I don’t love reporting on rumors that are doing the rounds because most of it is garbage but at the same time, I like to know what the rumors are. There’s also a war going on and the state of journalism is lamentable, so it’s a constant stream of staged ‘leaks’ and ‘sources’ reports that are spoonfed to create some kind of official narrative.

It’s all made trading very difficult and just in the last hour, there was a report about a strike on Iran’s nuclear power plant that turned out to be old news, but still briefly jarred the market.

The rumor doing the rounds is that Iran and Qatar made some kind of deal and it’s based on the reality that strikes on Qatar stopped on March 20 and Qatari employees were told to go back to the office and schools. They had been working from home since March 5. Other countries in the area are still

The rumor says that Iran struck some kind of deal with Qatar (likely to halt attacks from US bases there, and maybe to eventually close them) in exchange for a halt to attacks on Qatar, along with the release of $6 billion to Iran.

The genesis of the $6 billion number is that in September 2023, about $6 billion of Iranian funds were transferred to accounts in Qatar as part of a U.S.-Iran prisoner swap. At the time, U.S. officials said Iran would not be able to access the money “any time soon” but it’s unclear what happened to it since.

The actual ‘reporting’ on the deal can be traced back to JFeed is an English-language Israeli/Jewish news site founded in 2023. It’s more of a news aggregator. Reporter Eliana Fleming wrote that ‘western diplomatic sources’ said:

Doha is looking for a way to insulate itself from the broader war between the Allied forces and Iran. While a Qatari diplomat has officially denied these reports, Western officials believe the offer is a genuine attempt to buy immunity from Iranian missile and drone strikes.

From there, the rumor seemed to take off. Of course, in the backdrop to this Iran said it would stop attacking neighboring energy infrastructure if it was no longer attacked. This came after Iran caused major damage to 2 LNG trains in Qatar.

Now I don’t really believe this report and I don’t think Iran would be looking for money at this point in a life and death struggle but it’s out there, so be aware.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.