Al Jazeera Media Network is set to host Iran's foreign minister, a senior Hamas leader, and an Erdogan propagandist at its upcoming Forum on February 7.
The forum will be held from 7 to 9 February 2026 in the capital Doha and is titled "The Palestinian Cause and the Regional Balance of Power in the Context of an Emerging Multipolar World."
Among the keynote speakers are figures such as Abbas Araghchi, who is the foreign minister for the Islamic Republic of Iran, a state known for its abuse of human rights, extrajudicial killings, and support for terror groups. His appearance will come just weeks after Tehran’s major crackdown on Iranian protesters, with as many as 30,000 or more people having been killed by the regime.
Another keynote speaker is Burhanettin Duran, who serves as head of Turkey's Directorate of Communications and is a key ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As part of his propagandist role in the Turkish government, Duran oversees media control, disinformation, and repression of journalists.
Victor Gao, the vice president of the Center for China and Globalization, is also set to speak. Gao is a prominent Chinese Communist Party (CCP) apologist and has been known to defend Xinjiang camps and the Hong Kong crackdown. In 2019, he defended the detention of an estimated one million Uighur Muslims in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.
Hamas leadership at Al Jazeera conference
Among the listed speakers is Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, head of the terrorist group abroad. Meshaal formerly served as the group’s leader after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, but now lives in Qatar. He has survived an assassination attempt by Israel.
Mustafa Barghouti – Palestinian physician, activist, and politician, and general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI) – is set to be another speaker. Barghouti has previously been seen as a politician committed to nonviolence and ran for president of the Palestinian Authority against Mahmoud Abbas in 2005.
He is nevertheless extremely hostile to Israel, and has said that “Perhaps the most important achievement of [October 7] was that it defeated the Zionist project to solve the Palestinian issue by normalizing relations with Arab countries." He also praised Sinwar.
Several of the other speakers are linked to Al Jazeera or Qatari state systems, and others are academics with a history of strong anti-Israel or anti-Western rhetoric, such as Sahar Khamis and Myriam François.
The program of the conference itself is mainly focused on Palestinian resistance, using social media to shift perceptions on "the genocide against Palestinians," and on the advancement of Arab states.