Revealed: CAIR’s $7.7 Million of Foreign Financing

A multilateral bank co-owned by the governments of Iran, Qatar, Turkey, among others, is financing the construction of “CAIR Plaza” in Washington D.C. to provide the terror-tied Islamist group with decades of future income, contradicting CAIR’s repeated denials of foreign support for its operations.

July 20, 2026 • Sam Westrop • Focus on Western Islamism

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a controversial Islamist organization, is the beneficiary of tens of millions of dollars of financing provided by the Islamic Development Bank (ISDB), a multilateral governmental bank whose top shareholders include Iran, Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, a Middle East Forum investigation has found.

In the heart of Washington D.C, just a few blocks from Union Station, CAIR and its network of nonprofits and LLC subsidiaries have managed and overseen the nearly-completed construction of a foreign-funded $18 million building project named “CAIR Plaza” — an effort to provide the terror-tied Islamist group with decades of future rental income.

For many years, CAIR has denied benefiting from foreign support.

Financed by the Islamic Development Bank, as part of a $30 million project, CAIR Plaza is listed by its D.C. developers as a $18.5 million endeavor, comprising “a 49-unit apartment building with retail space.”

The Islamic Development Bank (ISDB) has long been accused of serving as a vehicle for the financing of Islamism around the world. A 2021 lawsuit notes that the ISDB “manages the Al-Quds and the Al-Aqsa Funds, which are funds established by twelve Arab countries in order to provide financial support to the Palestinian intifada and provide money to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers.”

Article courtesy of the Middle East Forum.

AUTHOR

Sam Westrop

Sam Westrop has headed Islamist Watch since March 2017. He is also a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Previously, he ran Stand for Peace, a London-based counter-extremism organization.

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