Qatar’s Cognitive Warfare Mechanisms Stepped Up a Gear at The Doha Conference (December 06-07, 2025)

Executive Summary

The Doha Forum conference (December 6–7, 2025) served as a peak point in the intensification of Qatar’s cognitive warfare and soft power mechanisms, which are part of an ongoing strategy aimed at undermining Israel’s international legitimacy, strengthening Islamist and Jihadist elements, and solidifying Qatar’s status as an ‘indispensable’ mediator in the regional and international arena.

The analysis indicates that the forum was a well-planned cognitive operation, within which a unified narrative was presented placing exclusive responsibility on Israel for the instability in the Middle East, while systematically blurring the role of Iran and its proxies, and of Qatar’s direct involvement in financing and supporting terror organizations and Islamist networks.

Through a combination of leading media platforms (led by Al Jazeera), collaborations with international Western media bodies (the involvement of CNN in the conference for example), massive investments in academia and research institutes, and the recruitment of senior international figures, Qatar succeeded in granting moral and political legitimacy to an anti-Israeli and antisemitic narrative, which covers a spectrum ranging from the defamation of Israel’s right to self-defense to the echoing of overt murderous incitement.

One of Qatar’s central achievements at the forum was the international whitewashing of jihadist actors, chiefly the new Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa (Abu Mohammad al-Jolani), who was presented as a legitimate statesman while denying his past as a terrorist and as the leader of the Al-Qaeda organization in Syria.

This move integrates into a familiar Qatari model of ‘rebranding’ terror organizations – similar to the treatment of the Taliban – with the aim of transforming them into Doha-dependent political players.

The forum was characterized by a deliberate uniformity of thought, in which no real pluralism of opinion was presented, but rather different variations of the same narrative: presenting Islamist terror as “legitimate resistance”, framing Israeli defensive actions as war crimes, and calls for the imposition of sanctions and embargoes on Israel in the name of “human rights” and “international law.”

From a strategic perspective, the Doha Forum 2025 illustrates the Qatari ‘Arson and Firefighting’ model of operation: funding and empowering extremist elements that undermine regional stability, and subsequently presenting Qatar as the only entity capable of mediating, calming, and resolving crises.

Thus, Doha seeks to deepen Western dependence on it, ensure immunity from criticism and punishment, and continue operating as a state sponsor of terror – under a guise of diplomacy, human rights, and international prestige.

For years, and with greater intensity since October 7th, Qatar has operated a systematic cognitive warfare infrastructure, in the Middle East and in Western countries, aided by media outlets on its behalf (led by Al Jazeera, Qatar’s main arm for consciousness shaping), presence on social networks, cooperation with Western media platforms, aided by massive financial investments in Western countries, in international institutions under its control (such as the Doha Forum), all to fixate a false narrative placing the exclusive responsibility for the instability in the Middle East on the State of Israel.

The Qatari narrative attempts to paint Israel as the aggressor in Gaza, in Lebanon and in Syria, while Qatar’s media arm, Al Jazeera, incites millions of viewers in Arabic by depicting Israel as a rogue state while accusing it of being responsible, among other things, for genocide.

Worse yet, Qatar supports organizations such as the International Union of Muslim Scholars, which regularly disseminate murderous antisemitism, like the article recently published by a member of the Union, Abu Jerra Soltani, former leader of the Algerian Muslim Brotherhood movement “Movement of Society for Peace” (Hams).

In the recently published article, Soltani claimed, according to the MEMRI website, that the Jews are “enemies of liberty and world peace,” and that humanity has realized that the Jews constitute a danger and that the countdown to their end has already begun.

He ‘estimated’ that by 2033 the Jews will become history, after “the world will show them no mercy” and “exterminate every last one of them.”

This prophecy precedes the Iranian vision for Israel’s destruction by 7 years…

In this, one can see how Qatar promotes the broad spectrum of anti-Israeli and antisemitic propaganda, from systematic defamation of Israel and its right to defend itself against terror armies, to the dissemination of murderous incitement encouraging antisemitic genocide in the Nazi style.

It appears that in Qatar’s eyes, every hostile propaganda tool serves its strategic goal to weaken Israel and strengthen Islamist elements in the Middle East, whilst simultaneously presenting itself as a moderate and fair mediator serving as a bridge to all sides.

