ASSESSING THE U.S.-QATAR RELATIONSHIP HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION JULY 26, 2017 Serial No. 115–55 Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs ( Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/ U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 26–427PDF WASHINGTON : 2017 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001 VerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:08 Sep 05, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 5011 Sfmt 5011 F:\WORK\_MENA\072617\26427 SHIRL COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida BRAD SHERMAN, California DANA ROHRABACHER, California GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida TED POE, Texas KAREN BASS, California DARRELL E. ISSA, California WILLIAM R. KEATING, Massachusetts TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina AMI BERA, California MO BROOKS, Alabama LOIS FRANKEL, Florida PAUL COOK, California TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas RON DESANTIS, Florida ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania TED S. YOHO, Florida DINA TITUS, Nevada ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois NORMA J. TORRES, California LEE M. ZELDIN, New York BRADLEY SCOTT SCHNEIDER, Illinois DANIEL M. DONOVAN, JR., New York THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York Wisconsin TED LIEU, California ANN WAGNER, Missouri BRIAN J. MAST, Florida FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida BRIAN K. FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania THOMAS A. GARRETT, JR., Virginia AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman STEVE CHABOT, Ohio THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida DARRELL E. ISSA, California GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia RON DESANTIS, Florida DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina LOIS FRANKEL, Florida PAUL COOK, California BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii LEE M. ZELDIN, New York BRADLEY SCOTT SCHNEIDER, Illinois DANIEL M. DONOVAN, JR., New York THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York ANN WAGNER, Missouri TED LIEU, California BRIAN J. MAST, Florida BRIAN K. FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania (II) VerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:08 Sep 05, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 F:\WORK\_MENA\072617\26427 SHIRL C O N T E N T S Page WITNESSES Jonathan Schanzer, Ph.D., senior vice president, Foundation for Defense of Democracies .......................................................................................................... 7 Matthew Levitt, Ph.D., director and Fromer-Wexler fellow, Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy ............................................................................................................ 33 Mr. Ilan Goldenberg, senior fellow and director, Middle East Security Pro- gram, Center for a New American Security ....................................................... 45 LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING Jonathan Schanzer, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ................................................... 10 Matthew Levitt, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ......................................................... 36 Mr. Ilan Goldenberg: Prepared statement ............................................................. 47 APPENDIX Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 88 Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 89 The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement .............................................. 90 (III) VerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:08 Sep 05, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 F:\WORK\_MENA\072617\26427 SHIRL VerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:08 Sep 05, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 F:\WORK\_MENA\072617\26427 SHIRL ASSESSING THE U.S.-QATAR RELATIONSHIP WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 2017 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:16 p.m., in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. The subcommittee will come to order. After recognizing myself and Ranking Member Deutch for 5 minutes each for our opening statements, I will then recognize other mem- bers seeking recognition for 1 minute. We will then hear from our witnesses. And without objection, witnesses, your prepared statements will be made a part of the record, and members may have 5 days to in- sert statements and questions for the record, subject to the length limitation in the rules. We have many members of our subcommittee who are also on the Judiciary Committee, including Ranking Member Deutch, and there is an important markup happening as we speak. So you might see a lot of members moving back and forth, and we appre- ciate the time they can spare to come over here. Thank you, Mr. Deutch. The Chair now recognizes herself for 5 minutes. Last month, this subcommittee convened a hearing on the chal- lenges and opportunities for the United States Saudi Arabia bilat- eral relationship. Today, we focus on the U.S.-Qatar relationship and Qatar’s relationship with its neighbors. I think it is important to note that this rift in the Gulf is not new. Katherine Bauer, a former senior-level official at the Treasury Department stated earlier this month at a think tank event, ‘‘Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sought for years to kind of galvanize Qatar’s actions against the terrorist financiers that were operating and continue to operate in Qatar.’’ Qatar has been known to be a permissive environment for terror financing, reportedly funding U.S. designated foreign terrorist or- ganizations, such as Hamas, as well as several extremist groups operating in Syria. In 2014, the former deputy director of CIA, David Cohen, called out Qatar publicly along with the Kuwaitis, because according to him, ‘‘The private engagement with these countries had not achieved what we were trying to achieve.’’ (1) VerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:08 Sep 05, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_MENA\072617\26427 SHIRL 2 In fact, Qatar has openly housed Hamas leaders, Taliban leaders, and has several individuals who have been sanctioned by our U.S. Treasury Department, and it has failed to prosecute them. At least one high-ranking Qatari official provided support to the mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks against our country, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. Then, of course, there is Khalifa Mohammed, who is a U.S.-, EU-, and U.N.-designated international terrorist for his role in financing al-Qaeda and the 9/11 mastermind. In 2008, he was tried and convicted in absentia by Bahrain for his terrorist activity, and arrested later that year by Qatar only to be released by the Qataris 6 months later, and then openly fi- nanced by Doha. Can anyone guess what Khalifa Mohammed has been up to these days? He was implicated in terror financing activities in 2012, but more recently, he has been alleged to be financing and supporting terror in both Iraq and Syria with no response from the Qatari Government. Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, also made Doha his head- quarters for years while the Qatari’s—with the Qatari’s Govern- ment support and even the Muslim Brotherhood has received sig- nificant support from Qatar. Of course, not all of this is supported by the government in Doha. Many individuals and charities in Qatar have been known to raise large sums of money for al-Qaeda, the Nusra front, Hamas, and even ISIS. In Qatar, there are three buckets: Terror financing by the government; terror financing done in Qatar through their own citizens that their government may not know about; and terror fi- nancing in Qatar that the government knows about but does noth- ing to stop. According to the 2015 country reports on terrorism, the State De- partment stated, ‘‘Entities and individuals within Qatar continue to serve as a source of financial support for terrorists and violent ex- tremist groups, particularly regional al-Qaeda affiliates such as the Nusra front.’’ There is no excuse for openly harboring terrorist and supporting groups that seek to harm our allies, and the excuse by Qatar that it is harboring these nefarious actors is because the U.S. asked them to no longer stands up. Qatar should not be continuing this reckless policy due to past mistakes from previous Republican and Democratic administra- tions. We must not allow for our air base to be used as a means to justify this sort of behavior, and a lack of a more appropriate response. Doha’s behavior must change the status quo, and if it does not, it risks losing our cooperation on the air base. The truth of the matter is that none