Qatari Prime Minister on Mediating U.S.-Iran Prisoner Deal

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, INTERNATIONAL HOST: Prime Minister, welcome back to the program.

AL THANI, QATARI PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much for having me.

AMANPOUR: Tell us about this amazing deal that you were instrumental in helping to seal. What was it or what was the moment that you knew it was going to be possible to reach a deal between Iran and the United States to free the prisoners?

AL THANI: Well, first of all I would like to congratulate the families of prisoners to have them back and seeing them. And I hope all are in good health. We always believe — we always have a faith and believe that we can help. We can facilitate, especially humanitarian situations. We’ve been through a lot of challenges throughout the negotiations. Honestly, none of the parties was easy in the negotiation, but we tried our best in order to create the trust between us and then — and create the trust between them in order to have this deal happening. It took us a month until we reached this agreement. But we have seen that the desire and determination of both parties to implement the agreement in good faith, and this something we commend both parties for doing.

AMANPOUR: I mean, goodish faith, they weren’t even together, right? They weren’t even in the same hotels. You had to relay back and forth.

AL THANI: Well, let’s — everything has its own challenges. But at the end of the day, results are what matters and what matters now that the prisoners are back with families.

AMANPOUR: As a human being, did you find it emotional when the — you know, the whole world saw on live television the Qatar Airways plane opened the door and down they came?

AL THANI: Well, we were so proud to see that Qatar helped in bringing those people back to their families, definitely. I mean, all of us on all levels were there, from his highness, myself, the entire guard (ph) and the people of Qatar, we are so proud that Qatar could make such a thing.

AMANPOUR: I mean, many people like to think that this could be the beginning of rapprochement between Iran and the United States. They’ve — the U.S. has ruled that out. Maybe Iran has as well. Nonetheless, do you think it’s the beginning of a building block? In order words, is there any thoughts that perhaps it could lead to a new nuclear deal?

AL THANI: Well, look, Christiane, I cannot claim that this will lead to a nuclear deal. But it’s going definitely to a better environment. We’ve been doing this mediating between countries between — mediating in different issues for decades now. And in our experience, we know that in complex situations, you need to unlock it by rebuilding the confidence between the parties. And I believe what happened yesterday, actually, was a great building block for rebuilding the confidence between the two countries. I hope both countries are believing this is — will lead to a better environment to go for an entire agreement on the nuclear issue and any other outstanding issue. At the end of the day, what we want for our region is stability.

AMANPOUR: Can I ask just you, you know, there’s been a lot of talk about, you know, the Iran, Saudi Arabia rapprochement through the auspices of China, then even bigger people have said, well, maybe Iran and maybe Saudi Arabia and Israel, maybe there’s a huge big Middle Eastern deal to be done. Do you see the possibility of that in the near future?

AL THANI: Well, definitely the Middle East and especially with us in the region went through the last couple of years — before that, we were going through challenges. Now, we are going in a better positive environment of rapprochement. We hear also, you know, about Israel. But from our perspective, as State of Qatar, we see that we don’t have a war with Israel as a region. The reason that we have the conflict with Israel is over the occupation of the Palestinian territories. And what we are asking for is the stated for the Palestinians, and that’s what basically been mentioned in that peace initiative that came out in 2001, and all Arab countries has adopted that. We believe to bring peace to the region, the starting point should be between the Israeli and the Palestinians. Normalization agreement happening between countries, it’s their sovereign decision at the end of the day. One has the right to question that as no one has the right to question our sovereign foreign policy decisions. But we think that, from our perspective, the Israeli issue is only the issue of the Palestinians.

AMANPOUR: And yet, it seems that that issue is off the boiling front burner. It’s just nobody is paying any attention to that. And I want to ask you many — even Americans I’ve talked to feel that there is a sort of sucking sound as the United States pulls out of the Middle East. Do you feel that? The U.S. is pulling back influence and responsibility?

AL THANI: Well, I think that with what we have seen in the past couple of years, we have seen more and more engagement with the U.S. We see their commitment to the defense of the Gulf Region and joint trainings are ongoing and we have a great military relationship with the U.S. We’ve been doing a lot of work together. And we did (ph) airbase hosting more than 10,000 U.S. U.S. men and women in uniforms. And we didn’t see any changes in that happening. We believe that, yes, the world is — I mean, they are busy with other things but —

AMANPOUR: Like China? There’s sort of a shift towards China.

AL THANI: But also, the Russian-Ukraine war is something big that’s happening to the world and I think the entire world. I won’t call it reprioritizing, but it’s taking more time, of course, from them than the Middle East.