority actually insulates Qatari influence from accountability. 
“A body with decisional power could be held accountable for the decisions it makes, such as a blocked hire, a rejected curriculum, or a vetoed budget item,” Mansour said. “An advisory body that merely consults, reviews, and comments leaves no such record, but the effect is the same.”
University officials, he argues, understand who funds the campuses and that Qatar Foundation can terminate the partnerships, creating pressure to accommodate Qatari priorities.
The report also notes that the agreements establish admissions targets under which a majority of students at the Qatar campuses are expected to be Qatari citizens. Georgetown&#8217;s agreement sets a target of 60% Qatari nationals, while Northwestern&#8217;s sets a target of 70%.
Both Georgetown and Northwestern operate branch campuses in Doha, Qatar, where students can study abroad or earn full degrees. Mansour argues that Georgetown&#8217;s agreement requires most intellectual property created at the Doha campus to be jointly owned with Qatar Foundation and commercialized in ways that promote Qatar&#8217;s &#8220;knowledge-based economy.&#8221;
The report further argues that Qatar Foundation can acquire ownership interests or broad licensing rights even in certain research involving U.S. federal funding, raising questions about whether taxpayer-funded research could ultimately benefit a foreign state.
Mansour’s report highlights a 2024 agreement under which Qatar&#8217;s Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided Georgetown University&#8217;s Bridge Initiative with $630,000 to support research and conferences focused on Islamophobia.
According to Mansour, the funding allowed Qatar to shape conversations on a politically charged topic while cloaking those efforts in the credibility of a U.S. university.
“A state that does not permit its own citizens the civil liberties it funds an American university to advocate for in America is not engaged in human rights philanthropy,” Mansour said. “It is purchasing the institutional vocabulary and academic prestige of American civil rights and deploying them in service of a political category that aligns with its foreign policy objectives.”
Mansour argues that &#8220;Islamophobia&#8221; has increasingly been used not as a neutral academic concept but as a political tool to discourage criticism of Islamist movements and governments aligned with Qatar.
The report also points to a long-running partnership between Northwestern University&#8217;s Qatar campus and Al Jazeera Media Network, the state-funded media organization that has long been accused by critics of advancing Qatari foreign policy interests. According to Mansour, a 2013 memorandum of understanding between Northwestern and Al Jazeera established cooperation on research projects, journalism and media studies programs, scholarships and training for students, employment pathways for graduates into the Al Jazeera network, executive training for Al Jazeera leadership, and jointly organized conferences and workshops.
In 2020, the Justice Department concluded that AJ+, Al Jazeera&#8217;s U.S.-based affiliate, operates &#8220;at the direction and control&#8221; of the Qatari government and ordered it to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, an order the network has not complied with. The department also cited Al Jazeera&#8217;s editorial guidelines as evidence that the outlet sought to influence public attitudes about the Middle East, including by discouraging the use of terms such as &#8220;terrorist&#8221; and &#8220;terrorism&#8221; in its reporting.
Critics argue the partnership is particularly troubling given Al Jazeera&#8217;s history of favorable coverage toward Islamist movements, including Hamas. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies has also <a href="https://www.fdd.org/analysis/op_eds/2025/03/24/the-trump-administration-should-bring-al-jazeera-in-line-with-us-law/">pointed to</a> documents recovered in Gaza that Israeli officials say showed coordination between Al Jazeera and Hamas on media messaging. 
Along with Northwestern and Georgetown, Qatar has reportedly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cope-academia-and-think-tanks-must-boycott-qatar">sought</a> to influence colleges such as Harvard, Texas A&amp;M, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, and Virginia Commonwealth through billions in funding.
Blake Schaper contributed to this report.