The Doha Forum as the realization of a destructive soft power strategy

In this context, the Doha Forum, which convened on December 06 and 07, 2025, was not intended to be a routine diplomatic conference for conflict resolution or promoting regional stability.

An in-depth analysis of the content, the list of speakers, the identity of the sponsors, and the messages that emerged from the fancy halls in Qatar, reveals a sophisticated and well-planned cognitive operation intended to re-engineer the security reality in the Middle East.

Under the laundered and cynical title “Justice in Action”, Qatar turned the forum into an international field court against the State of Israel, harnessing the strongest brands in Western media and figures with huge international recognition such as Bill Gates, one of the forum participants who shared a stage with an Al Jazeera correspondent and the Qatari Emir’s sister, to grant moral and political legitimacy to a narrative placing exclusive responsibility for the regional “escalation” on Israel.

The event illustrated the constant and dangerous Qatari strategy, which combines soft power with support for hard terror: providing active sponsorship, financial and logistical aid to terror organizations like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and radical regimes with one hand, and organizing glittering conferences preaching human rights and dialogue with the other.

The overarching goal is twofold: purifying Qatar’s name and acquiring immunity from criticism and diplomatic isolation of Israel in the international arena, while presenting it as the source of regional evil.

The forum served as a closed and sealed echo chamber for senior Qatari government officials and hostile international figures, who presented the Iranian jihadist aggression and Iranian terror proxies as legitimate resistance, while Israeli defensive actions were framed as systematic war crimes and as the sole cause of chaos in the Middle East.

For example, during the conference, former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed that “not a single bullet was fired in the last 45 years by our so-called proxies to advance our interests. They fought for their own interests, and Iran paid the price.”

This false presentation was intended to blur the Iranian strategy to take over the region through the establishment of terror armies, turning sovereign states such as Lebanon and Iraq into terror bases, and encircling Israel with a ring of fire intended for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Unlike international conferences where a variety of opinions are presented, the Doha Forum 2025 was characterized by a planned uniformity of thought, where there is no deviation from the anti-Israeli narrative but rather only different approaches to advancing Islamist and Jihadist narratives.

Qatar, one of the main funders of Hamas alongside Iran, which also supports the Muslim Brotherhood and supported jihad elements in Syria, and which encourages the establishment of a radical Islamist regime in Damascus, cynically presented itself as the only fair mediator, the ‘responsible adult’ capable of bringing calm, while it fans the flames through the funding and media platform it provides to the West’s enemies.

Qatar’s success in enforcing this narrative does not stem from its military power, but from its ability to buy influence in Western centers of power – in academia, media, and research institutes – and operate them as soldiers in the service of the Emir around the clock.

One of the main achievements of Qatar in the current forum was not measured by the content of the speeches alone, but by the identity of the sponsors who granted it a Western, liberal, and prestigious seal of approval.

The American CNN network served as an official co-sponsor for the event, a move that turned it from an outlet covering the forum into an active partner in whitewashing the narrative of the regime in Doha.

Within the framework of the forum, CNN did not settle for passive sponsorship. Senior journalists on its behalf participated in central panels and granted an air of respectability, seriousness, and reliability.

Recent reports point to the depth of Qatari penetration into the American media ecosystem, such as, for example, the report from December 9th that a former CNN producer is now operating as a “foreign agent” for the Qatar Foundation, and is operating openly to “promote and elevate” the regime within the US.

This phenomenon is not limited only to the specific case of the ex-producer, but reflects a wide-scale Qatari modus operandi of buying influence.

Qatar has invested billions of dollars in American universities and research institutes over the last decade, an investment bearing fruit in the form of a generation of opinion shapers and journalists who accept the Qatari narrative with understanding.

At the Doha Forum, this investment came to tangible expression: Criticism of human rights violations in Qatar, of the slavery-like conditions of foreign workers, or of Hamas financing disappeared as if it never existed.

Instead, parts of the Western media, under the auspices of CNN, served as a conduit for conveying Doha’s messages to the world.

The cooperation reached a cynical peak when panels on freedom of the press were held in a country that prohibits by law any “insult” – meaning, criticism of the royal family, imprisonment of poets, and holding discussions on women’s rights while in practice the regime systematically restricts them.

The forum also hosted the American far-right figure Tucker Carlson, who gives a platform and validation to antisemitic racists in his content, and calls on the Trump administration to replace the alliance with Israel with an alliance with Qatar.

