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While most people of good will celebrate the warming of relations between Israel and the Sunni Muslim nations of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, one tiny, gas-rich, Sunni nation should have all of us in the West concerned: Qatar.
Last month, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Arabian Gulf Affairs, Timothy Lenderking, stated, “We are going to go ahead with designating Qatar a major non-NATO ally.”
Being a “major non-NATO” ally means the United States provides a foreign partner certain benefits in the areas of defense, trade and security cooperation. It does not entail any foreign security commitments to that nation.
This also came with the announcement that there will be a $26 billion increase in U.S.-Qatari military cooperation, including “Foreign Military Sales” of that same amount, to help build up the Qatar Armed Forces. Qatar is also interested in purchasing our highly refined F-35s, the most sophisticated stealth fighter aircraft America has produced.
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