Georgetown-University-Protest-March-23

Qatar’s Billions In Campus Donations Come With A Dangerous Price

Qatar's Campus Cash Came With Strings Attached, Report Says

Al-Udeid Air Base

American Universities

Ivy League

President Donald Trump and White House officials are bidding farewell to the Boeing 747-200, known as Air Force One, which has transported U.S. presidents across the nation and around the world for more than three decades.
On Thursday, two White House officials said goodbye to the Air Force One jet after President Trump returned from the G7 summit in Europe. The farewell comes as the first of three aircraft being modified for the presidential role is expected to be delivered soon.
“The last ride,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung <a href="https://x.com/StevenCheung47/status/2067514778684162330?s=20">said on X</a>. “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
“THANK YOU,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino said, <a href="https://x.com/Scavino47/status/2067523503817977868?s=20">posting a video</a> of the aircraft, saying he has “been fortunate to fly around the world on this iconic plane for 5 1/2 years — of the 35 years it has been serving U.S. presidents.” 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I have been fortunate to fly around the world on this iconic plane for 5 1/2 years — of the 35 years it has been serving U.S. Presidents…
THANK YOU…
AIR FORCE ONE 2900🫡🇺🇸🦅 <a href="https://t.co/tnh8xYtZDU">pic.twitter.com/tnh8xYtZDU</a>
— Dan Scavino (@Scavino47) <a href="https://x.com/Scavino47/status/2067523503817977868?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 18, 2026</a></blockquote>
Air Force One is expected to be replaced by three Boeing 747-8s, including a luxury jet donated by the Qatari government that sparked a political firestorm. The so-called “flying palace” is estimated to be worth $400 million, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-defends-400-million-flying-palace-offered-as-gift-from-qatar">The Daily Wire</a> previously reported. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/18/politics/white-house-staff-bids-farewell-to-planes-used-as-air-force-one-for-more-than-35-years">CNN reported</a> that the Qatari jet received significant modifications for its new role as Air Force One, including a major overhaul to equip it with the secure communications and security systems required for presidential travel.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
The VC-25B Bridge aircraft has officially arrived at Joint Base Andrews!
More info: <a href="https://t.co/xhurcI0mjL">https://t.co/xhurcI0mjL</a> <a href="https://t.co/zyUpB99jqm">pic.twitter.com/zyUpB99jqm</a>
— U.S. Air Force (@usairforce) <a href="https://x.com/usairforce/status/2068038435114262809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2026</a></blockquote>
An <a href="https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4474728/vc-25b-bridge-program-completes-flight-testing-prepares-for-summer-rollout/">Air Force release</a> in May said the plane had officially completed modifications and was “on schedule to roll out in a new red, white, and blue livery this summer.”
The controversy erupted in May 2025 after multiple reports revealed that the Trump administration was in talks to accept a luxury jet from Qatar, a proposal that sparked bipartisan criticism.
Critics pounced on the president, arguing that gifts from Qatar — a nation that spends heavily to build influence in the United States — rarely come without strings attached.
Pro-Trump activist Laura Loomer <a href="https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1921615017138618439">urged</a> Trump not to accept the plane, saying, “This is really going to be such a stain on the admin if this is true.”
At the time, the White House <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-defends-400-million-flying-palace-offered-as-gift-from-qatar">said</a>: “Any gift given by a foreign government is always accepted in full compliance with all applicable laws.” 
Still, the president took to social media to blast the critics. 
“So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane. Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!! MAGA,” <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114492082555622686">Trump said.</a>
The first VC-25A, tail number 28000, flew as Air Force One for the first time on September 6, 1990, carrying President George H.W. Bush to Kansas, Florida, and back to Washington, D.C., <a href="https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104588/vc-25-air-force-one/">according to the Air Force</a>. A second VC-25A, tail number 29000, later carried multiple presidents on historic missions, including trips to Israel for the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and became especially notable on September 11, 2001, when President George W. Bush was rushed to the jet after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center.
It remains unclear exactly when the Qatari jet being converted into a new Air Force One will arrive in Washington and enter service.

HLMl_bIXkAAfNRR

‘The Last Ride’: White House Bids Farewell To Air Force One

Air Force One

Donald Trump

News

The revelations of improper conduct involving the International Criminal Court (ICC) continue to grow, with the Wall Street Journal recently breaking a story suggesting that Qatar promised to assist chief prosecutor Karim Khan if he brought charges against Israeli officials. Khan made a sudden rush to issue the indictments just as sexual assault accusations against him were coming to light. Qatar’s role makes the affair about more than one man’s alleged crimes – it is about the dangerousness and lack of accountability of the ICC as an institution.
Qatar is not an ICC member state. But it does host and sponsor Hamas, making its involvement with a prosecutor investigating the Gaza war deeply problematic. This may explain a strange aspect of the ICC’s arrest warrants. In addition to Israeli leaders, the ICC indicted Yahya Sinwar and two other top Hamas leaders in Gaza. It was gross moral equivalence equating Israeli leaders defending their people after the October 7 massacre with the masterminds of that crime.
The Court presented these parallel indictments as proof of its evenhandedness. Yet from the beginning, there was an obvious asymmetry: the Court indicted Israel’s top civilian leader, but ignored Khaled Mashaal and the rest of Hamas’s political leadership. When Israel mooted the warrants on Sinwar and Mohammed Deif by killing them during the Gaza war, Khan did not seek to restore balance by bringing new indictments against Hamas’s top leaders, who happen to be based in Qatar.
As the accusations against Khan began to mount, he argued it was a plot to weaken the Court, hinting at <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/icc-netanyahu-prosecutor-sexual-assault-israel-gaza-d9bedee3">Mossad involvement</a>. That appears to be, like so many charges against Israel, an exercise in projection. Qatar hired investigators in a failed attempt to discredit the employee who made the sexual assault allegations. Khan appears to have been right that there was a foreign intelligence operation surrounding these allegations, just not against him.
Khan specifically tied his warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the charges against him, urging his alleged victim to remain silent because it would undermine pending “Palestinian arrest warrants.” This, along with the emerging role of Qatar, makes it impossible to separate the scandal around Khan from the Court’s Gaza war indictments. Yet the Court has been silent about the Qatar revelations, a marked contrast to its public condemnation of a Trump administration executive order imposing sanctions on ICC officials as interference with its “independent and impartial work.”
The only action that the ICC has taken so far is disciplinary proceedings against Khan himself. The most that can happen is that he loses his job. His accuser never turned to the Dutch police because she said his official immunity would protect him. However, under the ICC’s rules, the judges could waive that immunity if they wished. The Court’s refusal to allow a criminal investigation of Khan, even as the scope of the scandal expands, demonstrates the institution&#8217;s political nature.
At the same time, the Court seems fully intent on proceeding with the Netanyahu prosecution. Such serious prosecutorial misconduct could, at least in the United States, lead to the dismissal of even factually substantiated criminal charges. Here, the evidence does not even show that the alleged crime (purposeful starvation of civilians) even occurred, let alone was committed by the accused. As the dust settles in Gaza, the lack of mass starvation becomes ever more evident.
An American prosecutor would be loath to try a case with such manifest prosecutorial misconduct (notably, senior court officials knew about the allegations against Khan at the time the indictments were made but kept it quiet for six months, when it leaked to the press). But Netanyahu is not facing a jury of his peers, but rather a panel of international judges who likely share the Court’s institutional culture.
Qatar’s involvement shows the ICC to be even more dangerous than its critics thought. The rap against the tribunal has long been that it acts like a global independent counsel – an unaccountable prosecutor with no democratic restraints. But even worse, it now appears that hostile states can coopt it as a political weapon in an ongoing conflict.
This illustrates the need for the Trump administration to take decisive action against the organization. The sanctions the Treasury Department has imposed on individual court officers have inconvenienced them but appear to have done little to fundamentally weaken the organization or change its trajectory. A body politically motivated enough to maintain the Israel warrants in the wake of the growing Khan fiasco will certainly retaliate against Trump and his top officials once they are out of office.
The administration should impose institution-wide sanctions on the tribunal and vigorously enforce them. The ICC recently got some good news as Peter Magyar, Hungary’s prime minister-elect, vowed to rejoin after it had become the first EU country to quit. Magyar prioritized the issue because he is seeking EU funding, and Brussels ties its financial support to adhering to its foreign policy. America must adopt the same tough approach, insisting that countries receiving benefits quit the Court. For Europe, pushing countries to join the ICC is a matter of ideology. For America, pushing back should be seen as a question of national security.
Eugene Kontorovich is a professor at George Mason University Scalia Law School and a senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom.

