HR McMaster condemned Qatar and Turkey for taking on a “new role” as the prime sponsors and scources of funding for extremist Islamist ideology that targets Western interest.
“Radical Islamist ideology is obviously a grave threat to all civilised people” Mr McMaster said.
The US national security adviser said this threat has been identified “myopically” in the past.
“We didn’t pay enough attention how it’s [radical Islamist ideology] is being advanced through charities, Madrassas and other social organisations.”
While Mr McMaster made reference to Saudi Arabia’s support for some of these organisations decades ago, he singled out Qatar and Turkey as main supporters at the present time. “[It] is now done more by Qatar, and by Turkey,” he said.
He went on to claim Turkey’s growing problems with the West were largely due to the rise of the Justice and Development Party in Ankara.
https://www.thenational.ae/world/the-americas/us-national-security-adviser-qatar-and-turkey-are-new-sponsors-of-radical-ideology-1.683989
13 December 2017: Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi said Tuesday that Qatar funds some terrorist organizations in the region, Emirati Erem News reported.
Speaking at a seminar on “Terrorism, Extremism and Regional Security in West Asia,” Alavi said, according to Erem News, that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Organization and Saudi Arabia’s Wahabbis are the roots of Islamist terrorism.
“One of the factors leading to the emergence of terrorism is insulting and despising religious minorities in some countries,” Alavi stated.
Speaking about the Islamic State (IS), Alavi said that (IS) does not have sovereignty anymore, but still exists. “They lost the lands they had control on, but did not lose their arms,” Alavi added.
“The (IS) is looking for ‘landing in’ Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia to restore the idea of establishing an Islamic Caliphate,” Alavi pointed out.
In November, the CIA released documents found after killing founder and head of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, claiming past connections between Al-Qaeda leaders and Iran.
“Irani people are Twelver Shia. The way they view Sunni Muslims is clear and known. Their ambition to control the Islamic world is known as well. However, they would cooperate with the strictest Salafists and Wahhabis (Islamic branches that oppose Shia), if they thought it would serve their interests even if temporarily, and then renounce them in the proper time,” said one of the documents dated 1428 A.H. (2008) and written by an anonymous writer, apparently an Al-Qaeda senior operative.
https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/36668/Alavi-announces-that-Qatar-supports-terrorism-Erem-News
HR McMaster:
While stressing that not all the Muslim Brotherhood branches were alike, he urged to build opposition groups that respect individual freedoms, and in order to avoid another “Morsi model” in reference to former Egyptian president overthrown in 2013. Gen McMaster said that the Brotherhood operated clandestinely and monopolised opposition after the street upheavals and fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
The other model that Gen McMaster identified with the Brotherhood is Turkey’s AKP. “By operating through civil society, they consolidate power through one party, sadly it is a problem contributing to Turkey’s drift from the West” he said.
On Iran, Gen McMaster described the government in Tehran as a “rogue regime also and a revisionist regional power” and said “We need to counter destabilising activity especially in Syria” as well as blocking support for its proxies and its paths to nuclear weapons. He also advocated looking for sanctions outside the nuclear deal, and abandoning the Barack Obama approach that made the deal itself a focal point of the strategy toward Iran.