Viral Clip of Emir of Qatar Threatening to Cut Gas Supply to World Is Fake News
Minutes ago, the large news aggregator Citizen Free Press picked up a video clip purporting to show the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, threating to shut off gas supply to the world. He’s purported to have said, “If the bombing of Gaza doesn’t stop, we will stop gas supply of the world.”
Zero Hedge has confirmed that this is fake news. The Arabic in the below clip nowhere mentions natural gas or any other energy commodity, but instead merely decries Palestinian land being taken as the main “issue” in general remarks on the Israel-Gaza crisis.
The clip is fast approaching one million views after it hit Citizen Free Press [since deleted].
On Friday as the fake statement spread, natural gas prices only briefly spiked, and then dumped, remaining relatively unaffected…
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Qatar meeting with leaders over the Israel-Gaza crisis. Meanwhile, just this week, as Reuters reported:
Qatar on Wednesday secured its largest and longest European gas supply deal from Doha’s massive production expansion project, providing France with up to 3.5 million metric tons of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) a year for 27 years.
A Qatar-based English language news portal has also said the natural gas supply cut threat is fake news in the below…
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An account previously exposed to have links with the UAE has posted fake news on Qatari threats to cut gas supplies to the world if Israel continues to bombard Gaza.
Disinformation experts have exposed an account “masquerading” as a Qatari news source that has spread false reports on an alleged Qatari threat to cut its gas supplies to the world if Israel continues to bomb the besieged Gaza Strip.
The ‘Qatar Affairs’ account shared a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday, alleging “the State of Qatar threatened to stop gas supplies to the world if the bombing of Gaza does not stop.”
The remarks raised eyebrows among Qatar watchers on social media with many calling out the suspicious account for the unverified claims.
“Qattar_affairs is an account used to try and frame Qatar in a negative light. It masquerades as a legitimate news account and the majority of its content is designed to make it look like a standard Qatar news account, but like many disinfo ops, it will occasionally include obvious disinformation,” Marc Owen Jones, an associate professor of Middle East Studies at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar, told Doha News on Thursday.