NETHERLANDS-JUSTICE-ICC

The International Criminal Court Is In Bed With Our Enemies And It’s Time We Clean House

DW Opinion

Hamas

International Criminal Court

In a startling new development surrounding the International Criminal Court (ICC), a witness statement claims that the Qatari government promised to “look after” prosecutor Karim Khan if he moved forward with arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/karim-khan-icc-prosecutor-benjamin-netanyahu-qatar-israel-7b62d474?mod=hp_opin_pos_1">reports</a>.
The accusation, which is supported by audio recordings reviewed by investigators, suggests a potential quid pro quo agreement between the Gulf state and the ICC&#8217;s top prosecutor. According to the witness statement submitted to the FBI, the promise of state protection was made while Khan was reportedly hesitant to issue the warrants.
“I want to issue the warrant, but I’m terrified to do it,” Khan told intermediaries, according to a recorded conversation cited in the report.
“If you do it, then we’ll look after you,” a voice described as linked to the Qatari state responded, according to the recording.
These revelations add to a layer of geopolitical intrigue to the scandal already engulfing Khan, who took a leave of absence in May 2025 following allegations of sexual misconduct involving a subordinate. Khan has denied the accusations and described them as part of an “orchestrated campaign” to discredit him.
Investigators are also examining whether a Qatar-linked intelligence effort sought to discredit Khan&#8217;s accuser, according to the report. The operation, involving London-based firms Highgate and Elicius Intelligence, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/nov/06/qatar-linked-intelligence-operation-targeted-icc-prosecutor-karim-khan-alleged-victim">allegedly sought</a> to find &#8220;links&#8221; between the female accuser and Israeli intelligence.
Documents and recordings indicate the firms investigated whether the victim—a Malaysian Muslim lawyer—had a “Jewish grandmother” or a secret Israeli passport. They even scrutinized her husband’s former employment at a company with a kosher-food subsidiary, speculating that a rabbi associated with the firm could provide “cover employment” for an agent.
The witness statement claims the intelligence operation also targeted Tom Lynch, a senior American ICC official who first reported the assault allegation, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Investigators reportedly attempted to link Lynch to the “Israel political lobby” in Washington.
Khan has denied any knowledge of or involvement in the intelligence operations. His lawyer said Khan never discussed the warrants with Qatari officials prior to the warrants and “was not offered or given (and would not have sought or accepted) any ‘promise’ by any state to ‘look after’ him.”
The Qatari government has dismissed the allegations as &#8220;unfounded.&#8221;
According to the report, individuals involved in the recordings referred to their employer as &#8220;the client country&#8221; or &#8220;Q country,&#8221; with one manager reportedly clarifying: &#8220;No, it’s the state.&#8221;
The controversy comes as the ICC’s governing body has voted to advance disciplinary proceedings against Khan. A United Nations inquiry previously found a “factual basis” for the sexual misconduct claims and allegations of retaliation against staff.
As the Dutch counterterror agency (NCTV) interviews ICC officials who may have been targeted by the spying operation, the cloud over the court’s objectivity continues to darken. Critics argue that if the prosecutor’s legal decisions were influenced by promises of state protection, the integrity of the warrants against Israeli leaders—and the ICC itself—may be permanently compromised.

