Qatar solidified its role as the Trump administration’s preferred negotiator after playing a decisive role in bringing together the Memorandum of Understanding to end the U.S. war with Iran.
Speaking alongside Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani at a summit on Tuesday, President Donald Trump heaped praise on the Qatari leader and his nation’s efforts to help the United States.
“We have a great relationship,” Trump said. “The emir is a fantastic man, respected all over the world … highly respected people, great people, and we work very well together. We have our deal done with Iran, and to be successful, it goes to a second stage, which I think will be actually easier.
“Working with Qatar and the people of Qatar was really a pleasure,” the president said. “They were tough, they were strong. … You were in a more dangerous position. But … I do have to say, you fought and you helped us, and with great bravery, so I just want to compliment you on that, and you’ll always be my friend.”
Trump’s comments focused on Qatar’s role as an ally and fending off Iranian attacks during the war, but take on a new meaning in light of recent reports highlighting the centrality that Qatar played in negotiating an end to the war.
The central peacemaker
From the early days of the war, Pakistan was the primary mediator between Iran and the U.S., ultimately bringing about the April ceasefire. By mid-May, however, negotiations had reached a deadlock, and war looked likely to return. After Trump warned the ceasefire was close to collapsing, Washington made a direct request for Qatar to step up, according to a report from the Financial Times, having previously been reduced to a supporting role to Pakistan, Turkey, and Egypt.
Veteran Qatari mediators Ali al Thawadi and Hamad al Kubaisi took a secret flight to Tehran shortly after, soon reviving negotiation efforts. While several regional players had a hand in the peace talks, the report said Qatar did most of the heavy lifting.
Its efforts culminated in a fast-paced drama last week in which frantic calls and trips were made to centers of power in Iran, the U.S., and Qatar. Trump’s ordering of strikes against Iran in retaliation for the downing of an Apache helicopter even stranded the Qatari delegation at a Tehran airport for seven hours, according to the report.
Also notable in the report was the revelation that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan called Trump to plead with him against further strikes, a major departure from their earlier hawkish stance, particularly that of the Emirati leader.
After several setbacks and close calls, both sides ultimately agreed to the MOU, and the signing was scheduled for Friday in Switzerland.
“It was very intense,” a person briefed on the talks told the Financial Times. “It was exhausting, but there was relief. It’s like when you finish a marathon, you are fully exhausted.”
Qatar’s centrality in negotiations comes as little surprise to seasoned watchers of the region, given the tiny Gulf country’s meteoric rise to become one of the most prominent peacemakers in the world. Despite its small size, it has helped mediate conflicts ranging from the war in Gaza to the war between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwandan-backed rebels.
A rising star in global mediation
As the Gulf countries have grown in wealth and state capacity over the past three decades from their oil wealth, each has pursued different routes to diversify its portfolio. While the UAE focused on improving its military, hard-power footprint, and business connections, and Saudi Arabia concentrated on tech development, Qatar carved out a niche as a mediator of conflicts, often those considered radioactive to other smaller powers.
Former British diplomat Edmund Fitton-Brown, who has extensive experience in the Middle East, said Doha’s pursuit of becoming a major mediator began in the early 2000s, with one of its first major ventures being negotiations to end the second intifada, entering talks with Hamas. The Israel-Palestine issue has become a central part of its mediating strategy, hosting Hamas’s government after it left its former headquarters in Damascus as a result of the Syrian Civil War.
Simon Henderson, Baker Senior Fellow and director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at the Washington Institute, traced the genesis of Qatar’s mediation efforts even earlier, in the 1990s.
“Don’t forget it initially developed relations with Israel in the early 1990s, though full diplomatic ties proved elusive,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Its prominence in Israel-Palestine negotiations landed it mediating roles vis-a-vis conflicts in Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Yemen. It established relations with the Taliban to mediate negotiations with the U.S. as early as 2010, and was behind the Doha Accords, which brought the U.S.’s longest war to a close.
Though the Doha Accords were widely viewed as a failure because the Taliban launching offensives to overthrow the government soon after, Fitton-Brown argued that their help in getting the U.S. out of Afghanistan earned the lasting gratitude of President Donald Trump and helps explain his trust in Doha during his second administration.
A key development in Qatar’s diplomatic posture was the 2017 Gulf Crisis, when Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt cut off relations with the Gulf nation, alleging support for terrorism. The relations blacklist was accompanied by an all-out blockade lasting several years. Qatar proved resilient, and relations were restored in 2021.
Henderson argued that Trump “may feel he was misled by Saudi Arabia and the UAE at the time of the Gulf Rift early in his first administration,” warming toward the nations in his second. Notably, Trump’s second state visit in his second term was to Qatar, a country completely snubbed in his first trip abroad in his first administration.
Trump and his Cabinet’s distrust of the legacy staffers in the CIA and State Department, relative to his predecessors, also serves in Qatar’s favor, according to Fitton-Brown.
While Trump’s favor has sent it to new heights over the past year, Fitton-Brown said support for Qatar in the U.S. is largely bipartisan. Democratic and Republican administrations have used it as a mediating tool, seeing the utility in a neutral but friendly third space to host discussions and communicate with distrusted powers it doesn’t want to meet with directly, such as Iran, Hamas, and the Taliban.
“The fact is, the Qataris were the people to call when you were stuck and didn’t know what to do, and you needed someone who could talk to an adversary and provide a location for meetings,” Fitton-Brown said.
Most importantly, he argued, Qatar has a special knack for “ingratiating themselves with Western partners, not just the United States.”
He described the Gulf nation’s leadership corps as “agile and charming,” knowing how to best win the favor of Western governments.
Though Qatar has been “amazingly successful in convincing the Trump administration that it’s a useful partner,” Fitton-Brown said, others are less convinced of their utility.
HOW TURKEY CAME TO POSITION ITSELF AS A DOMINANT POWER IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND BEYOND
Qatari mediation often results in a delayed crisis rather than resolving it, and the diplomatic missions sent by less desirable actors create their own problems. The diplomatic offices of terrorist groups in Doha, such as Hamas and the Houthis, are known to double as fundraising and espionage fronts.
Whatever the concerns, however, Doha’s role in negotiating a deal to presumably end the war between the U.S. and Iran, in terms that Trump finds favorable, is guaranteed to win it further mediation ventures in the near future.