Idaho officials caught off-guard by plan to train Qatari air force at Mountain Home
As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth celebrated a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas at the Pentagon, he dropped another piece of news: that Idaho would be a training ground for newly minted Qatari air force members.
The announcement caught Idaho elected officials off-guard. Even the state’s four congressional delegates weren’t told ahead of time, one of them said.
“First I heard of it was listening to the news,” House Majority Leader Jason Monks, R-Meridian, told the Idaho Statesman.
“I don’t believe any Idaho lawmaker was aware,” said Senate President Pro Tem Kelly Anthon, R-Burley.
Though he supports military partnerships, “Idahoans deserve transparency,” Anthon added. “We need clear information on how this training program will work and how it will impact our communities.”
Gov. Brad Little’s office didn’t answer a question about whether Little was consulted on the idea of the facility before Hegseth announced the plan, but said he has been discussing concerns from the public with Idaho’s congressional delegation and President Donald Trump’s administration.
“It is critical we work with the administration to ensure this agreement is done in a way that protects Idahoans’ interests as further details are finalized,” Joan Varsek, a spokesperson for Little, said in an emailed statement.
Hegseth told reporters Friday that the U.S. would build a facility for the Qatar Emiri Air Force at Mountain Home to “enhance our combined training, increase lethality (and) interoperability.” The base will host and train pilots and fighter jets from Qatar, he said.
Back in 2022, the Air Force announced that Mountain Home would be the location for 170 Qatari trainees, as part of a $12 billion deal the U.S. signed years ago to give Qatar aircraft and U.S.-based training, the Statesman previously reported.
Eight Idaho lawmakers wrote an open letter Sunday to Idaho’s congressional delegation expressing concern about the “lack of consultation with Idaho’s state leadership prior to announcing this deal.”
The lawmakers, including Sen. Christy Zito, R-Hammett, and Rep. Faye Thompson, R-McCall, whose districts include the Mountain Home Air Force Base, sought more information about how many Qatari personnel would live and work at the base, how the program was being funded, and whether there were screening or intelligence processes in place to ensure trainees had no ties to extremist organizations.
Zito and Thompson on Tuesday declined to comment to the Statesman until they had spoken to Hegseth and Idaho’s congressional delegation.
Monks, who saw their letter on social media, said it raised “fair questions” but that he wasn’t overly concerned. Air Force personnel in the past have “done a pretty good job” of reaching out to lawmakers and neighboring communities to explain what’s going on at the base.
“They’ve always been very responsive to any requests (for) information that I know the Legislature has asked, so I don’t imagine this will be any different,” he told the Statesman by phone. All the same, he said, “I think it would have been nice if we had a little bit more of a heads-up.”
House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, and Senate Majority Leader Lori Den Hartog, R-Meridian, did not respond to requests for comment.
Concerns over foreign governments in Idaho
U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson in a post on X celebrated Hegseth’s announcement. U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo in a statement said he was awaiting “further details about the agreement” but would continue to work with Air Force and base leaders to “protect our long-term national security interests.”
But in an interview with KIDO radio Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Russ Fulcher said none of Idaho’s federal lawmakers received a heads-up from the Trump administration. He even attended a group dinner with Hegseth the night before the announcement, Fulcher said, but still didn’t learn of the plan until he saw it in a news report. Fulcher’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the Statesman.
“I was not aware of this until this hit the media, and I was as shocked as anybody,” Fulcher told KIDO. “So we’re learning as we go here, but I have to just be honest and say that I’m uncomfortable with it, and the (Defense) Department is not done hearing from me or the rest of the delegation from the state of Idaho.”
Madison Hardy, a spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, did not respond to a request for comment from the Statesman but pointed to comments Risch provided to the Spokesman-Review. In those comments, Risch said the decision to host Qatari pilots “is in line with other preexisting U.S. military agreements with important allies.”
“Idaho’s congressional delegation is working with the administration to ensure questions about proper safeguards are addressed and that this agreement is implemented in a way that makes America’s military stronger, safer and more reliable,” he added.
The Idaho Freedom Foundation, a far-right think tank, on social media said it “unequivocally condemns” the plan, which “appears to have been made without consultation or consideration for the residents of Idaho or through our elected state representatives.”
“To unilaterally decide that Idaho will host a foreign nation’s air force facility, which would house and train foreign nationals whose loyalties don’t align with our own national and state interests, is a completely unacceptable overreach,” the organization said in a statement on X. The Department of Defense’s action “is a flagrant disregard for the autonomy of our state and the security of its citizens.”
Rep. Ted Hill, R-Eagle, has been outspoken in the Legislature about his opposition to foreign governments’ presence in Idaho. In 2025, he proposed House Bill 356 — which Little later signed into law — to expand on rules banning governments from buying agricultural land, water rights and mining claims in the state. Hill declined to comment on this story.
Reporter Kevin Fixler contributed.
This story was originally published October 16, 2025 at 9:41 AM.