United Nations Security Council Meets On Ongoing War In Sudan

Qatar Promised To ‘Look After’ ICC Prosecutor If He Targeted Netanyahu, Witness Claims

Benjamin Netanyahu

Don&#8217;t fall for the propaganda: Iran is losing. They are getting scorched. 
One by one, the leaders of the Islamic Republic are being eliminated. Generals, security chiefs, regime powerbrokers. All gone. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, was dead on day one.
No biggie, right? The regime had a backup plan. They proclaimed his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, an impotent, likely gay, half-idiot mullah, as his successor. Even his daddy didn&#8217;t want that to happen.
The problem is, he has not been seen in weeks, and he may be in a coma.
Meanwhile, Iran&#8217;s command structure is shattered. The missile capacity has been slashed by 90%. Whatever is left of the regime is throwing a temper tantrum like a toddler.
So the real question isn&#8217;t why Iran is losing. The real question is why so many people in the West are pretending they aren&#8217;t.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2389-breaking-iran-s-next-leader-killed?elementPosition=0&amp;row=6&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, was poised to step in as the new leader. He was walking around Tehran just a couple of days ago.
Last night, Larijani, who you might remember from such banger tweets as “Our leaders have been, and still are, among the people. But your leaders? On Epstein&#8217;s island!”, is no longer among the people, among any people.
Because he&#8217;s dead.
He was killed last night in an Israeli airstrike. In addition, Reza Soleimani, the head of the Basij — the internal Iranian force dedicated to murdering protesters and quashing dissent — was killed by Israel last night, along with other top members of the Basij.
And now, individual Basij checkpoints in Tehran are being struck with Israeli drones. In fact, according to the IDF intelligence head, Major General Shlomi Binder, “Their command structure is shattered; their capability stripped down to the bone. What you&#8217;re seeing launch now is whatever scraps they can still push out. That&#8217;s their ceiling.”
The United States has so severely degraded Iran&#8217;s missile capabilities that the government has been firing off, in rather desultory fashion, individual missiles, like a kid whose tantrum is ending but is still kind of sporadically kicking as he tires himself out and goes down for a nap.
On day one of this war, Iran launched 350 missiles. Today, they are down to barely double digits. Their ballistic missile capacity has been reduced by upward of 90%. How about drone launches? Same story: 800 drone launches day one, down to 75 on day 15, and even fewer yesterday. Their ballistic missile factories have been destroyed, their drone factories have been destroyed, and their nuclear facilities have been destroyed or heavily damaged.
Don&#8217;t believe me? Ask Muhanad Seloom, writing for — wait for it — Al Jazeera.
Yup. There&#8217;s a gigantic piece in Al Jazeera, Qatar&#8217;s propaganda outlet, titled “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/3/16/the-us-israeli-strategy-against-iran-is-working-here-is-why?utm_source=chatgpt.com">The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why</a>,” accurately explaining the toll this war has now taken on Iran. Remember, Qatar is a half-ally to Iran. That alone should tell you just where things stand for the Iranians. 
The Qataris, who play both sides, are now pretty clearly taking America&#8217;s side.
The article points out:
<blockquote>The picture is not one of US failure. It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat the previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades. &#8230; The campaign has moved through two distinct phases. The first suppressed Iran&#8217;s air defenses, decapitated its command and control, integrated its missile and drone launch infrastructure.
By March 2, US Central Command announced local air superiority over western Iran and Tehran, achieved without the confirmed loss of a single American or Israeli combat aircraft. The second phase, now underway, targets Iran&#8217;s defense industrial base, missile production facilities, dual use research centers, and the underground complexes where remaining stockpiles are stored. This is not an aimless bombing. It is a methodical campaign to ensure that what has been destroyed cannot be rebuilt.</blockquote>
What about the Strait of Hormuz? We keep hearing about that.
The chances of President Trump allowing the Strait to remain permanently closed are zero. That is not going to happen. And leaving Iran in total control of the Strait, just because Iran has a few drones and the capacity to fire them from the shoreline, is, shall we say, a short-term problem.
Soon, the Iranian government will have much larger problems, because it feels as though all of this is a prelude to action by the Iranian people themselves. President Trump noted that Iranians will soon head out into the streets when they feel more secure.
He said yesterday, “So the women had 250,000, even 500,000 people protesting a year ago, and they shot women right through the middle of the forehead with snipers. And they didn&#8217;t have to do many. About ten went down, bleeding profusely and 250 to 500,000 women went running in the other direction because they can be brave. But they’re not stupid and they have no guns. And they have snipers in buildings specifically for this reason. So a woman goes down, falling, bleeding from the head, and it doesn&#8217;t take long for that to spread. And when that spreads, that crowd dispenses. And nobody else has been able to do that to the extent that these people. These people are violent. They killed a minimum, two weeks ago, 32,000 people. And they put out a notice two days ago, ‘If you protest, if you protest, you will be shot and killed.’”
Something is going to change. The time is coming. Chief rivals to the Iranian people are being individually eliminated. Right now, the Iranian people have the Americans and the Israelis actually flying air cover for them. Yes, of course, they&#8217;re going to have to brave death to take on the regime. They’ve done it before.
But last time they did it, no help was on the way. Then, President Trump said help is on the way.
And then President Trump acted.
What happens next will be in the Iranian people’s hands.

