President , well now they better really worry about it. American history tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. Six arab countries including saudi arabia and egypt have cut ties to the nation of qatar. A house subcommittee held a hearing on the issue earlier this week. Its two hours, 20 minutes. Subcommittee will come to order after recognizing myself for ourow statements, i will then recognize other members seeking recognition for one minutet. You will then hear from witnesses and without objection, witnesses your prepared statements will be made a part of the record and members will have five days to insert statements and questions for the record subject to the length limitation in the rules. We have many members of our subcommittee who are also on the Judiciary Committee including Ranking Member doich. You might see a lot of members moving back and forth, and we appreciate the time they can spare coming here. Last month this subcommittee convened a hearing on the challenges and opportunities for the United States, saudi arabia bilateral relationship. Today we focus on the u. S. qatar relationship and the relationship with its neighbors. Catherine boyar, a former senior level official at the Treasury Department state earlier this month quote, saudi arabia and the uae, have sought for years to kind of galvanize qatars actions that were operating and continue to operate in qatar. Qatar has been known to be a per missive environment for Terror Financing, supporting terrorist organizations such as hamas as well as other extremist groups operating in syria. In 2014 the former director of the cia, david cohen, called out cutter publicly along with the kuwaitys because according to him, quote, the private engagement with this countries did not achieve what we were trying to achieve, end quote. Nafgt qatar has infamously housed leaders and sanctioned by the u. S. Treasury state department and has filed to prosecute them. At least one high ranking qatary official provided support to the mastermind of the 2011 attacks to our country. And then of course there is culeaf mohamed is an u. S. , eu in 2008 he was tried and convicted for his terrorist activity and arrested later that year by cutter only boo tee released by the cutteries six months later and then openingly financed. Can anyone guess what culeaf mohamed has been up to these days . More recently hes been alleged it be financing and supporting terror in both iraq and syria with no response from the qatary government. While the qatarys Government Support with the support and even the mohamed brothers regime has received support. Many individuals and charities in qatar have been known to raise large sums of money for al qaeda, hamas, and even isis. In qatar there are three buckets. Terror financing by the government, Terror Financing done in qatar done by their own citizens that the government may not know about, and Terror Financing in qatar that the government knows about but does nothing to stop it. According to the 2015 country reports on terrorism the state department stated, quote, entities and individuals in qatar continue to serve in support of terrorist groups. There is no excuse for openly harboring terrorist and supporting groups that seek to harm our allies. And the excuse by qatar that it is harboring these nuinarious actors is because the u. S. Asked them to no longer stands up. Qatar should not be continuing this reckless policy due to past mistakes from previous republican and democratic administrations. We must not allow our air base it be used as a means to justify this sort of behavior and a lack of a more appropriate response. Must change the status quo, and if it does not it risks losing our cooperation on the air base. The truth of the matter is none of the gulf countries none of the gulf countries are without their issues. All of the nations have been involved in funding different groups at some point that we would not approve of. But it seems like saudi arabia and the uae are making progress as a faster rate while qatar is making some progress but still lagging farther behind. In october 2016, daniel glazer, then assistant secretary for terrorist financing in the office for terrorism and Financial Intelligence told a washington, d. C. Research institute that over the past decade qatar has made less progress in countering Terrorism Financing then had saudi arabia, end quote. We must analyze the totality of our relationship with these gulf countries. While qatar only helps to facilitate our operations at our air base, the uae, for example, has spent 12 years with us fighting alongside in afghanistan and has been involved in Counter Terrorism operations with the u. S. In libya. So moving forward one outcome i hopes come out of this dispute is for the gulf countries to work closely with our Treasury Departments Action Task Force to root out and disrupt Terror Financing screens. This may be the time and opportunity for us to take a long hard look for how and for some if we can effect 11 address and stop Terror Financing in the region and ultimately defeat the extremism that threatens the security of us all. And with that i turn to Ranking Member doich for his statement. Thank you, chairman. Thank you for our witnesses for being back with the committee. I thank the chairman to explore our relationship with qatar. The ongoing diplomatic rift between qatar and its gulf neighbors is not good to parties to the conflict, not good for the region, and its not good for american interest. It is a distraction from