US refuses to share intel with Qatar due to its support for Iran
“Qatar embarked on a hastily organized double diplomatic mission to consolidate its relationship with Turkey and Iran to pre-empt any Gulf reconciliation deal,” the document said.
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALUpdated: DECEMBER 17, 2020 18:54EMIR OF QATAR Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in Doha(photo credit: NASEEM ZEITOON/REUTERS)
British MP Ian Paisley Jr. delivered a shocking presentation last week during a House of Commons debate, saying the American government does not share military intelligence with Qatar, where the US has a huge military base, because the Gulf monarchy is aligned with the Islamic Republic of Iran.“Some of the reading in that report is very worrying indeed,” he said. “For example, it indicates that the USA, our partner, no longer shares information that has military intelligence associated with it with Doha because of its concerns over the proximity that Qatar has to Iran.”Paisley referenced a report from the management consultants at the London-based Cornerstone Global Associates. “Today, I have left in the House of Commons Library a very important report by Cornerstone into the Fakhrizadeh assassination, which links some of the activities in the Gulf with Qatar and Iran and with the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said.Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading Iranian physicist and a brigadier-general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was under US sanctions for his work on nuclear weapons. He was assassinated near Tehran on November 27.Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base, the largest military installation in the Middle East, hosts units of the US Air Force, the British Royal Air Force and a forward headquarters of US Central Command.The Cornerstone report alleges, based on Western intelligence sources, that “Qatar would undertake that it would not permit the US to carry out any attacks against Iran from Qatari territory.”When asked about this, French Senator Nathalie Goulet, who led a commission investigating jihadist networks in Europe and authored a report for NATO on terrorist finance, told The Jerusalem Post: “It’s plausible. But if you remember, Qatar had prior knowledge of the Iranian attack on a US ship in the Persian Gulf some months ago.”“Again, I am very suspicious,” she said. “We cannot trust Qatar as long as they support our worst enemies, the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. Any reconciliation [by Qatar] with the Gulf Cooperation Council would be a short-term hypocrisy.”The US government is currently seeking to mediate an end to an economic and diplomatic blockade imposed on Qatar by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (the so-called Arab quartet) and other countries due to Qatar’s alleged support of Iran’s regime and jihadi terrorist movements.The Cornerstone report’s assessment, “based on Western and Gulf diplomatic sources, is that Qatar is not interested in reconciliating with the Arab quartet. The Qatari regime has decided that its interests lie with the Islamic regimes of Iran and Turkey. Any reconciliation would be superficial and short-lived, and unlikely to stop Qatar from pursuing what is seen by its neighbors as pro-Islamist hostile policies.”
“Qatar embarked on a hastily organized double diplomatic mission to consolidate its relationship with Turkey and Iran to preempt any Gulf reconciliation deal,” the document said.“In the days and week preceding the reported US-led GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] reconciliation, there was a marked increase of hostile attacks by Qatari and Qatari-funded media against the Arab quartet. This was in coordination with media attacks by Iranian and Turkish media against the Arab quartet. This was an indication that Qatar is in no position to agree to the terms of the Arab quartet and continues to coordinate closely with both Tehran and Ankara,” it added.Paisley said: “Iran is one of the world’s most malevolent pariah states. It is a destabilizing influence across the Middle East, and it now stretches its extremist statecraft across Europe.“Iran backs terrorism,” he said. “In 2018, Members from this House were caught up in an event in Paris; some people in this room attended it. One of Iran’s front people tried to murder people at that protest [by exiled Iranian dissidents] by way of a bomb. Many Members were moments from death. The person who was accredited with carrying out that bombing was an Iranian diplomat who is now using his diplomatic immunity to avoid prosecution.”Both the Obama and Trump administrations have designated Iran’s regime the world’s biggest state-sponsor of international terrorism.Paisley called on “Her Majesty’s Government to use their power, authority and influence to influence Qatar to influence Iran to pull itself away from some of these things.”“At the moment, we in the UK buy something like 31% of all our gas from Qatar, which is astounding, and yet that country is playing a role in Iran, which is influencing extremists in this country also,” he said.The Post sent press queries to the Qatari Embassy in Washington and the Foreign Ministry in Doha.
