Israel Strikes Hamas in Qatar
By William Roebuck, Kristen Smith Diwan, Hussein Ibish, David B Roberts, Mohammed Baharoon- September 10, 2025
Gulf Unity
Kristin Smith Diwan
There
is an assumption, perhaps by Israel and even the administration of
President Donald J. Trump, that most Gulf leaders despise Hamas and thus
will look sympathetically at the Israeli targeted action in Qatar.
There are further arguments, held over from the 2017 Gulf crisis, that
the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia resent Qatar and will be
satisfied with the country taken down a notch by Israeli actions. This
is a serious misreading of the Gulf states’ most fundamental interests
and where their relations stand today.
The Israeli strike on a
Hamas delegation hosted by Qatar and involved in peace negotiations over
the most recent Trump proposal on Gaza will shake Gulf assumptions
about their ties to the United States and will bring them closer
together, despite their policy differences. No Gulf state can look
dispassionately at a foreign strike on the soil of any Gulf Cooperation
Council state. These oil monarchies are too much alike, in their
compacts with their populations and in their paths toward economic
diversification through global integration. Such a direct strike on
their sovereignty and perceived safety is anathema to them all.
The
formal statements they released, carefully coordinated, should not be
ignored. Neither should the personal visit of UAE President Mohammed bin
Zayed al-Nahyan, the ruler of the state most at odds with Qatar, to
show solidarity with his often-time foe, Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad
al-Thani. There are differences, in political orientation and relations
to Israel itself, but, at the core, these are states that share an
essential fate and can’t ignore such a direct challenge to their shared
basis of sovereignty and global ambitions.
Repercussions for Gulf-U.S. Relations
Mohammed Baharoon
The
Israeli attack on Qatar may have much deeper repercussions, not just
for Doha’s relationship with Israel but also regarding the role of the
United States in the Gulf. This could be both on the level of the air
defense equipment GCC countries use as well as the impact of the
security partnership with the United States, considering Qatar is a
major non-NATO ally to the United States. If there is no U.S. reaction,
this would be compounded with the failure of the United States to
provide critical security guarantees following the attacks on Saudi oil
facilities in 2019. There may be a very rigid revision to
counterintelligence capacities within the United States, and it will be
directed toward Israel not Iran, as it was traditionally designed.
The
attack may also trigger the need to revisit the call for an integrated
air-defense network that may even extend to Jordan, the Levant, and
Iraq, which has become the Achilles’ heel allowing these attacks to
proceed undetected. Unfortunately, given the perceived deficiencies in
U.S. security assurances for the Gulf, such a network is unlikely to be
led by the United States.
Doubts About the U.S. as Security Guarantor
Hussein Ibish
Israel’s
lawless and reckless airstrike in Qatar will likely strongly reinforce
existing doubts among the United States’ Gulf partners regarding
Washington’s reliability as a security guarantor.
Qatar
undoubtedly and reasonably believed that its close relations with the
United States – especially hosting and largely paying for the Al Udeid
airbase that houses 11,000 U.S. service personnel at any given time,
serves as the forward headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, and is
effectively the epicenter of the U.S. force posture in the Gulf region
and broader Middle East – would effectively preclude such a sudden and
massive attack on its territory by another major U.S. military partner:
Israel. Worse, the Israeli attack was on a civilian apartment building
in a residential neighborhood and cost the life of a Qatari security
officer as well as several others. Moreover, the primarily targets were
two senior Hamas figures marked for death by Israel but who were only in
Doha for the indirect cease-fire and hostage-release talks that both
Israel and the United States participate in and thanked Qatar for
hosting, and they have urged Doha to continue such a brokering role on
the Gaza war.
No one is surprised that Israel continues to hunt
down the Hamas leaders it has sworn to assassinate because it holds them
responsible for the atrocious October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on
southern Israel. Most of these external leaders had lived in Doha for
over a decade before that attack, and the administration of former
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. urged Qatar not to expel them until
October 2024, by which time almost all Hamas politburo members had
either relocated to, or acquired alternative homes in, Turkey.
The
only reason these Hamas figures had returned to Doha was to participate
in the cease-fire and hostage-release talks that had resulted in months
of quiet and large numbers of prisoner releases. The cease-fire that
began on January 19, 2024 was broken in early March by massive Israeli
airstrikes in Gaza that killed hundreds of Palestinians, many of them
children.
But Trump has repeatedly emphasized his demand that the
war end through the indirect talks in Qatar, so not only did the Hamas
figures no doubt feel safe in returning to participate in them, Doha was
shocked to find itself under Israeli air attack under these
circumstances. It’s hard to imagine Qatar agreeing to hold more talks
that open it to additional deadly Israeli bombardment and also difficult
to imagine what assurances Washington could give Doha that would fully
reassure the Qataris that they would be safe from additional Israeli
attacks.
This brazen and shocking attack by one major U.S.
military partner against another will join the September 2019 attack on
Saudi Aramco facilities and 2022 deadly Houthi drone strikes in Abu
Dhabi, both of which went unanswered by Washington, as another key
inflection point in intensifying Gulf Arab doubts about Washington’s
reliability as a security guarantor.