todays most pressing challenges. Irans destabilizing activities, the conflict in syria, and the spread of terrorism. For most americans who expect conflicts in the middle east to fall along sectarian lines or competing hedgemans, it is kwerning kwer kwerning in many cases the United States see as deeply problematic. This feud like others in the region is a nuanced and deeply complex matter. And our relationship with qatar is no less complex. The tinily and wealthy nation employs a qatar has served as a financial and political lifeline for hamas devastating rule. It helped legitimize hamas rule in 2012. Qatar has also supported other dangerous groups in the renen including setting advanced weaponry and financing has giv voice to clerics calling for attacks against americans and israelis. These realities are troubling. But qatar is also a close partner in our fight against terrorism in the region. Doha hosts and helps fund the Largest Military facility in the middle east, essentially our Forward Operating base for u. S. Central command. It is from that base that we supported the wars in iraq and afghanistan and today flying strikes against isis. Qatar served as regional mediator, oftentimes to the benefit of the United States. Qatar has helped broker cease fires between hamas and israel during intense fighting. Qatar helped secure the release of an american hostage held for nearly two years by the quooid news ra front in syria just days after the tragic beheading much james foley. Qatar has provided the u. S. With valuable and actionable intelligence on the financing streams for i. C. E. And begun taking steps to hold qatar accountable for Terror Financing. While theyve begun prosecuting qataris, theyve done so in secret, hardly an effective deterrent. It is unclear whether the outcomes led to any jail time or penalty. I was pleased to see signing of a new memorandum of understanding on Terror Financing. We dont know how it will be implemented and wait to see the results. Madam chairman, it is important 0 note also that saudi arabia, uae egypt and other nations now isolating qatar face challenges, as well. Two weeks ago our subcommittee held a similar hearing on youre relationship with saudi arabia in which we explored or Strategic Partnership as well as our deep concern over saudi arabias slow progress on human rights and continued exporting of fundamentalist ideology. Todays hearing should not be determining who is right but had that this fighting among partners does not advance americas interests. We should be pushing for unity among allies to fight common threats and pushing all partners in the region to cut off funding to terror groups and urge every leader to curtail hate speech and improve the records on human rights including treating women as equal members of society. I hope today we can assess our relationship with qatar thoughtfully. I hope our witnesses can can inform our path forward and i hope that we can review the major demands made on qatar to reduce relations are iran, shut down the Turkish Military base, severe all ties to terror organizations and shut down al jazeera to understand the motivations behind these demands and in an effort to see how a resolution might actually come. I am i trust that our Witnesses Today will lead us in an interesting and worthwhile conversation and i appreciate again them being here and yield back the balance of my time. Mr. Deutsch, thank you. Now we will turn to members for any opening remarks they might have. Starting with mr. Cook of california. Thank you, madam chairman. This is going to be a very interesting hearing. Its almost similar to the one we had with turkey. Friend or foe, and obviously has has already been discussed, some of the issues are going to come up, the relationship with hamas, taliban, financing and Everything Else, but now theres a new wrinkle. And that is the world cup. And the north korean workers that are going to be paid for by that government there with the money going back to north korea that is probably going to be used to finance more Missile Research and i dont think i have to tell the panel or anybody here that this is an even more troubling scenario than some of the other were talking about a large number of North Koreans including the north korean military. Theyre going to be working on that. And i hope that our panel will also discuss that as well as the other issues that were were just raised. Mr. Suecy of new york. Mr. Swau zi. Im so sorry. Im used to that for a long time now. Madam chair and Ranking Member, thank you so much for holding this hearing. Its very timely. Its difficult for many of us to untangle all the complicated relationships that exist in this region. We dont have the background that the witnesses do. Thats why were appreciative of them being heard today. Between the religious disputes and family relationships and historic disputes and peoples economic interests, its difficult to untangle who the different parties are. No one in the region has clean hands. We need to figure out how to promote our agenda in america and throughout the west which is that we have to start hard against people hop use propaganda and hate speech and warfare tore promote extremism and violence. Im excited to be here today and listen to what the witnesses have to say. Thank you the chair now recognizes mrs. Zelden for five minutes. One minute. Sorry ive just taken over the chair. Thank you. It, im very much looking forward to todays hearing listening to our witnesses and being able to be ask questions and getting