WASHINGTON — A senior official with the Qatari government is speaking out in a Breitbart News exclusive interview, encouraging President Donald Trump to continue the push for peace in the Middle East just ahead of Trump’s Monday evening meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Dr. Majed bin Mohammed al-Ansari, the spokesperson for Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a senior adviser to Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim bin Jabr Al Thani, spoke to Breitbart News by phone exclusively on Monday morning, saying that Trump has put the Middle East on a pathway to peace and seeing the ceasefire in Gaza through to a lasting peace is critical to expanding his vision in the region.
Al-Ansari told Breitbart News that Trump’s appointment of Steve Witkoff to oversee the negotiations in the aftermath of his election victory during the transition and since the inauguration has been critical to securing the first phase of the deal that former President Joe Biden’s administration was unable to lock down on his own. Al-Ansari said that when Trump said during the transition that a deal must be reached and the hostages released before he took office, that energized both sides towards reaching the cease-fire in Gaza.
“We’ve gone through countless mediations throughout the years, between hostage exchanges, de-escalations, ending war,” Al-Ansari said. “We know the context very well, and we know how difficult the context is. To give you some color over the last couple of months, we’ve been working since the fall of the first cease-fire in 2023 under the concept that we need a sustainable pause which would allow us to work toward de-escalation in the region as a whole. Therefore, we built up this document with the help of Egypt and the United States that is very detailed, addresses all the concerns from both sides, has trouble-shooting mechanisms for anything that might happen, addresses everything that might end up in disagreement from both sides. But we have been in Iraq since May, when we were unable to convince both sides to come to the table and come to an agreement. There was a lot of movement toward that moment, but when President Trump made the statement and took the decision when he was president-elect during the transition that this needs to end before I get into the White House, the real momentum began. When he sent Steve Witkoff to the region, Witkoff started working in close coordination with the transition team and with President Trump and he got the deal across the line and got both sides to agree. Then from the moment the deal was announced he has continued working to make sure the implementation has been successful. So we do believe this thing never would have been there if it was not for President Trump’s statement and President Trump’s assertiveness, and we are counting on that for the continuation of implementation and going through the next phases.”
Technically speaking, Israel was supposed to send their delegation to Doha in Qatar to begin talks around the second phase of the deal right now, but that has been put on hold as Netanyahu meets with Trump here in Washington on Monday evening.
“We’re in day 16 now, and phase one ends at day 42,” Al-Ansari told Breitbart News. “The 16th day was supposed to be the day when the Israeli delegation comes to Doha and we start the negotiations of phase two. However, they have not sent the delegation yet, but we are in contact with both sides to make sure they remain committed to that. From what I understand, Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to meet with President Trump first and have a discussion with him and then send the delegation team. We are counting on President Trump and the administration to give the clear message that they are behind the negotiation process and they are behind the phase two and that they will support this process throughout the peacemaking.”
Al-Ansari, the top spokesperson for the Qatari government, which has overseen the peace talks in Gaza, said the Qataris hope Trump tells Netanyahu on Monday evening to follow through on his commitment and send his negotiating team to Doha immediately upon his return to Israel from Washington.
“I can tell you what we hope comes out of this meeting, which is that President Trump will convey to Prime Minister Netanyahu how he believes in the mediation process, he believes in bringing the hostages back home, and he believes that the negotiations should go forward,” Al-Ansari said. “We hope that upon returning to Israel that Prime Minister Netanyahu will immediately dispatch his negotiation team to Doha to begin the phase 2 talks with Steve Witkoff and the negotiations continue. We know that President Trump believes in the process and it is through the help of President Trump that so many hostages—most of the hostages now—are back with their families and we hope that we can bring the rest of the hostages back home and we hope we can help the people of Gaza recognize a day of peace and hope. This is about hope for our children, and our children’s children, all across the region. We cannot afford for this deal to fail—that would open the floodgates to chaos across the region. We have seen the ramifications across the region in terms of security from this war. So we are counting on President Trump and we know he will encourage Prime Minister Netanyahu to continue with the peace and to go forward with creating a lasting peace that President Trump will have brought to the region.”
Assuming the ceasefire in Gaza holds, Al-Ansari said that Qatar believes there is a path—which Trump pursued in his first term via the Abraham Accords and negotiating the end of the war in Afghanistan, and has made clear he intends to seek again and even more profoundly in his second term—to broader peace agreements throughout the Middle East. Qatar’s Prime Minister was just at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and spoke about the opportunities that exist with Trump back in the White House. Al-Ansari said Qatar sees a pathway for the “Middle East to be great again” and views Trump as a critical partner in making that happen.
“The Prime Minister was speaking in Davos a couple of weeks ago and he said we believe in President Trump’s call for peace, we believe he is a dealmaker, and we believe he has successes in the past,” Al-Ansari said. “We know him. We know what kind of a dealmaker he is. It was because of our mediation that we were able to end the longest war in U.S. history and it was because of the determination of President Trump to end that war. We believe in his ability to do that. What the Prime Minister said was President Trump has promised to Make America Great Again and we want the Middle East to be great again and we can do that by working together with President Trump and his administration.”
Qatar’s Emir, Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago back in September 2024, before Trump’s return to the White House.
Asked about this meeting and the importance it had in setting the stage for what’s happening now, Al-Ansari said the Emir “has always enjoyed a very close relationship with President Trump spanning throughout the years even before President Trump was in the office in his first term, and we have had a lot of good rapport with President Trump on a lot of issues like Afghanistan and other regional issues.”