Whatever some of its Gulf
Arab neighbors think of Qatar’s long-standing friendly relations with
Hamas and support of other Islamist groups in the region, all will be
shocked and dismayed by the ambivalent and contradictory responses from
the White House that seem to criticize and praise the attack
simultaneously. The sense that powerful neighbors, such as Israel and
Iran, can strike Gulf Arab countries with no meaningful response from
Washington will likely greatly intensify the impression that the United
States has become a thoroughly unreliable security guarantor and that
the pursuit of additional defense options is no longer optional, unless
the United States moves quickly and decisively to address these concerns
and reverse the severe damage the Israeli attack on Qatar has caused.
Heightened Gulf Anxieties
Ambassador William Roebuck
Gulf
capitals have reacted strongly to the September 9 Israeli attack on
Hamas leaders in Doha. Initial reactions have condemned the Israeli
action in harsh terms that reference key themes: Gulf solidarity with
Qatar and framing the attack as a violation of international law and
Qatari sovereignty, a dangerous escalation, and, according to a key
Emirati official, a “treacherous Israeli act.” The White House response
evolved over time – reactions communicated significant if nonspecific
irritation with Israel, softened with some degree of understanding for
Israel’s action against Hamas, deep appreciation for Qatar as an ally
and key mediator, and conflicting messages about how much warning the
United States received from Israel. The White House has not yet offered a
public assessment of the impact the attack will have on its recent
proposal to end the war in Gaza or the negotiating process it is
leading.
The attack comes at a time of heightened Gulf
nervousness about Israeli military actions and policy discourse. Israel
has recently launched an offensive in Gaza City and, since the December
2024 fall of Bashar al-Assad, has launched hundreds of airstrikes and
ground incursions in Syria, including a late August airborne landing of
Israeli forces on the outskirts of Damascus at a time when Gulf
countries and the West have been working to stabilize the country and
invest in reconstruction. Gulf leaders have stressed that the Syrian
government did not threaten or attack Israel to prompt the monthslong
military campaign. Overwhelming Israeli military and intelligence
successes against Hezbollah and Iran in the past year, while not
prompting the same type of criticism, have contributed to the notion in
the Gulf that Israel has become an unchecked, dominant military power,
acting in ways that risk destabilizing the region.
Israeli policy
discourse has similarly alarmed Gulf leaders and analysts. Recent
discussions by Israeli political leaders, analysts, and media
referencing the need to expel Gazans from Gaza and annex four-fifths of
the West Bank (essentially dooming any prospect of a two-state solution
to the conflict with the Palestinians) and expressing support for a
fragmented Syria have fed the growing Gulf nervousness about Israeli
capabilities, language, and regional ambitions. Recent support expressed
by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the concept of
“Greater Israel,” a notion widely understood to involve implicit claims
on territory in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, also recently sparked
Gulf concerns about Israel’s projected borders and the way it perceives
relations with the Arab world.
The timing of the attack in Qatar
unfortunately contributes to these concerns, which have begun prompting
Gulf leaders to revisit generally accepted notions developing over the
past decade or more that Arab states and Israel share significant
interests and perceptions about future relations, a bedrock of the
Abraham Accords. For now, these concerns about normalization of
relations with Israel, greatly heightened in recent days by the West
Bank annexation threat, may be tactical and serving primarily as
leverage to push Israel to back away from its more radical plans and
discourse. The attack on Qatar will do nothing to calm Gulf anxiety.
Qatar Ought Not Panic
David B. Roberts
Qatar
has discovered the brutal realities of international politics. In many
ways, it has long done the right thing for a state of its size (tiny),
wealth (huge), and location (dangerous). Hosting the critical U.S.
Central Command forward headquarters, courting Trump with strategic
investments and a $400 million aircraft deal for Air Force One, and
building soft power through U.S. university campuses made strategic
sense. Qatar positioned itself as Washington’s indispensable regional
partner, hosting Taliban negotiators for U.S. hostage releases and troop
withdrawals while simultaneously – at U.S. and Israeli requests –
managing Hamas officials to keep Gaza’s roiling politics on a simmer,
and so to support Israel and core U.S. regional aims.
This
high-wire act has collapsed. Some of this is Qatar’s fault, but plenty
is not. Trump’s unpredictability, endemic undependability, and scattered
focus created deep-seated uncertainties in international politics that
politicians like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can skillfully exploit. But Qatar, the
Gulf’s Icarus, bears responsibility for overextending itself, feeling
uninured from the consequences of regional politics by placing excessive
faith in increasingly unreliable U.S. security guarantees and failing
to develop deterrent capabilities that might have restrained Israeli or
Iranian aggression.
Brutally mugged by reality, Qatar ought not
panic. It remains a successful, prosperous little state with key tools
to safeguard its future. It needs to do four things.
First, it
needs to jettison Hamas. The state is too vulnerable to continue this
mediating role without significantly stronger – and unlikely – U.S.
guarantees or a politically costly Israeli rapprochement. Second, it
needs to develop a policy lever with teeth – something on the cyber
spectrum, deep financial leverage, critical personal relations – that
will give it hard or at least genuine sharp power. Third, it needs to
keep and augment its warm, close U.S. relations, while treating with
caution future promises or guarantees of security from the United
States, and fastidiously hone its military instrument as if its
independence depends upon it – which it does. Fourth, Qatar should pivot
from controversy to competence. The discussion surrounding Qatar ought
not focus on hosting the world’s most contentious political movement but
on Qatar as the global hub for educating nurses, students, and medics.
The
path forward demands strategic restraint and focused capability
building. Qatar’s survival depends on reading the new rules of a more
dangerous game.