The Iran-Qatar-Turkey relationship is growing

Iran hosted Qatar’s foreign minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani this week. He met with his Tehran counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian as well as with Ali Shamkhani, a key Iranian official. This is important because Doha is trying to push a renewed Iran deal as part of a way for Qatar to become a broker between Iran and the US so that Qatar can use this leverage to enhance its role in the region.

This means the Turkey-Iran partnership is growing. It’s important to note that these two countries are key partners. They are also partners with Russia. Yet Turkey is supposed to be a member of NATO. It often threatens the defensive alliance, for instance trying to sabotage Finland and Sweden from joining. Turkey threatens NATO, and its members like Greece, while working with Iran.

As such, both Turkey and Qatar set themselves up as countries that are necessary because of the potential threat they can also impose. Countries that seek to be solely partners and allies of the West don’t have the threat card to play and they don’t have the extremists to “control” through brokerage.

The overall context here is that while the Turkey-Iran-Qatar relationship is important, the Turkey-Qatar axis is a key to the region because both countries back the Muslim Brotherhood, including groups like Hamas, which Iran also backs. Meanwhile, all these countries also do deals with Russia.