US Using UK Military Bases For Defensive Strikes Against Iran

Don’t Believe The Propaganda: The Mullahs Are Losing

Don't Believe The Propaganda: The Mullahs Are Losing

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Middle East

U.S. Military

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In a stunning display of gaslighting on International Women’s Day, Qatari Minister of Education Lolwah bint Rashid Al Khater took to social media on Sunday to deliver a sharp rebuke to the West.
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<div>
Her message? Stop trying to “liberate” Muslim women. While Al Khater framed her defiance as a stand against “sick destructive agendas” and &#8220;Hollywood-style&#8221; savior complexes, the reality on the ground in Doha tells a much darker story of state-sponsored subjugation.
</div>
<div>
Al Khater demanded that critics &#8220;leave us alone,&#8221; claiming on social media that the Islamic world is doing &#8220;just fine.&#8221; She went further, accusing Western powers of igniting wars for profit and &#8220;trafficking and raping little kids.&#8221; It is a classic authoritarian tactic: deflect from your own human rights record by hurling inflammatory, unsubstantiated accusations at the proponents of liberty.
</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WomensDay?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WomensDay</a> 
Happy Women’s Day to all women wherever they are, those who are striving for their families, to survive, to make this planet a better and more peaceful place.
As a Muslim woman and as an Arab woman I just want to say:
STOP 🛑 
STOP talking on our behalf 
STOP…
&mdash; لولوة الخاطر Lolwah Alkhater (@Lolwah_Alkhater) <a href="https://twitter.com/Lolwah_Alkhater/status/2030622485587071083?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div>
<div>
But for the women living under Al Khater’s government, things have been anything but &#8220;fine.&#8221; While the Minister enjoys the privilege of high office, the average Qatari woman is legally treated as a permanent minor. According to a damning 94-page 2021 <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/03/29/qatar-male-guardianship-severely-curtails-womens-rights">report</a> from Human Rights Watch in 2021, Qatar’s &#8220;male guardianship&#8221; system masked a suffocating reality.
</div>
<div>
In the Qatari &#8220;paradise&#8221; Al Khater defends, a woman’s life was entirely tied to a man. Want to get married? You need the permission of a male guardian. Want to study abroad on a scholarship? Get a man’s signature. Want to work in a government job—perhaps even in Al Khater’s own Ministry of Education? You’ll likely need your father’s or husband’s consent.
</div>
<div>
The stories of those living under this &#8220;peaceful&#8221; planet that the Minister speaks of are harrowing. One 32-year-old woman, &#8220;Nawal,&#8221; recounted how her brother blocked her marriage simply because he &#8220;felt powerful&#8221; and wanted to show resistance. Another woman, &#8220;Dana,&#8221; was denied an urgent vaginal ultrasound for a suspected burst ovary because she couldn&#8217;t produce a marriage license. This isn&#8217;t &#8220;liberation&#8221;; it’s a medical and civil rights hostage situation.
</div>
<div>
Furthermore, the legal deck has been stacked. A husband could easily be granted a divorce, but a woman faced years of litigation. If she &#8220;disobeyed&#8221; by working without permission or refusing sex, she could lose her financial support. Men could marry four wives without any consent from their current spouse, yet a woman could not even be the primary guardian of her own children.
</div>
<div>
When Al Khater tells the West to &#8220;stop talking on our behalf,&#8221; she is really asking the world to stop looking at the bars of the cage. Qatar wants the prestige of the international stage—hosting World Cups and educational summits—without the accountability that comes with basic human dignity.
</div>

LEBANON-QATAR-ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-POLITICS-DIPLOMACY-CONFLICT-HEALTH

‘STOP Liberating Us’: Qatari Minister Accuses Western Powers Of ‘Trafficking And Raping Little Kids’

