How Qatar Became One of the Middle East’s Biggest Problems

Earlier this week, reports have circulated claiming that Qatar is planning to expel the leaders of Hamas, whom it has hosted for many years, after they refused to condemn Iranian attacks on Qatari soil. Similar reports have appeared more than once since October 7, 2023, and each time have come to naught. (These reports also raise the question of why the U.S. doesn’t demand that these terrorists be extradited and their bank accounts frozen, rather than merely expelled.) But the Iranian attack does suggest that Qatar’s longstanding strategy of playing both sides of the conflicts between the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies on the one hand and extremists on the other—and positioning itself as the indispensable mediator between the two—may be collapsing.