Qatar’s emir set for first White House meeting with Biden

The situation puts Qatar “back to where [it] wanted to be” as a “flexible, active, useful interlocutor for the United States”, said Tobias Borck, a research fellow for Middle East security studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). The Afghanistan withdrawal, which was an absolute disaster for most countries, gave Qatar the opportunity to really demonstrate its strength rather impressively, and that was noticed in the US and that was noticed elsewhere, too,” he told Al Jazeera, adding the situation resulted in a long-sought strategic dialogue between the countries in November.