The ‘Talibanization’ model of Syria: Transforming Ahmed Al-Sharaa into a statesman

One of the defining moments in the 2025 forum was the appearance of the new Syrian President, Ahmed Al-Sharaa (also known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani), formerly the leader of the jihadist organization Jabhat al-Nusra which later changed its name to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Al-Sharaa, who until recently was classified as an international terrorist and leader of the Al-Qaeda branch in Syria, was presented at the forum as a legitimate, pragmatic political figure, and as the de-facto new President of Syria.

Al-Sharaa’s appearance in Doha is not accidental but part of a strategic and planned Qatari move of rebranding radical jihadist elements, similar to the model Qatar operated with great success with the Taliban organization in Afghanistan a few years prior.

The goal: To turn terror organizations into legitimate state players dependent on Qatar as a conduit for international oxygen.

In an interview at the Doha Forum on December 6, 2025, Al-Sharaa addressed the claims directed at him:

“First, (regarding) the ruling that I was a terrorist, many of the rulings are political now in the world. The rulings on people that they are terrorists require proof, as certainly on a personal level, I never harmed a civilian. I fought on many fronts, for close to 20 years, and with honor. Quite the opposite, I would meet with dangers and endanger myself and everyone who was with me, in order not to endanger the civilians.

And regarding this last campaign (referring to the toppling of the Assad regime in December 2024) that you witnessed in the last year and the ideology (of it) went to other places, I believe it was full of mercy.

What you perceived at the time as ‘terror’ prepared the ground for an 11-day plan, including entry into major cities, like Aleppo, Homs, Damascus, Hama and Deir (Ezzor), Raqqa, Latakia, Tartus, Daraa and Suwayda, and this without harming a single civilian.

We entered a military campaign that could be described with the words destruction and killing, but not even one civilian was displaced from the cities and villages and towns. Is this an act of terror?”

For these words, Al-Sharaa received applause. Those sitting in the audience were blind to the Syrian President’s terrorist past and to acts of terror his regime performed against civilians during the first year since his rise.

The sentences we chose to emphasize above are either clear lies or a virtual reality, alternative to the facts that Al-Sharaa is trying to hide.

Denying his past as a terrorist and harming civilians is a distortion of reality through sophisticated rhetoric.

Al-Sharaa did not explicitly deny his past as a terrorist, but used bypassing claims when noting that “on a personal level” he never harmed a civilian – an interesting choice of words by Al-Sharaa.

From his perspective, harming civilians counts only if you are the one directly pulling the trigger…

Is belonging to a terror organization not enough to be considered a terrorist?

Between the years 2003-2011, Al-Sharaa (Al-Jolani) belonged to the Mujahideen battalions of the Al-Qaeda terror organization in Iraq, as part of the struggle against US forces that invaded the country, and swore allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (at the time the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq). Al-Qaeda were responsible for large-scale terror attacks that harmed thousands of civilians in the world, mainly in the USA and led by the September 11, 2001 attacks. Even earlier, in 1999, the US officially declared Al-Qaeda as a terror organization. In 2004 Al-Jolani was arrested by American forces and held at Camp Bucca until 2010 and was released only after Iraqi forces controlled the camp.

It is not surprising that Al-Jolani chose the words “on a personal level” since very little is known about his personal jihadist activity in Al-Qaeda, but there are unverified reports on his specialization in the field of explosive devices which connects to the suicide attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Is a leader of an organization that commits massacres against civilians not guilty to the same extent as the one pulling the trigger?

At the end of 2011, Al-Jolani established Jabhat al-Nusra (“The Support Front”) in Syria to fight in an organized manner against the Assad regime.

Under Al-Jolani’s leadership, Jabhat al-Nusra carried out many suicide attacks in Syria, mainly in Damascus, and in many of them innocent Syrian civilians were killed.

On December 11, 2012, the US State Department designated Jabhat al-Nusra as a foreign terror organization due to the killing of innocent civilians, as the organization took responsibility starting from 2011 for nearly 600 attacks, of which more than 40 were suicide attacks and improvised explosive devices in city centers, like Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Daraa, Homs, Idlib, and Deir Ezzor.

