Wadah Khanfar is the President of Al Sharq Forum. Formerly he was the Director-General of the Al Jazeera Network from 2004- 2011. He is famously known for leading Al Jazeera to become an influential voice in the Arab Spring of 2011. Later that year, Khanfar was named as one of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 global thinkers.

In June of 2017, a diplomatic crisis began when several Arab countries broke ties with the Qatari state over the allegations of it having ‘funded terrorist groups’ and its supposed ‘ties with Iran’. Wadah Khanfar, who led the Doha-based media giant Al Jazeera says that Qatar is being isolated because GCC countries wanted Qatar to join their ‘crusade’ against the forces that support democracy in the region. “The situation is a direct investment against the Arab spring” says Wadah Khanfar.

The Strait Talk’s host Ali Mustafa asked Khanfar, if there was a possibility of Turkey and Iran entering into an alliance, to which Khanfar stated, “A new dynamic might emerge, where Iran and Turkey have to come together to resolve the conflicts in the middle-east peacefully.”

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