The Vandenberg Coalition, founded by former Trump administration officials, made the recommendation today.
Conservative foreign policy experts are urging President Trump to move U.S. Central Command’s forward headquarters from Qatar, in response to the Gulf country’s alignment with Iran and Hamas.
The Vandenberg Coalition, founded by former Trump administration officials, made the recommendation today, in a new report that outlines how the president could build on the hawkish Middle East policies he advanced in his first term and reverse the Biden administration’s “failed policies.”
Carrie Filipetti, Vandenberg’s executive director and an official in the State Department during Trump’s first term, said that policy recommendations were crafted by a group of experts that included several former officials from Trump’s first administration who worked on Middle East issues.
“We really wanted to articulate a strategy that could be implemented by any administration that would understand how to recognize our resource limitations but also reestablish deterrence by broadening our partnerships, by expanding our relationship with Israel and other allies, and by making it clear what the consequences for negative activity are,” Filipetti told National Review.
The Vandenberg report urges a tough stance toward Iran and its proxies, including that the new administration reimpose its “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign and enforce oil sanctions that critics have accused the Biden administration of failing to enforce.
The Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility covers parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia, and it is headquartered in Tampa, Fla. The command’s forward headquarters, though, is located at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
During the Biden administration, the U.S. designated Qatar a major non-NATO ally and signed a ten-year extension of the basing agreement for Al Udeid.
While Qatar has been an intermediary between Hamas and the U.S. and Israel during negotiations surrounding the hostage-release deal, supporters of Israel in Congress question the Gulf emirate’s longstanding role as a host to top Hamas leaders and its close ties to Iran.
“With much better friends like the Saudis, Washington no longer needs to tolerate destabilizing Qatari behavior,” the Vandenberg report argues.
“Al Udeid is too close to Iran and too far from Asia for the U.S. military to deal effectively with the Iranian and Chinese threats,” the report states, explaining its proposal that the base be moved out of Qatar. “There are other possible bases in the region that are safer.”
The Vandenberg Coalition also called on the Trump administration to revoke Qatar’s major non-NATO ally designation.
“A lot of this is about how can we make it clear that we’re finally back with an administration where there are consequences for doing things that are against American interests,” Filipetti said. “That is not something that the region has heard for the last four years.”
The report also details steps that the administration could take to rein in antisemitism and anti-Israel bias at the U.N., including by exerting more pressure on the organization as it makes personnel decisions and drastically cutting funding for the U.N.’s peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon while also pushing reforms that give it more authority to counter Hezbollah’s violations of Security Council resolutions.