feed back. A lot of great thoughts are already shared. I especially like the Ranking Members opening testimony. He touchdown on so much of what i too care deeply about. Recently i was in qatar and i found them to be very welcoming. They were going as far out of their way as possible to make progress in our relationship. We visited the military base that was there and our Service Members were well taken care of in a good strategic location and at the same time, im greatly concerned by the welcoming atmosphere that exists for hamas and i just want to better understand the future of this relationship and the reasons why the reality exists as it does right now in 2017. So thank you again for doing this hearing. I look forward to the testimony. Thank you. Chair now recognizes mr. Lew for one minute. Thank you for holding this hearing. There have been a series of allegations between qatar and the countries theyre imposing a blockade. Its resulted in some cruel consequences from what i read, have you families now being separated based on National Origin. And that to me is highly troubling. I also see a Trump Administration that is sending very mixed signals. At the same time, the secretary of state is saying deescalate, do not blockade. You have the president doing the opposite claiming credit for this blockade. And then you have also the United States selling 12 billion worth of fighter jets to qatar. Would love to see the panel clarify that and tell us not only what our policy towards qatar should be but what it actually is right now. I yield back. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from california, mr. Issa, for one moment. Thank you, madam chair. It seems like only yesterday that a president said youre either with us or against us. And the world said, oh, its too simple. But i think as we evaluate qatar and the other gulf states, we have to ask that basic question, is qatar with us, are they moving toward being more with us . Are they cooperating . Are they more cooperating . Are they moving toward iran, are they moving away from the u. S. S . These are questions i believe were going to be asking today that im hoping to hear throughout the day because i believe that although youre either with us or against us, there are shades of gray in all of our allies in the region. Its clear that turkey has been moving away from us since 2003. It is clear that qatar has not been the best of actors when it comes to taking away funding from those who support terrorism and its clear if they aring with us, we needed to have that demonstrated just as we asked saudi arabia the uae to demonstrate on a regular basis. The gentleman yields back. The chair recognizes the gentleman from new york, mr. Meeks, for one year. I want to join with the statement of mr. Lew. I think weve got to talk about the issue of fairness and we need to make sure i think that when you talk about qatar and the other countries in the region i dont think the United States should be picking and choosing. We need them all and need to figure out how we work collective together. Qatar has been clear its clear theyve done things that have been very good for the United States with our military base, trying to make sure that working with us in regards to the war on terror. I think what needs to happen here especially if we need to talk about qatar, we need to bring the individuals from both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration because theres dialogue and conversation that we can have with them to talk about the region and the people theyve asked, qatar being one, to do certain things on behalf of the United States and if that is the case then those individuals should not be held responsible if theyre working cooperatively with us. I look forward to hearing the testimony from the witnesses and need to make sure we have a level Playing Field here. Thank you, mr. Meeks, for your Opening Statement. Well now turn to our witnesses. I would like to welcome back dr. Jonathan schanzer the Senior Vice President of research for the foundation for defense of democracies. He served at the department of the treasury and prior to that worked as a Research Fellow at the Washington Institute for near east policy. Welcome back. Id also like to welcome back dr. Matthew levitt who the directs the Stein Program on counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for near east policy. Previously, dr. Levity served as the Deputy Assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the u. S. Department of the treasury. Before that, as fbi counterterrorism analyst. We are glad to have you back with us today, dr. Levity. Finally, i would like to welcome elan goldenburg, a senior fellowen an director of the middle east Security Program at the center for a new american security. Prior to cnas, mr. Goldenburg served as a chief of staff to the special envoy for israeli, palestinian negotiations at the u. S. Department of state. From 2012 to 2013, mr. Goldenburg served as a senior professional staff member on the Senate ForeignRelations Committee covering middle east issues. In that capacity, he acted as one of the lead crafters of the syria transition support act which provided additional authorities to arm the Syrian Opposition. The bill passed the Senate ForeignRelations Committee in may of 2013. I thank you for being here with us today. Dr. Schanzer, well begin with you for your Opening Statement. Madam chairman and members of the subcommittee, on behalf of the foundation for defense of democracies thank you for the op