United States

Qatar, which supported the terrorist group Hamas and was closely allied with Iran, is trying to stop the U.S.-Israel attack on the tyrannical Iranian regime by warning of global economic consequences if the war continues.
Traditionally a close ally of Iran and a long-time financial and political patron of Hamas, Qatar is now leveraging its position as the world’s second-largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) producer to force a ceasefire that would effectively bail out the embattled regime in Tehran.
Following an Iranian drone strike on its Ras Laffan plant — an act many view as a coordinated effort to &#8220;raise the stakes&#8221; for the West — Qatar declared force majeure, halting its massive gas exports. Qatar’s energy minister, Saad al-Kaabi, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/be122b17-e667-478d-be19-89d605e978ea" target="_blank" rel="noopener">warned</a> that if the war continues, oil will skyrocket to $150 a barrel within weeks, and every energy exporter in the Gulf will be forced to shut down production.
By framing the energy crisis as an inevitability of the US-Israeli offensive, Qatar is attempting to pivot the blame for global inflation and potential GDP contraction away from Iranian aggression and onto the Western military response.
Despite hosting a major US military base, Qatar’s loyalties remain deeply intertwined with the &#8220;Axis of Resistance.&#8221; Having <a href="https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-866913">sheltered Hamas leadership for years</a> and maintained deep economic ties with Tehran — Qatar’s ambassador to Tehran <a href="https://irannewsdaily.com/2025/12/qatar-envoy-hails-distinguished-ties-with-iran/">said</a> in December 2025, ““Qatar has important and distinguished relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and these relations are based on the principle of neighborliness, mutual respect and cooperation in all common fields” — Doha is now using the threat of &#8220;weeks to months&#8221; of energy delivery delays to pressure Washington. Al-Kaabi dismissed U.S. President Donald Trump’s offers of naval escorts through the Strait of Hormuz, labeling the waterway &#8220;too dangerous&#8221; and effectively siding with the Iranian position that the Strait cannot function while Iran is under attack.
“This will bring down the economies of the world,” Kaabi said. “If this war continues for a few weeks, GDP growth around the world will be impacted. Everybody’s energy price is going to go higher. There will be shortages of some products and there will be a chain reaction of factories that cannot supply.”
Al-Kaabi’s rhetoric suggests that Qatar is not merely a victim of the crossfire but an active participant in a diplomatic squeeze. By predicting that Asian buyers will outbid Europeans for dwindling supplies and that global supply chains will suffer a &#8220;chain reaction&#8221; of failures, Doha is sending a clear message to Western capitals: the survival of the Iranian regime is now directly linked to the stability of the global economy.
As Qatar halts its $30 billion North Field expansion and warns of long-term &#8220;liability&#8221; for other Gulf nations that continue to pump oil, it is clear that Doha is utilizing its energy dominance as a shield for its allies in Tehran.

Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, Minister of State for Energy Affairs

Qatar Moves To Shield Iran, Warns Of Energy Shock If War Continues

WASHINGTON—The State Department is shutting down a Biden-era program that allowed Afghan allies to enter the United States, citing serious concerns about President Joe Biden&#8217;s failure to follow security procedures in vetting Afghans.
The Biden administration set up the refugee program at Camp As Sayliyah in Doha, Qatar, to support Afghan allies who fled their country during the botched Afghanistan withdrawal.
Around 1,300 Afghans <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/afghan-refugees-us-camp-as-sayliyah-844d4c89?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=AWEtsqcmolnrTV32c1lCdvly5ZZ9yXtjEnKPg3YdJUdmDRWrcQnKpmoZZZSPb_nsx_o%3D&amp;gaa_ts=6967aa02&amp;gaa_sig=Jv4emKo41qUqizTkV659y3ZHqrpn9wYfWdpr5tECaucKk9YeZddz9KDkNS4T0q62sQHbC1EcyGQOLTiZARMLwQ%3D%3D">have been waiting</a> at the former American military base for years, in cramped living conditions, to enter the United States. Many of them have feared that they will be returned to Afghanistan, where they will be tortured and killed for working with the United States.
As of Wednesday, The Daily Wire can first report, the State Department says that the Biden administration&#8217;s failure to properly vet these Afghans, throwing standard security procedures out the window during the withdrawal, will prevent them from ultimately entering the United States. They will be sent to &#8220;a third country&#8221; — though what country this is, the State Department has not yet confirmed.
A State Department spokesperson shared that the Afghan nationals who are currently at Camp As Sayliyah &#8220;do not have a viable pathway&#8221; to the United States and that hundreds of these nationals have &#8220;derogatory information&#8221; that presents serious security concerns.
But President Donald Trump does not want these vulnerable groups of people to be forced to go back to Afghanistan &#8220;under the brutal Taliban regime,&#8221; particularly the women and girls, so the United States has presented the Afghan nationals at the camp with a &#8220;safe, third-country option for resettlement.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_1027715" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-state-department-shuts-down-biden-era-afghan-refugee-program/afghan-refugees-arrive-at-dulles-airport-after-us-pulls-out-final-troops-2" rel="attachment wp-att-1027715"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1027715" class="wp-image-1027715 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-1337456532-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-1337456532-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-1337456532-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-1337456532-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-1337456532.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" /></a>Refugees walk through the departure terminal to a bus at Dulles International Airport after being evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on August 31, 2021, in Dulles, Virginia.  (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)</div>
