Qatar marks 50 years of bilateral relations with the United States since the establishment of diplomatic ties on March 19, 1971.
The United States President Joe Biden has nominated Timmy T Davis as the new US envoy to Qatar, in a statement released by the White House.
The nominee is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the ranking of counsellor, who had recently served as the executive assistant to the Secretary of State.
A native of Virginia, Davis speaks both Arabic and Spanish.
Davis has also served as the US Consul General for Basrah in southern Iraq, where the US shut down its consulate and evacuated its diplomats from that point upon increasing “threats and rocket fire from Iran and Iran-backed fighters,” according to Al-Jazeera.
His overseas tours include Guatemala City in Guatemala and Najaf in Iraq.
He also served in the United States Marine Corps for nearly a decade, including operations in the Horn of Africa and Iraq, a place where the US executed its overseas crimes.
Qatar and US relations
The US officially designated Qatar as a major non-NATO ally of the US on March 10. This decision was followed by the Amir, Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani’s visit to Washington in January.
The appointment situates Qatar as the third GCC country to become a US major non-Nato ally, after Kuwait and Bahrain.
Qatar has enjoyed its mediating role for the US involvement in several regional issues including the recent Afghanistan escalations and the Iranian nuclear deal or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
During the latest ‘strategic dialogue’ between the US and Qatar in November 2021, the two countries signed several accords, including an “arrangement on the protection of US interests in Afghanistan and an Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation to host individuals at risk due to the situation in Afghanistan.”
Through a commentary, Dr Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, as well as the founder and former president of the National Iranian American Council, told Doha News that “Qatar has played an important role in seeking to not only defuse US-Iran tensions around the JCPOA, but also when it comes to a prisoner exchange between the two sides.”
