Appearing at a press conference with President Donald Trump after a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in Evian, France, Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani responded to a question from Nick Gilbertson of Breitbart News by saying he saw “huge opportunities” for investments in Iran after its peace deal with the United States has been signed.
“This is a very important deal,” Sheikh Tamim said. “There is still a lot of work to be done, but I think, you know, with this momentum – if we continue like that, Mr. President, I think we can achieve and do great things in the region. So I think it’s going to be very important for the region, and very important for Iran as well.”
Tamim noted that trade between the U.S. and Qatar has flourished to $1.2 trillion since Trump’s “historic visit to Doha last year.”
“We have a lot of great investments as well that we’re very proud of in the U.S., and also American companies investing, and others,” he said. “All in all, we’re very proud, and very happy about this relationship.”
The Qatari emir praised Trump’s leadership on the Iran deal and expressed enthusiasm for the economic possibilities that peace with Iran would create, although he insisted Qatar was not thinking along those lines when it helped to mediate discussions between the U.S. and Iran.
“Our interest, both of us, was to first of all to find a deal to stop this war. This is our main target, but looking at the economy and opportunity, I’m sure there are going to be huge opportunities,” he said.
“This is a very important momentum, to keep working like that, to reach a final deal,” he said. “After that, Iran will be, of course, open for any kind of investments, and I’m sure they’re going to be huge opportunities – but to be honest, you know, we never thought of it, you know. Our target, you know, is to try to find a deal.”
“Well, they’re going to need something, because we blew them up,” Trump interjected.
“I used to make the case that – like, a week ago I said it, now it’s different, we have an agreement – but if we left, we did a great job. If we just left, we did a great job, because it would take them 15, 20 years maybe to rebuild,” he said.
“And we were going to do a much bigger job, if the agreement wasn’t signed,” he added. “We would have taken it to a level – and if we did that, they would never, ever, I believe, be able to rebuild.”
Trump said during the press conference that America is not “investing any money in Iran,” dismissing rumors to the contrary as “ridiculous.”
“We have the right to go in someday if I want to do something, or if somebody wants to do something, but we are not investing any money. We have no obligation to invest any money in Iran,” he said.
Many of the rumors Trump referred to were sparked by Vice President JD Vance responding to a question about Iran’s potential access to a $300 billion “reconstruction fund” on Monday.
“Well, Ed, that’s the sort of thing they could have access to, funded by the Gulf Coast Coalition, so long as they honor their end of the obligation,” Vance said in response to a question from Ed O’Keefe of CBS News. The vice-president was likely referring to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), whose membership includes Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the other Gulf oil monarchies.
“I think that one of the things you’re going to see, Ed — and people have to be skeptical of this — is that the hard-liners in the Iranian system will overemphasize the benefits that Iran gets, while underemphasizing all the things that they have to concede, and all the things they have to provide, in order to get these benefits,” Vance added.
President Trump wrote a Truth Social post on Monday night insisting that “the story that the U.S. is paying Iran 300 million dollars is Fake News, put out by the Dumocrats.” He was presumably referring to stories that omitted Vance saying the reconstruction fund would be financed by the GCC nations, not the United States.