Much ethical debate has occurred since Qatar floated the idea of gifting President Donald Trump a Boeing 747 to replace America’s aging fleet of presidential planes. The idea surfaced shortly before Trump’s recent Middle East visit, but it’s certainly not a novel idea hatched by Doha.
In 2018, after learning that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was looking to add to his fleet of presidential airplanes, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani gifted Erdogan his personal, custom-made Boeing 747-800 plane.
Originally acquired in 2015, the plane logged less than 500 hours of flight, and al-Thani was interested in putting it up for sale for around $400 million. Upon learning of Erdogan’s interest, al-Thani decided to gift him the jet, casting a critical light on the methods Qatar employs to influence international political actors and bend them to its will. The gifting of a 747 first to Erdogan and now to Trump represents the endpoint for Qatar in successfully influencing both Turkish and American politics.
Qatari political and financial investment in Turkey has been carefully shepherded by Erdogan and al-Thani over the course of a decade. It would be fair to say that when it comes to the Middle East, Qatar is Turkey’s one and only genuine ally. And it’s easy to understand why: Both Erdogan and al-Thani espouse and champion the Muslim Brotherhood’s vision for the region, as witnessed in both countries’ support for Hamas. While Qatar serves as the U.S.-designated terrorist entity’s main headquarters outside of Gaza, Turkey is home to Hamas’ main financial and logistical hubs.
Underwriting the ideological cooperation between Ankara and Doha is the Turkey-Qatar High Strategic Committee, a key bilateral agreement established in 2014 that governs trade, defense, transport, and media agreements between the two nations. This has been buttressed by military cooperation. In 2017, Turkey established a forward operating military base in Qatar to increase levels of military readiness. Finally, Doha is also a major source of financial support for Ankara. In November 2022, when Turkey was at the height of witnessing a shortage of central bank foreign currency reserves, Qatar stepped in to deposit billions of dollars in emergency funding.
In short, Doha has expended considerable resources, slowly cultivating a purposeful relationship with Ankara. A similar picture is beginning to emerge in the United States.
Over the last quarter-century, Qatar has sunk hundreds of billions of dollars into the United States, spread across the defense, energy, education, real estate, and entertainment industries. Speaking at the Qatar Economic Forum on May 20, the chief executive of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund announced that Doha plans to invest an additional $500 billion in the U.S. over the next decade — a sum nearly equal to the fund’s $526 billion in assets.
Meanwhile, Qatar has been courting American politicians, Democratic and Republican, at all levels of government, for years. Perhaps the most well-known case is that of New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who fell from grace after a jury found him guilty of accepting bribes under the expectation that he would “use his influence and power” to “benefit the Government of Qatar.”
Menendez is not the first American lawmaker to rub elbows with Qatar. Doha started to flex its lobbying muscle seriously in 2017 after the Gulf Cooperation Council severed ties with Qatar over its “adoption” of extremist groups. Since then, Qatar has devoted significant resources to building clout in both houses of Congress, cultivating relationships with individual lawmakers and employing lobbyists to influence the legislative process.
In 2017, for example, Qatar dispatched lobbyists to build opposition against the Palestinian International Terrorism Support and Prevention Act, which identified Qatar as a sponsor of Hamas. Materials distributed by Qatari agents warned that the bill “erroneously and unfairly” targeted Qatar and had the potential to “chill the robust economic relationship between the U.S. and Qatar.” Whether because of Qatar’s efforts or not, the legislation never passed.
Qatar’s efforts have continued amid the war in Gaza. Disclosures submitted to the U.S. Justice Department indicate that lobbyists on Qatar’s payroll engaged with offices in the House and Senate over 285 times between October 2023 and April 2024 on the issue of Qatar’s role in hostage negotiations. Doha’s efforts appear to be paying off. Qatar has maintained its role as mediator and continued to soak up praise from American officials even as it heaps lopsided blame on Israel for the war Hamas started.
Qatar’s decision to gift Trump a Boeing 747, despite reports that the Pentagon “offered to buy the plane,” is the pinnacle of political influence. As Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) has noted, “in the cruelest irony, Air Force One will have something in common with Hamas: paid for by Qatar.”
Facing backlash over the ethical implications of accepting a $400 million jet from a foreign government, Trump said it would be “stupid” to say “no, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.” Another senior administration official chimed in: “There are no strings attached either contractually or implicitly.” Setting aside the fact that converting the Qatari plane into Air Force One could cost American taxpayers up to $1 billion, the notion that the plane comes without strings is tenuous at best.
TRUMP BLOWS HIS STACK OVER QUESTIONS ABOUT QATARI AIR FORCE ONE GIFT
Since receiving his jumbo jet from Qatar, Erdogan has been wedded to Doha, relying on vital Qatari investments to stabilize the Turkish economy. The U.S. economy may not need Qatari cash, but it’s a mistake to assume that Qatar’s “great gesture” won’t similarly tie Washington’s hands. That might mean forsaking American values to do business with a regime that enabled Hamas and sponsored the Taliban. Or it could mean leaving Syria prey to Qatari and Turkish interests, with no safeguards in place to prevent the emergence of a jihadist state financed by Qatar and implicitly blessed by the president of the United States.
The Pentagon just accepted the Boeing 747 from Qatar. Perhaps it should’ve read the fine print first.
Natalie Ecanow is a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Sinan Ciddi is a non-resident senior fellow.