Since October 7, 2023, Qatar has been one of the few states relentlessly leading mediation efforts in an attempt to end Israel’s genocide on Gaza, mainly by leveraging its close ties with major relevant parties such as Hamas, Iran, and the US. On multiple occasions during the ongoing genocide, Qatar has faced many pressures from factions within the US in addition to Israeli efforts to undermine Qatar’s mediation efforts and to force Qatar to distance itself from Hamas. While these pressures may expose Qatar to political risks, the Qatari government remains committed to mediation as part of its diplomacy and international relations strategy for a variety of reasons.

Mediation was first integrated into Qatar’s diplomacy and foreign policy in the mid-1990s as the former Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani realized that Qatar needed to build more strategic ties and to expand its political and diplomatic sphere of influence to bolster its national security in the middle of a turbulent region. This strategic shift in foreign policy may have initially been motivated by national security concerns about attempts by regional actors to undermine the political legitimacy of the state and to interfere in its affairs. Eventually, however, Qatar’s mediation efforts became a fundamental and constant component of its foreign policy.

The foundations of this policy were laid down by maintaining close ties with neighbors, hosting a US military base, and developing tools of soft power through media such as Al-Jazeera, organizing major sports and cultural events, expanding economic investments overseas, and actively contributing to emergency relief efforts and programs worldwide. This web of intricate connections enabled Qatar to position itself as an honest mediator and broker in many complex conflicts in which other powers were unable to play an effective role resulting for example in the conclusion of the 2008 Doha Agreement that ended a political conflict in Lebanon, the 2011 Doha Peace Agreement in Darfur in which Qatar successfully brough the warring factions in Sudan to the peace talks table, the US-Taliban peace agreement in 2020, and others. Qatar also played an effective role in multiple other mediation efforts such as the repeated conflicts between Israel occupation and Hamas in Gaza, between the warring factions in Yemen, as well as in the border dispute between Eritrea and Djibouti, and the internal strife in Chad.

Qatar’s motivation for such a foreign policy based on mediation can be inferred from these examples as well as from its 2023 mediation efforts between the US and Iran which resulted in a prisoner swap as well as in releasing billions in frozen Iranian assets that both sides agreed to hold in Qatari banks. Not only did Qatar successfully lead the mediation and talks between the hostile parties, but it also established itself as a trustworthy mediator who could lead the talks to completion and guarantee the terms and conditions of the agreement after its completion, whether through its political capital and close ties with both parties, or through the trustworthiness of its financial institutions to manage the structured and conditional transfer of frozen assets to Iran.

Examples such as the US-Iran prisoner swap agreement or the US-Taliban peaceful agreement further reveal that Qatar has positioned itself as an indispensable and reliable player in the international arena with unique connections and ties that enable it to lead mediation between parties who are otherwise are unable or unwilling to sit at the same table to talk, including state and non-state actors, regional players and global powers. Such mediation efforts have not only bolstered Qatar’s global image and prestige, but also its position and role in the international system, which also reinforces the legitimacy of its government and its political influence.

Although Qatar’s initial motivations for developing its position as a mediator were to solidify its state legitimacy and to build political influence in foreign policy, whether by building cultural ties and engaging in humanitarian aid on a global scale, or by cultivating political and strategic ties with world nations, it has now evolved into a global actor that is actively involved in and committed to pursuing peaceful resolutions in regional and international conflicts, a role that the world needs today more than ever. At this point, Qatar is no longer concerned with facing or avoiding diplomatic and political pressures, but with pursuing peace and ending violent conflicts that threaten world peace and devastate communities.