Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar shatters Gulf’s faith in US protection

[Right_in_Virginia]

Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar shatters Gulf’s faith in US protection
The Guardian/UK, Sep 12, 2025

Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Doha on Tuesday, which also killed a Qatari officer, marked an unprecedented moment for the Gulf kingdom. The attack undercut the assumption that has underpinned Qatari foreign policy for three decades and reverberated across the Arab region: be useful to the United States, and it will protect you.

Qatar has been useful. It has facilitated peace talks between Israel and Hamas, did the same with the Taliban and the US during the war in Afghanistan, and hosts the Al Udeid air base, the largest American military base in the Middle East.

For decades the arrangement has held. The US supplied arms, parked its aircraft carrier in the Gulf and provided political cover internationally. The support has helped spare Gulf nations from the unrest that has consumed much of the Middle East, despite the rivalry with Iran.

That changed when the US failed to stop the strike on Qatar this week, despite Israel being one of its closest allies. Donald Trump said he tried to give warning, but Qatar said it was only notified after the strike.

Doha strongly condemned the strike, with al-Thani calling it “state terror” in an interview with CNN.

“I have no words to express how enraged we are from such an action … This is state terror. We are betrayed,” he said.

Although Trump tends to view international relationships as transactions, diplomats say that the strike has wounded the trust between the Gulf and the US that has existed since the 1930s.

“This has real repercussions for the relationship,” said Patrick Theros, a former US ambassador to Qatar who helped build the Al Udeid base.

The perception in the Gulf is that at worst is that the US didn’t want to stop Israel and gave it a green light, or at best, that it doesn’t care about the sovereignty of its Gulf allies,” said Yasmine Farouk, project director at the International Crisis Group.

The reaction among Gulf states has been immediate. Despite past rifts with Qatar, its neighbours viewed the attack as an assault on all of their collective sovereignty.

A flurry of diplomacy has followed, much of it spearheaded by the UAE. Qatar has welcomed Jordan’s crown prince, the UAE president and Egypt’s foreign minister. On Sunday, Doha will host an emergency Arab-Islamic summit.

“The repercussions of Israel’s war in Gaza and its military campaigns across the region have been bringing the gulf states closer together,” said Farouk. “I think this will be a moment where they try to move from solidarity to action.”

In the short term, there will likely be little change in Washington relations. The US still underpins security and economic order in the Gulf and a hasty breakup is not in the cards.

But Gulf states may quietly start turning down American requests.

Getting more Arab states to sign up for the Abraham Accords – Trump’s major initiative in the region – is farther off than ever. The relationship between the UAE and Israel is already on the rocks, with the former summoning the Israeli ambassador. US access to Gulf capital could also be in jeopardy.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/12/israels-strike-on-hamas-leaders-in-qatar-shatters-gulfs-faith-in-us-protection

[bigheadfred]

Meh. Qatar is playing the part of the pretty little in the white dress who beans you in the back of the head with a rock when you aren't looking.

[Right_in_Virginia]

Mossad said to have refused to carry out ground op to kill Hamas leaders in Qatar
Times of Israel, Sep  13, 2025

The Mossad spy agency refused to carry out a planned ground operation to kill Hamas’s leaders in Doha, fearing that the operation would doom hostage-ceasefire talks and damage the agency’s ties with Qatar, a key Mideast mediator, the Washington Post reported Friday.

Instead, Israel was forced to carry out airstrikes, which Israel’s security establishment now increasingly believes failed to kill any of Hamas’s top brass who were gathered at the site of  Tuesday’s strike in Doha.

Amid the fallout from the apparent failed strike, reports began to emerge of significant opposition to the plan, both in the way it was carried out and the timing amid ongoing hostage talks.

A senior official with knowledge of talks on the hostage release-ceasefire deal told Channel 12 that most of the defense establishment recommended that the attack be put off.

"The position was clear — there is a deal for the return of the hostages on the table, and the negotiations should be exhausted. Everyone understood the consequences for the hostages and that an operation like this at the current time could harm this possibility,” the official said.

Channel 12 reported that the plan was opposed by IDF chief of staff Eyal Zamir, Mossad chief David Barnea and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi.  It said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, acting Shin Bet chief known as “Mem,” and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer were in favor of the attack.

The Mossad spy agency even declined to carry out a ground operation it had itself drawn up in recent weeks to assassinate the Hamas leaders, forcing the adoption of an air strike, two Israelis familiar with the matter told The Washington Post on Friday.

Mossad chief Barnea opposed killing the leaders in Qatar due to the spy agency’s relationship with Doha as well as its role as a mediator in talks with Hamas, the sources said.

Israel’s announcement of the strike said it had been carried out by the Air Force, in conjunction with the Shin Bet security service. The operation was even monitored from a Shin Bet command center.

The Shin Bet is normally tasked with domestic security, while the Mossad handles operations abroad.

The Washington Post report noted that it was the Mossad that killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last year. The agency was also heavily involved in Israel’s surprise attack on Iran earlier this year and famously spearheaded the exploding pager operation on thousands of Hezbollah operatives.

"This time, Mossad was unwilling to do it on the ground,” the Washington Post quoted one of the Israelis as saying, adding that the agency viewed Qatar as an important intermediary in talks with Hamas.

Another Israeli familiar with the dissent from the Mossad questioned Netanyahu’s timing. “We can get them in one, two, or four years from now, and the Mossad knows how to do it,” he said, referring to the possibility of covertly assassinating Hamas leaders anywhere in the world. “Why do it now?”

A separate report Friday by the Wall Street Journal revealed new operational details about the strike, which relied on air-launched ballistic missiles fired from over the Red Sea.

The newspaper, which cited interviews with senior US officials briefed on the operation, said the strike was designed to avoid having Israeli fighter jets enter Saudi airspace and to be carried out swiftly so the Trump administration would have less time to object.

According to the report, eight F-15s and four F-35s took part in the operation, flying south from Israel over the Red Sea before launching ballistic missiles toward Qatar from the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula.

Israel reportedly didn’t tip off the US until minutes before the strike was launched or give precise details on the target, which the US was able to determine was the Qatari capital using space-based sensors that detected the missiles’ heat signatures. By the time the US alerted Qatar, the missiles had struck 10 minutes earlier.

“Notice was given so close to actual launching of missiles that there was no way to reverse or halt the order,” a senior American defense official was quoted as saying, while describing the operation as “absolutely unimaginable.”


More:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/mossad-said-to-have-refused-to-carry-out-ground-op-to-kill-hamas-leaders-in-qatar/

[Right_in_Virginia]

Mossad said to have refused to carry out ground op to kill Hamas leaders in Qatar
Times of Israel, Sep  13, 2025

[...]

According to the report, eight F-15s and four F-35s took part in the operation, flying south from Israel over the Red Sea before launching ballistic missiles toward Qatar from the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula.

Israel reportedly didn’t tip off the US until minutes before the strike was launched or give precise details on the target, which the US was able to determine was the Qatari capital using space-based sensors that detected the missiles’ heat signatures. By the time the US alerted Qatar, the missiles had struck 10 minutes earlier.

“Notice was given so close to actual launching of missiles that there was no way to reverse or halt the order,” a senior American defense official was quoted as saying, while describing the operation as “absolutely unimaginable.