Majed al-Ansari, a Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman and advisor to the prime minister, praised Palestinian suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli civilian centers in social media and blog posts prior to taking up his post in 2022.

Al-Ansari is one of the Qatari government’s most public faces, hosting regular press briefings and giving interviews about the Gulf state, including to Israeli media. 

In May 2021, when Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched 130 rockets at Israel, Al-Ansari posted his support on X, saying that “Palestine emerges to remind this nation of its glory and the greatness of its message.” Al-Ansari added the hashtag #Tel_Aviv_is_burning to his post.

During the ensuing 11 days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank, and rioting by Israeli Arabs in mixed Jewish-Arab cities in Israel, Al-Ansari posted: “Jerusalem, the interior [of Israel], the West Bank, Gaza … rise with one voice against the occupier. This unity is what terrifies the enemy the most. Oh Allah, unite their word and guide their aim.” 

The posts were resurfaced by analyst Eitan Fischberger.

Al-Ansari also maintained a blog, which he linked to on his verified X account. 

In one blog post, Al-Ansari praised the Second Intifada — the 2000-2005 Palestinian terror campaign — against the “Zionist enemy” and its “martyrdom operations,” a euphemism for terrorist attacks. He credited the intifada with leading Israel to pull out of Gaza in 2005. 

In an overview of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis in recent decades, Al-Ansari argued that “the Israeli military losses were great, but the most important loss was Tel Aviv’s loss of a large part of its narrative and story of its victimhood in the West, following the spread of images of the brutal aggression throughout the world.” 

Al-Ansari encouraged “a celebration of the continued march toward victory in the conflict,” praising what he described as the Palestinians’ advancement from “resistance with stones and bare chests [to] the launching of 3,000 rockets in ten days toward the entity’s [Israel’s] cities.” 

In another blog post, in which Al-Ansari wrote about the Israeli Arab riots in May 2021, which included burning down Jewish-owned businesses and a synagogue, he falsely claimed that “the occupation forces were forced to withdraw” from Lod — a central Israeli city in which Ben Gurion Airport continued to operate normally and most neighborhoods continued to function peacefully. 

The blog and X posts were written when Al-Ansari was the head of the Qatar International Academy for Security Studies. The blog was deleted after Jewish Insider sent a request for comment about the matter to the Qatari Embassy, which the embassy did not respond to.

In earlier posts on an unverified Facebook account under Al-Ansari’s name, the Qatari spokesman repeatedly called President Donald Trump a racist.

In 2015, during Trump’s first presidential campaign, Al-Ansari wrote, “We call on the board of directors of Qatar Airways to cut ties with Trump and his racist empire.” Also that year, he lamented that the head of Qatar Airways “brags about his friendship with this racist.” 

The Pentagon’s chief spokesman said on Wednesday that the U.S. strikes against the Iranian nuclear program had set the program back by two years. His estimate appears to be the most specific information the Trump administration has shared on the extent of the damage caused by the strikes.

U.S. allies “share our sentiments about the degradation of Iran’s nuclear program and the fact we have degraded their program by one or two years … I think we’re thinking closer to two years,” Sean Parnell said at a press conference.

The administration has consistently claimed the strikes completely destroyed the nuclear program. During the briefing, Parnell said that he believed the combination of U.S. and Israeli strikes would be successful in deterring Tehran from continuing its nuclear program in the future. 

“We believe that sending bombers from Missouri, 37 hours on a mission, not a single shot fired on them, took a very strong psychological toll on the Iranian leadership,” Parnell said. “So, when you take the constellation of different things into consideration, we believe Iran’s nuclear capability has been severely degraded, perhaps even their ambition to build a bomb.”

Parnell’s remarks came hours after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told CBS News that the country’s nuclear facilities were “heavily and severely damaged.” Araghchi maintained that Iran’s enrichment equipment and knowledge base were not impacted, despite Israel assassinating several of the country’s senior nuclear scientists. 

Araghchi also said that Iran’s nuclear agency was still conducting damage assessments at the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites. This was confirmed by geospatial imagery analysis from the Institute for Science and International Security, which showed crews working to gain access to the underground sections of the facilities.