The State Department says that it&#8217;s neither appropriate nor humane to keep the Camp As Sayliyah group as is, saying that a large minority of the population are women and children who are living in a confined space without much freedom to move around. <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/afghan-refugees-us-camp-as-sayliyah-844d4c89?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=AWEtsqcmolnrTV32c1lCdvly5ZZ9yXtjEnKPg3YdJUdmDRWrcQnKpmoZZZSPb_nsx_o%3D&amp;gaa_ts=6967aa02&amp;gaa_sig=Jv4emKo41qUqizTkV659y3ZHqrpn9wYfWdpr5tECaucKk9YeZddz9KDkNS4T0q62sQHbC1EcyGQOLTiZARMLwQ%3D%3D">According to the Wall Street Journal</a>, residents at the program spend most of their time inside due to the blazing desert temperatures, typically walking around the hangars or scrolling on their phones.
State believes that moving the group to &#8220;a third country&#8221; is a &#8220;positive resolution&#8221; that will offer the Afghan nationals safety and the opportunity to start new lives — and at the same time, protect the American people.
&#8220;The United States has kept its promise to those Afghans who risked their lives to support the U.S. government during our attempts to help Afghans build a better country for themselves,&#8221; the State Department spokesperson shared.
&#8220;We have resettled roughly 400,000 Afghans since 2001,&#8221; the spokesman added. &#8220;It is now more than four and a half years since the United States withdrew from Afghanistan. It is long past time to move past this decades-long conflict, so costly in blood and treasure, and look ahead to the future.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_1027709" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-state-department-shuts-down-biden-era-afghan-refugee-program/us-and-european-defence-forces-assist-in-evacuations-from-afghanistan-following-taliban-takeover-5" rel="attachment wp-att-1027709"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1027709" class="wp-image-1027709 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-1234843735-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-1234843735-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-1234843735-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-1234843735-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-1234843735.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" /></a>In this handout image, Sgt. Juan Miranda, culinary specialist, 155th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, files in Afghan Special Immigrants into the dining facility, August 20, 2021, at Camp As Sayliyah, Qatar. (Photo by Sgt. Jimmie Baker / U.S. Army via Getty Images)</div>
The move comes on the heels of the tragic Thanksgiving week attack on members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C. Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/lakanwal-newly-indicted-shooting-guardsmen-near-white-house-killed-sarah-beckstrom">was brought into the country</a> by the Biden administration in 2021, shot and killed Specialist Sarah Beckstrom and seriously injured Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe in an ambush-style attack on November 26.
Lakanwal was one of many thousands of Afghan nationals who were flown out of Afghanistan without proper vetting and put on &#8220;U.S.-controlled platforms for an eventual pathway to the United States.&#8221;
He is not the only Afghan national who has attempted to kill Americans: Abdullah Haji Zada and Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi were sentenced for intent to conduct a terrorist act in Oklahoma in October 2024, and Jamal Wali was killed in Fairfax, Virginia, after opening fire on police officers during a routine traffic stop in April 2025.
Two days after Lakanwal&#8217;s attack, and about 24 hours after President Trump pledged to dramatically shake up the United States immigration system in response, the State Department <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-department-orders-posts-to-refuse-visas-to-afghan-nationals?author=Mary+Margaret+Olohan&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=25&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=State+Department+Takes+Action+On+Afghan+Nationals+Following+Trump+Pledge">directed its posts</a> to refuse visas to Afghan nationals using Afghan passports.
Trump argued at the time that the “refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America.”
“As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota,” the president said. “Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone.”
On December 3, the president <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-halts-immigration-from-19-high-risk-countries-following-national-guard-shooting">paused the processing</a> of all immigration applications for individuals from 19 “high-risk countries&#8221;: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
And in mid-December, the president <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/12/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-further-restricts-and-limits-the-entry-of-foreign-nationals-to-protect-the-security-of-the-united-states/">signed a proclamation</a> expanding and strengthening entry restrictions on nationals from countries with &#8220;demonstrated, persistent, and severe deficiencies in screening, vetting, and information-sharing to protect the Nation from national security and public safety threats.&#8221;

