Did the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, threaten to stop oil supply to the world if bombing in Gaza does not stop? No, that's not true: The statement has never been made by Sheikh Tamim, a Qatari official told Lead Stories. An internet search did not produce any results that would corroborate the claim.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on December 2, 2023. It opened:
BREAKING:
If the bombing of Gaza does not stop, we will stop the oil supply to the world.
- Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim
This is what the post looked like on Twitter at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Dec 6 23:21:39 2023 UTC)
A Qatari official told Lead Stories via email on December 6, 2023, that the claim that Tamim made that statement is false:
This is yet another case of an online disinformation against Qatar - such a statement has never been made and never would be.
The post offered no source for the claim nor any evidence that the threat was ever made in public, which would have been an internationally reported story.
A Google search (archived here) with the keywords "Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bombing gaza does not stop oil supply to world" did not yield any matching or credible results.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (archived here) and Worldometer (archived here), Qatar as a nation ranks 14th globally in oil production.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about the 2023 Hamas-Israel war can be found here.
