Netanyahu unhinged
Summary: with Donald Trump functioning as a loyal sidekick rather than as the president of the mightiest military nation in the world Benjamin Netanyahu continues to wreak regional havoc crossing red line after red line with impunity.
We circulate below an edited transcript of our September 17 podcast with Gulf defence and security analyst Andreas Krieg. Andreas’s latest book is Subversion: The Strategic Weaponisation of Narratives. You can listen to the full podcast here.
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Can we begin with your assessment of the attack as a military endeavour. The Israelis pride themselves on launching what they call efficient surgical strikes against their enemies. How surgical was this attempt to kill senior Hamas leaders in Doha?
It wasn't surgical at all. This has a lot to do with the fact that the Israelis had to use standoff weapons so they didn't penetrate Qatari airspace. There are essentially two stories of what happened. One is the Qataris flew down the Red Sea seaboard along the west coast of Saudi Arabia, then sent ballistic missiles into space over Saudi Arabia that then came down on Qatar. I don't think this is a very realistic scenario and it's also one that serves the Israelis because they're saying ‘we did not penetrate any Saudi airspace.’
The other story is that they flew from their airbase in southern Israel, Nevatim, into Jordanian-Saudi airspace then went to the northern part of the Gulf where they released the weapons which then flew into Qatar. I think that's the more realistic scenario. It would have meant they penetrated the air spaces of several different Arab countries and thereby violated their sovereignty but Israel has done this time and again over the last two years with impunity.
There's been much speculation about what Trump knew and when he knew it. What is your understanding?
It is very unlikely that Trump knew anything about it primarily because the Israelis know how deeply penetrated the Trump administration is and how close they are to the Qataris, especially [Steve] Witkoff, the Special Envoy to the Middle East. There's just no way if anyone around Trump or Witkoff had known about this attack they wouldn't have leaked it to the Qataris. So the Israelis knew if they wanted to surprise the Qataris and make sure the Hamas leadership wasn't warned, they would make sure Trump wouldn't know about it. Three anonymous Israeli sources yesterday were saying Trump was warned an hour in advance directly by Netanyahu but I find this to be just another information campaign by the Israelis trying to drive a wedge in US-Qatari relations.
What are the implications for the Qataris?
It's a watershed moment, unprecedented in various ways, not just for the Qataris. This is something all the Gulf royal families are looking at as an attack on the Gulf.
The US is still seen as the major security guarantor. Then you have a strike, not just by Iran which was bad enough for the Qataris in June, but by a fellow US CENTCOM partner, because Israel and the Gulf states are all under US Central Command. One American ally - arguably Israel being the closest US ally - striking the probably second closest ally of the United States. Qataris are still in disbelief. They never expected the Israelis to do something as bold as this. There have been questions asked about what would happen if the Israelis were to strike Hamas in Qatar, but most scenarios were looking at some sort of covert operation on the ground rather than an air strike. They now know that you cannot rely on the United States and that's also the perception across the region.
Worse than that, you could make a case that in the 80s and the 90s, even the early 2000s, most of the GCC countries were free riders. They were not investing enough into defence, just relying on the United States. But what we've seen since the Arab Spring is that all the Gulf states are burden-sharing quite extensively. They're a force multiplier for US power in the region, probably a net contributor to US power, unlike Israel, which I still think is a net consumer of US power. So the Gulf states were thinking ‘we're indispensable now we're investing trillions - not billions - of dollars in the United States’. They thought they had literally paid off Trump, then something like this happened. Now Trump looks impotent, especially against the backdrop of his visit to the Gulf earlier this year which was such a high, especially in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Everyone was glowing, saying ‘this is one of the greatest moments for the Gulf’. Everyone thought, ‘we've got him in our pocket’. Now this happens he appears weaker than even Biden or other previous presidents and that is something that the Qataris have to deal with.
Trump is saying, ‘Look, this will not happen again’. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is saying, ‘Oh, yes, it will’. Does Trump have enough clout to prevent another Israeli attack on Qatar or other Gulf states?
No, it's quite clear and it has mostly to do with the fact that Netanyahu is risking everything because he knows he has very little, if anything, to lose domestically. The operation against Iran was already a major risk. Striking [Ismail] Haniya in Iran [political leader of Hamas, on 31 July 2024] was a major risk. He's willing to not just test boundaries, but cross boundaries. He's done it time and again and he's never had any severe consequence from any US administration. In Gaza, I don't even remember how many red lines were crossed. We're now moving into genocide and the US is still saying, ‘Carry on and kill Hamas leadership.’ In this context, I can't see how the US administration is actually able or willing to enforce any red lines on Israel.
How strongly do you think the Saudis and the Emiratis will express their unhappiness with what the Israelis have done?
Well, they have. So the visit to Qatar on Wednesday [10 September] by the Abu Dhabi government and entire strategic establishment at such short notice, not just to pay condolences but also to express support, shows how shocked Abu Dhabi was in particular. Abu Dhabi obviously maintains its relationship with Israel despite what's going on in Gaza but the Emiratis were shaken to their core because they know while they're not hosting Hamas, they host a range of Iranian operations, whether they support it or not, explicitly or implicitly. So the Israelis could say that what's going on in the UAE is a threat to national security and strike the UAE.
The Saudis were shocked for different reasons. I don't think they're necessarily a target at the moment, but the rhetoric about Greater Israel - I think there was a comment by someone in the Israeli administration saying, ‘The Saudis have so much land, why don't they take the Gazans?’ - the Saudis are taking these sorts of comments seriously, because Netanyahu has to be taken verbally literally because he's usually delivered on any atrocious comment that he has made. So it's a wake up call for the Gulf states.
Why doesn't the UAE say, ‘all right, you've gone too far this time we're going to withdraw our ambassador?’
I think that has to do with the fact that they're expecting something worse to happen next week. Canada, France, the UK and others are going to recognise a Palestinian state during UNGA in New York and we are expecting the Israelis to respond to this. One way would be for Netanyahu to go forward with formal annexation of parts of the West Bank. This would obviously lead to massive condemnation globally, but maybe Netanyahu doesn't care anymore. He's a rogue leader in a pariah state, so it doesn't really matter anymore for him, but the Emiratis have said there will be consequences, so they will have to do something. So I think they are holding back, knowing that next week they will have to basically kick out the ambassador as an act of last resort.
Iran has been constantly viewed as the regional security threat. But is Netanyahu and his extremist government the big threat right now in the region?
That's my opinion but more importantly this is the Gulf States’ view. We've had comments from the Emiratis and senior Saudis saying that actually now Israel is either worse than Iran or just equal to Iran as a regional threat. I would go a bit further and say that Iran is actually a more manageable threat. Iran is a country under massive sanctions. The US is very much pushing back against Iran. The Iranians are reaching out their avenues of engagement and dialogue. With Israel there's nothing. Israel has the complete, unequivocal support from the United States. It acts with impunity. It disrespects the United States. It is not under pressure. Even the international community largely, despite all the condemnation, still hasn't done anything meaningful against Israel. Israel is entirely unhinged under Netanyahu and there are no avenues for dialogue and engagement in the way that exist with Iran.
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