JEDDAH: As international pressure on Iran increases, its ally, Qatar, finds itself in a precarious situation. Should the situation escalate and Washington decides to take military action, there is a real risk that Doha could share sensitive US military intelligence with Tehran, experts warn.
Doha has a history of running with the hare while hunting with the hound. Since 2017, however, when Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain — the anti-terror quartet (ATQ) — imposed a boycott on the country over its support of terrorist organizations, Qatar has shown its true colors and its previously secret alignment with Turkey and Iran has been exposed.
Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani, who was Qatar’s prime minister from April 2007 until June 2013 and foreign minister from January 1992 to June 2013, recently suggested, in a message posted on Twitter, that his country does not support the escalation of action against Iran.
On Wednesday night, state-funded Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera cited an anonymous official as saying that Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani recently traveled to Tehran to meet his Iranian counterpart, Mohammed Javad Zarif. Flight-tracking website FlightRadar24.com reportedly tracked a Qatari government plane that landed in Tehran at 7 p.m. on Saturday and set off on the return flight to Doha at 10:30 p.m. the same day. Other media outlets suggested that the Doha official who visited Iran was in fact Sheikh Tamim, Qatar’s ruler.
Global News 
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