After announcing on Friday that the Trump administration would be building a Qatari air force base in Idaho, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth later backtracked, issuing a clarification on social media in response to a growing backlash.

“Important clarification,” Hegseth wrote in the post, published to X. “The U.S. military has a long-standing partnership w/ Qatar, including today’s announced cooperation w/ F-15QA aircraft. However, to be clear, Qatar will not have their own base in the United States—nor anything like a base. We control the existing base, like we do with all partners.”

Earlier in the day, Hegseth—joined by Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani at the Pentagon—announced the building of a Qatari Emiri Air Force facility at

See Full Page