Externally, Iran and Qatar maintain normal relations, but beneath the surface there is not much love, especially not from the ultra-conservative camp in Tehran.
An indication of this was given over the weekend when Mohammad Marandi, the former advisor to the nuclear negotiating team in the government of former President Ebrahim Raisi, threatened in a post on Platform X to destroy the gas fields of neighboring Qatar.
This post provoked many reactions and Marandi was eventually forced to delete it, but he openly wrote what conservatives in Iran say in private.
He wrote this in response to an American report that incoming President Trump was considering, among other things, attacking Iran's nuclear facilities. "If Iranian facilities are attacked, we will flatten the gas facilities in Qatar," wrote Marandi, who is a prominent representative of the conservative camp in Iran.
Marndi added that in the event of an attack on Iran, "thousands of Iranian drones and missiles would destroy the vital infrastructure of countries hosting American forces or allow hostile forces to use their airspace." He continued: "The US and Europe will burn their forests to keep warm."
It should be noted that Qatar is home to the largest US air base in the region – Camp Al-Adid.