BEIRUT — For years, Persian Gulf nations staked their protection on one factor above all: A U.S.-supplied safety umbrella, paid for with tens of billions of their petrodollars and agreements that allowed the U.S. to dot the Center East with a few of its largest army services.
The pondering was that being customers of U.S. weaponry and having a U.S. army presence was a digital assure of safety if enemies got here to name.
That pondering was upended on Tuesday, when Israel, arguably the U.S.’s prime ally, dispatched warplanes and hurled 10 missiles at Hamas’ political workplace compound within the Qatari capital Doha.
The assault, which focused the Palestinian group’s senior negotiation group because it was discussing a ceasefire proposal from President Trump, killed 5 Hamas members and a Qatari safety officer. Hamas denies any of its senior management was killed.
However whether or not the focusing on succeeded is irrelevant to Gulf leaders pondering the effectiveness of decades-old safety preparations with the U.S.
“The message to the region appears to be, ‘If you think close ties with and major military support for Washington provides protection… think again,’ ” stated Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar on the Arab Gulf States Institute.
“They’re all vulnerable to attack by larger and more powerful neighbors, and they expect a commitment that helping the U.S. militarily comes with a certain degree of protection. It clearly doesn’t,” he stated.
This satellite tv for pc picture from Planet Labs PBC taken on Wednesday reveals injury after an Israeli strike focused a compound that hosted Hamas’ political management in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday.
(Planet Labs PBC through Related Press)
Qatari officers had been apoplectic after the strike, calling it cowardly and a violation of the nation’s sovereignty.
Particularly galling to Qatar — which homes the Al Udeid Air Base, the biggest American army set up within the area — is that it allowed Hamas officers to brazenly stay in a well-appointed district of its capital at Washington’s request, simply because it had with the Taliban in the course of the group’s negotiations to finish America’s warfare in Afghanistan.
“Everything about that meeting [with Hamas] is very well known for the Israelis and for the Americans. It’s not something we’re hiding,” stated Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in an interview with CNN on Wednesday.
“I have no words to express how enraged we are from such an action [by Israel]. This is state terror,” he stated.
Different Gulf leaders — even these harboring lingering reservations about Qatar and its regional insurance policies — introduced a united entrance on Qatar’s behalf.
Saudi Arabia referred to as the strike a “brutal aggression” and stated the dominion would “stand with Qatar without limit.” Bahrain expressed its “full solidarity.”
Mohamed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, traveled to Doha the subsequent day to satisfy the Qatari emir — a shock given how assiduously the UAE has labored to enhance ties with Israel as a part of the Abraham Accords, the Trump-brokered agreements that noticed numerous Arab and Gulf nations normalize relations with Israel in 2020.
“The Gulf states view an external attack on one member as an attack on all,” stated Yasmine Farouk, the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Undertaking director on the Worldwide Disaster Group.
Farouk added that belief within the U.S. was already diminished in recent times when Washington did not defend or reply to assaults on Saudi Arabia in 2019 and the UAE in 2022 by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Qatar, which suffered by an Iranian missile assault on Al Udeid in June, now has the doubtful honor of getting its territory develop into a proxy battleground for either side of the bigger U.S.-Iran battle.
This week’s strike additionally represents a setback for the anti-Iran coalition the U.S. has labored to forge with its Arab allies and Israel. However the feeling amongst many within the Gulf is that Israel is simply as belligerent and destabilizing an actor as Iran.
“Israel has misinterpreted the willingness of Gulf countries to normalize relations with it as an acknowledgment of its dominance in the region,” Farouq stated.
“The Gulf states do not want to live in a region dominated by either Israel or Iran,” she added. “They reject that kind of behavior, rather than rejecting a specific country.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the instant motive for the strike was Hamas claiming duty for the killing of six Israelis by Palestinian gunmen in Jerusalem earlier this week. He insisted the operation was deliberate and performed completely by Israel.
On the identical time, the greater than 1,000-mile distance between Israel and Qatar means Israeli warplanes flew over a number of Arab international locations, nearly all of them with U.S. bases presumably in a position to detect incoming plane. (The U.S. has 19 bases throughout the area.) The constructing the Israelis struck is lower than 20 miles away from Al Udeid.
Trump stated he realized in regards to the assault shortly earlier than it started and instructed members of his administration to “immediately” inform the Qataris. However Al Thani stated the decision from the U.S. got here 10 minutes after the planes lobbed their missiles on Doha.
In Might, when Trump visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, they feted him with grandiose occasions heavy on the pomp and circumstance and pledged trillions of {dollars} for investments within the U.S. The expectation was that this may purchase some leverage, however Trump is reported to have completed little greater than scold Netanyahu over Tuesday’s strike, even whereas stopping wanting condemning his actions. (Additionally in Might, Qatar donated a luxurious Boeing 747 plane for Trump to make use of as Air Drive One.)
The conclusion for Gulf international locations anticipating U.S. safety from all threats, stated Abdulaziz Al-Anjeri, founding father of the Kuwait-based suppose tank Reconnaissance Analysis, is that some threats are extra equal than others.
“U.S. security assistance is effective against Iran or its allied armed factions, but it does not extend to Israel,” he stated, including that historic alliances with the Gulf don’t carry the identical weight for Trump as they could have prior to now.
The difficulty, stated Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor of historical past at Kuwait College, is that there’s little specificity as to what a U.S. safety umbrella really entails.
“America’s No.1 ally is now striking another American partner, and all they got from Trump is that they ‘felt badly.’ That it happened this way is not in America’s favor,” Al-Saif stated.
He added that Gulf nations, particularly Saudi Arabia, have been pushing for extra formal — and well-defined — protection pacts, however that the connection with the U.S. wanted to mirror current adjustments. “You’re here as a security guarantor,” he stated of the U.S. “We cannot be cash dispensers if we feel that our basic security is not guaranteed.”