“Just like President Trump, His Highness is a man of his word and he is a dealmaker and he believes in being pragmatic and getting things done and this why he found a great partner in President Trump working together with him,” Al-Ansari said. “In that meeting at Mar-a-Lago, they discussed everything from President Trump’s views for the region, how he views peace, and His Highness told President Trump that Qatar is on your side and will be working with you to make sure you implement your view of peace and prosperity in our region by creating a Middle East that is a beacon of prosperity and a model for the rest of the world. Qatar is a small, prosperous, forward-leaning country and it can be a model for the region. This is why we are working very closely with the administration right now. We are having daily contact with people from the administration. The Prime Minister just had his first call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Steve Witkoff is in daily contact with us coming in and out of Doha and we are working with the whole administration to make sure that we realize President Trump’s view for international peace and security.”
Al-Ansari responded harshly when asked by Breitbart News about recent comments in a television interview that Israeli ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter made about Qatar. Leiter had criticized Qatar for funding it provides to Gaza, and said of Qatar, “You can’t continue to play this duplicitous game of funding the pyromaniacs and funding the firefighters at the same time.” In response, Al-Ansari ripped that argument saying that Qatar are not the arsonists but the firefighters since the Qataris are helping facilitate the peace talks.
“Let me tell you first of all if we spent a dime of effort on every single individual who tried to scapegoat using Qatar or tried to use Qatar as a political punching bag we wouldn’t have any time to do any of our mediation work,” Al-Ansari said. “We are working on 10 different mediations in 10 different contexts as we are speaking right now including in the region and beyond—you just have seen the hostage releases we have helped facilitate. What I have to say about what the ambassador from Israel said, you know the ambassador said we should not be allowed to fund the firefighters and those who start the fires but let me tell you we are the firefighters. We have been the firefighters for so much time now and then we are working on extinguishing fires lit by people with megalomaniacs and narcissists and people with larger than life egos who just want to realize their personal ambitions even if it meant costing lives of thousands of innocent civilians. The trauma we saw on the seventh of October and the ensuing war we have seen over there cannot be legitimized under the political ambition of any particular individual. If the ambassador thinks by saying this he can deter Qatar from being the firefighter in the region and can deter our leadership from taking on the very costly responsibility of bringing peace to our region, he is sadly mistaken. We will continue doing this. We are used to such rhetoric in the past and it will not stop us from doing what we know how to do and what we have been successful in. Let me ask the ambassador: How, through the war efforts or anything else, was he able to bring hostages back to their families? I have certainly been in contact with some of the hostage families on the day they have seen their loved ones back, the day a mother hugs her child coming back from being a hostage in Gaza—she sent me a text message thanking Qatar for its role. So I would ask the ambassador to go and talk to the hostage families and go and listen to the hostage families which have been neglected by some officials for a long time. Ask them what they think of the role of Qatar in these negotiations. We have been putting sweat and blood into this mediation. I can tell you that the team that has been working on this negotiation has been working 24/7 for more than 400 days now without a day off. They have been—their health, their attitude—everything has been affected by spending every minute so they can save one individual, bring one hostage back to their families. If you look at the pictures of the families as they hug their loves ones, if you look at the children as they look to the sky, the fact they can now sleep at night without tying something to their leg to identify themselves so if they die and they just find body parts they know who they are, that is what we’ve been working towards and that is what we will be continuing working on.”
Regarding funding in Gaza, Al-Ansari pointed to a recent Time Magazine interview where Netanyahu himself discussed Qatar’s funding there and explained how the Israeli government is supportive of that. Al-Ansari said Israel not only supports the funding Qatar provides to Gaza but has asked to increase it and helps facilitate it as well.
“When it comes to funding, I would point you to what Prime Minister Netanyahu himself has said in a recent Time Magazine interview,” Al-Ansari said. “He clearly stated that the funding was not by Qatar to Hamas—it was requested by the Israeli government and the reason was they wanted, the Israeli government, for there to be a civilian administration that was capable of sustaining the lives of people in Gaza and they have hope of bringing more peace and security there. It is with the Israeli administration that has facilitated the aid that Qatar has sent and that has facilitated the work of the reconstruction committee in Gaza. It is through them that this aid got to Gaza. So I’d ask the ambassador to go back to his Prime Minister and ask him why he wanted that aid to go in and why his administration has asked Qatar so many times to increase its funding to Gaza.”
But again, as soon as this broader peace is brokered in Gaza, Qatar views itself as what Al-Ansari called a “hub for peacemaking” in the Middle East, especially after Trump’s return to the White House in Washington. Al-Ansari said that the goal is not just a lasting peace in Gaza, but broader deals across the region like what the world saw with the Abraham Accords during Trump’s first term and other bigger peace deals.
“We certainly are working towards that and believe we have always been a useful partner with the United States in creating peace in the region,” Al-Ansari said. “We’ve been working on Afghanistan and Iran, we’re coordinating over Syria and what’s happening there and what’s happening in Gaza. We’re talking about every conflict all over the world today with our partners in the U.S. and our partners in Europe. Therefore, yes, we see ourselves as a hub for peacemaking in the region. We have the agility for it. We have the flexibility for it. We have the expertise. We have the people who have been working on it. And we have all the testimony of our good partners in the U.S. over what can be done when Qatar gets into mediation. We believe with this administration, an administration that believes in action and believes in doing and believes not in mid-way political language but in finalizing deals and getting things across the finish line, we believe with them we can cut so many offers than we have in the past and then move forward with a peaceful region. It is through the partnership we have seen with the United States since the Bush administration when we began working on peace between Israel and the Palestinians we believe we have a window of opportunity right now that should not be left without utilizing. It is a window of opportunity that can move us from the most terrible act in recent history in Israel to the most peaceful path that Israelis and Palestinians can see for their future. We believe that if we can get that across the line, if anyone can do it, it’s President Trump.”