Qatar’s Double Game and the Complicity of American Universities

To release their new “Document of General Principles and Policies,” leaders of Hamas held a press conference at a hotel in Qatar, where the organization’s main office is located. Clifford May explains why Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, emir of the small but wealthy country, hosts the terrorist group:

[Sheikh al-Thani] is extraordinarily adept at playing both ends against the middle. He provides Hamas not just with a capital-in-exile but also with much of its funding. He supports other Muslim Brotherhood organizations throughout the region. Financiers of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist groups operate openly in Qatar. At the same time, the emir transmits Qatari perspectives—a less polite term would be Islamist propaganda—around the world through Al-Jazeera, the state-funded international television network.

But Qatar has another face. It hosts the largest American military base in the Middle East. It contributes millions of dollars to several Washington think tanks. And it lavishly subsidizes satellite campuses [in Qatar] for American universities. Among them are Georgetown, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, Texas A&M, and Virginia Commonwealth.

The [satellite] campuses are located in “Education City,” where the main mosque regularly features Islamist clerics. For example: Mudassir Ahmed, who from the pulpit last year said: “Kill the infidels. . . . Count them in number and do not spare one!” Another preacher called for Allah to “render victorious our brothers the mujahedeen . . . in every place” and to “guide their shooting.”

What do the administrators of the American colleges say about this? Not a word. When it comes to Islamists, too many academics long ago gave up the struggle to see what’s in front of their noses.

Read more at Washington Times

More about: Al Jazeera, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Politics & Current Affairs, Qatar, U.S. Foreign policy, University

Israel Had No Choice but to Strike Iran

June 16 2025

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.

Read more at UnHerd

More about: Iran nuclear program, Israeli Security