According to a report by the UN Human Rights Council on human rights violations in Syria between March 2011 and December 2020, a range of offenses committed against Syrian civilians are attributed to Jabhat al-Nusra and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, including armed attacks on civilian population centers, kidnapping and rape of civilians, and inhumane detention conditions including physical and mental torture.

Among the events attributed to Jabhat al-Nusra: in January 2013 a mass massacre was carried out against kidnapped civilians in Aleppo and their bodies were thrown into the Queiq River in the city.

In June 2013, the rebels in Syria and among them Jabhat al-Nusra personnel carried out a massacre of about 30 civilians in the town of Hatla, Deir Ezzor.

In December 2013, another massacre was attributed to the organization against Alawites, Christians, and Druze (men, women, and children) in the town of Adra.

In December 2013, the organization carried out a kidnapping of 12 nuns from a convent in the town of Maaloula in Syria.

And in August 2014, Jabhat al-Nusra personnel kidnapped 45 UN soldiers (Fijian citizens) of UNDOF (UN Disengagement Observer Force) in the Golan Heights.

After al-Sharaa’s rise to power in Syria, the security forces of his regime carried out massacre events in the Alawite minority areas (March 2025) and the Druze (July 2025).

Al-Sharaa arrived in Doha to receive international blessing and establish his rule in Damascus, and in return provided his Qatari hosts with the rhetorical goods they requested: A frontal and focused attack on Israel as the factor thwarting regional stability.

In his speech, Al-Sharaa read a carefully prepared text, perhaps in full coordination with the media consultants of the Qatari Foreign Ministry, which blamed Israel for exclusive responsibility for the “escalation” on the northern border and for the chaos in Syria.

The central claim in his speech was that Israeli actions, and not the years-long Iranian entrenchment or Global Jihad activity, are what dragged the region to the current situation.

This false narrative serves the Qatari interest precisely: Diverting the fire and international attention from the responsibility of terror organizations (supported by Doha, Ankara, and Tehran) toward a convenient scapegoat – the State of Israel.

Meanwhile, the new Syrian army has already managed to hold parades with anti-Israeli, jihadist, antisemitic, and pro-Hamas calls.

Al-Sharaa went as far as to claim in his speech that “Israel is trying to export its internal crises to the region” and that its attacks are a “violation of Arab sovereignty” and damage to Syria’s rehabilitation chances.

These words, sounding absurd coming from the mouth of a leader of an Islamist coalition that has already managed to massacre minorities in Syria, were received with applause.

During the conference, Qatari representatives also pushed for the removal of the IDF from the Gaza Strip, and ignored the Trump plan’s demand to disarm Hamas.

Beyond the specific speeches and colorful figures, the entire forum was planned as a mechanism of cognitive and diplomatic pressure on Israel through manipulative use of “human rights” and “international law” terminology.

The various speakers at the forum, in perfect coordination that seemed pre-ordered, repeated the mantra that “the absence of justice” for the Palestinians and “the occupation” are the root of all evil in the region, while giving a tailwind to Hamas demands and presenting Israel as a serial peace refuser.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, and Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur “on the occupied Palestinian territories,” exploited the stage in Doha to attack Israel harshly and call for the imposition of international sanctions and an embargo on it, and accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza.

Lolwah Al-Khater, the Qatari Minister of State for International Cooperation and a key figure in the emirate’s propaganda array, delivered a well-planned speech that focused on Israel’s “war of genocide”, and accused the world of “double standards” regarding Israel.

A comprehensive analysis of the Doha Forum 2025 reveals Qatar’s grandiose strategy: creating absolute international dependence, which guarantees it immunity from any punitive action.

Qatar operates in a circular mechanism of ‘Arson and Firefighting’: it funds and nurtures the most extreme elements that ignite the Middle East (Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Syrian regime) and then, when the crisis erupts, it gathers the world into the luxury halls in Doha and offers itself as the only ‘firefighter’ who has access to the ‘water tap’ and the terror leaders.

The forum was intended to fortify the concept among decision-makers in Washington, Paris, and London that there is no substitute for Qatar.

This is achieved by positioning it as a central axis without which no diplomatic solution can be advanced – whether vis-à-vis Hamas in Gaza in an attempt to release hostages, whether vis-à-vis Hezbollah in Lebanon, or in stabilizing the new regime in Syria – Qatar ensures that the US and Europe will continue to court it, sell it advanced weapons, and protect its regime, despite it being a terror-supporting state.