Former Israeli prime minister says Qatar funded Iran’s IRGC

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on July 27 that he will “declare Qatar an enemy state” if re-elected to lead the government. Bennett, who is running in the October 2026 Knesset election as the leader of the “Together” alliance, maintained that Qatar is “the main sponsor of Islamist terrorism” and that when he was prime minister, he “received intelligence that Qatar also funded Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards [IRGC].” Bennett believes that current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “absolutely” seen the same intelligence. The former prime minister reiterated his threat to declare Qatar an enemy state on July 29.

There is no publicly available information to substantiate Bennett’s statements further. However, the possibility that Qatar has helped finance the IRGC is not a new question.

During a visit to the White House in June 2021, then-Israeli President Reuven Rivlin reportedly shared intelligence with then-President Joe Biden about “recent funding” that Doha had provided to the IRGC. The US State Department opened an inquiry into the allegation shortly after Rivlin departed, but the inquiry’s outcome has not been publicly reported.

Additional events have drawn scrutiny on the relationship between Iran and Qatar, and Qatar’s possible funding of the IRGC. Iran helped Qatar weather the blockade that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt imposed on it in June 2017 over accusations of Qatar supporting terrorism and its close ties with Iran. Weeks before the blockade, Qatar had paid approximately $1 billion to free 26 of its citizens held hostage by Iran-backed Iraqi militants, and part of the ransom allegedly went to the IRGC.

As the blockade took effect, Iran began sending loads of food to Qatar, which had relied on its land border with Saudi Arabia for approximately 40 percent of its food imports. The Tehran regime also allowed Qatar to use Iranian airspace and shipping lanes, and Doha reportedly paid Iran upwards of $130 million per year in overflight fees.

That money flowed into Iran’s coffers as the first Trump administration attempted to starve the regime of funds through its maximum pressure campaign. Qatar publicly opposed the US campaign, arguing that “sanctions are not the way forward to solve the problem.”

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt lifted their blockade on Qatar in 2021 and, beyond evidence of Qatar financing Hamas, an Iranian proxy, subsequent reports about financial support for the IRGC are scant. However, Qatar has since invited the IRGC twice to showcase its arsenal at the biennial Doha International Maritime Defense Exhibition.

Natalie Ecanow is a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies focusing on the Gulf region.