TOPSHOT-AFGHANISTAN-CONFLICT

EXCLUSIVE: State Department Shuts Down Biden-Era Afghan Refugee Program

Afghanistan

State Department

In a recent <a href="https://x.com/joelmowbray/status/1999584250774061488?s=46&amp;t=ghpHusspWPjTMisXwpsMaA">podcast episode</a>, Tucker Carlson <a href="https://x.com/joelmowbray/status/1999584250774061488?s=46&amp;t=ghpHusspWPjTMisXwpsMaA">asked</a>, “Where do Christians feel more comfortable in Qatar or Israel?” If his foolish comments weren’t so dangerous, they would almost be laughable.
Carlson said,
<blockquote>But if the deeper question is, “Where do Christians feel more comfortable in Qatar or Israel?”, I mean, it&#8217;s sort of hard to know what people actually think. So maybe the best way to measure that is by where they live. So there are twice as many Christians living in Qatar as there are in Israel. Twice as many. At least twice as many. Did you know that? Again, not promoting Qatar. I&#8217;m not moving there. But there are twice as many Christians living there. So if it&#8217;s like an ISIS state where people are beheaded for proclaiming the name of Jesus, why are there twice as many in Qatar as there are in Israel? And why are there so many Christian churches in Qatar? All, or at least most, on land granted to them by the government. Again, not promoting Qatar, just saying if you&#8217;re telling me that this is a country whose values are so far from mine that even to go there is a crime of some kind, you&#8217;re lying. Or we have very different values. Extremely different values. So why are they telling me that?</blockquote>
His words are lies in sheep’s clothing. He is defending a regime that has made its name not on religious freedom, but for its support of the Muslim Brotherhood — which the Trump administration is in the process of designating a terror group.
Carlson, who has spent two years attacking my home of Israel, based his argument on the fact that more Christians live in Qatar than in Israel.
Yes, there are roughly twice as many Christians in Qatar as in Israel — about 400,000 versus 188,000. But let’s get the facts straight. The Christians living in Qatar are almost entirely migrant workers, people who have no legal rights as citizens.
Carlson asks, “And why are there so many Christian churches in Qatar?”
There are exactly six government-sanctioned churches in Qatar. Six churches serving hundreds of thousands of people. And to make it even worse, they are all right next to each other under the close supervision of the government.
To be clear, it is illegal for Qatari citizens to convert from Islam to Christianity, and Qataris <a href="https://www.opendoors.org/en-US/persecution/countries/qatar/">are not allowed</a> to enter Christian churches. In fact, every person entering a church in Qatar must submit an ID.
The migrant workers who do attend often live and work under conditions that have been widely condemned as modern-day slavery.
Contrast that with Israel, a country where Christians are fully recognized citizens, including my community of indigenous Aramean Maronite Christians. We vote, we serve in the military, and we even hold elected office in the Knesset. Israel’s Christians are not confined to a single gated area or monitored by state authorities. We are free to worship openly, participate in society, and contribute to the nation’s cultural and political life.
There are more Baptist churches in Israel (17) than there are total churches in Qatar. In fact, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the native Christian communities are growing. Carlson took the only possible data points to show anything positive about Christian existence in Qatar and still got it all wrong.
As a Christian Israeli working to inspire the next generation of believers in our homeland, I can say with confidence: Israel protects religious freedom in ways that Qatar can only dream of.
Qatari Christians live in fear, are under constant surveillance, and have no path to citizenship or full participation in society.
Christians must understand where true freedom exists and where it is merely an illusion sold by regimes with an agenda and their influencer mouthpieces.
For Israel’s Christians, faith and citizenship go hand in hand. For Christians in Qatar, faith comes at the price of subjugation, invisibility, and in many cases, abuse.
We must call out lies like this, not just for Israel’s sake, but for the safety and understanding of Christians worldwide. Truth matters, and it will set you free.
* * *
Shadi Khalloul, founder and chairman of the Israeli Christian Aramean Association, is one of Israel’s most compelling voices for coexistence, minority rights, and Christian identity in the Middle East.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Aerial view of the West Bank cornice business center in Doha, Qatar

I’m A Christian Living In Israel. Tucker Carlson Is Wrong About Qatar.

I'm A Christian Living In Israel. Tucker Carlson Is Wrong About Qatar.

Christians

Religion

Tucker Carlson

The Trump administration has officially pulled back the curtain on the staggering amount of foreign influence-buying occurring on American college campuses. This week, the Department of Education launched a new transparency portal — <a href="https://www.foreignfundinghighered.gov/">foreignfundinghighered.gov</a> — revealing that adversarial and &#8220;illiberal&#8221; regimes have funneled billions into the very institutions currently serving as ground zero for anti-American and anti-Israel radicalism.
The data is damning. China, including Hong Kong, has pumped nearly $6 billion into U.S. higher education, targeting elite institutions like Harvard, New York University, and Stanford. <a href="https://chinaselectcommittee.house.gov/media/press-releases/transfer-portal-news-china-s-money">According</a> to House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar, this isn&#8217;t philanthropy — it’s a calculated effort to &#8220;transfer critical research, influence, and academic talent&#8221; to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
While the Trump administration is now prioritizing enforcement, the report highlights a catastrophic lapse under the previous administration. Data has revealed that foreign donations surged during the Biden years, with the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) noting that the &#8220;floodgates opened,&#8221; creating what experts call a &#8220;national security crisis.&#8221;
Furthermore, the scale of the deception is massive. While the portal lists billions in disclosed funds, previous reports suggest that hundreds of universities have illegally withheld information on an estimated $13 billion in additional contributions.
It is no coincidence that the universities receiving the most cash from hostile actors are the same ones currently exploding with antisemitic protests and &#8220;illiberal&#8221; faculty agendas.
<ul style="font-weight: 400;">
<li>Qatar, a nation that harbored Hamas leadership, remains the top contributor with over $6.5 billion in total funding.</li>
<li>Cornell University alone took $2.3 billion from the Qatari regime.</li>
<li>Northwestern and Texas A&amp;M have also raked in hundreds of millions from the Middle Eastern state.</li>
</ul>
President Donald Trump issued an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/transparency-regarding-foreign-influence-at-american-universities/">executive order</a> in April 2025 that required institutions of higher education to “report significant sources of foreign funding,” while noting, “But, because section 117 has not been robustly enforced, the true amounts, sources, and purposes of foreign money flowing to American campuses are unknown. From 2010 to 2016, according to one study, universities failed to disclose more than half of reportable foreign gifts. Even when foreign funding is reported, its true sources are often hidden.”
Trump pointed out that during his first term, “the Department of Education opened investigations on 19 campuses from 2019-2021, which led universities to report $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed foreign funds. Yet the prior administration undid this work, moving the Department of Education’s specialized investigatory work on foreign funds to a unit ill-equipped to perform it, undermining investigations, and hindering public access to information on foreign gifts and contracts.”

Man hold stack of US dollars.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: Trump Administration Exposes Billions In Foreign Funds Going To Woke Universities

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