For the first time, the state of Israel has launched a unilateral, unprovoked attack on the territory of one of its Gulf neighbors. The decision to strike a meeting of senior Hamas officials in Qatar’s capital of Doha on September 9 was as risky as it was foolish and intentional. Indeed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing increasing criticism at home over his country’s war and ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza, almost certainly hoped to kill diplomatic efforts, providing a rationale to continue pursuing a violent solution in Gaza.
Opting to strike a mediator amid the ongoing, indirect negotiations between Tel Aviv and Hamas certainly can help achieve that outcome. Israel targeted the Hamas meeting multiple times, but, reports say the strikes likely failed to kill any senior leaders. Rather, Hamas announced that five non-senior members were killed, with Doha confirming the death of one security officer and multiple other injuries to its nationals.
The timing of those strikes was hardly a coincidence. United States President Donald Trump had just announced his “final offer” to the Palestinian armed faction days prior, claiming Israel had accepted the terms while heaping additional public pressure on Hamas to accept a new ceasefire in Gaza. Yet, it was Israel that played spoiler once again, seeing an opportunity to wipe out Hamas’s senior political leadership abroad after years of threatening to do just that, even in the face of widespread international support for an end to the fighting in Gaza.
As such, the incident sparked global uproar. Regional leaders, major Western allies of Israel, the United Nations, and the United States all condemned the strike to varying degrees, citing international law and the basic concept of state sovereignty. For Trump’s Washington to publicly oppose Tel Aviv’s violation of Doha’s sovereign rights should speak volumes.
According to U.S. leaders, Israeli officials reached out to Washington to inform them of the strike as their planes were in the air. This gave the Trump administration no time to warn Qatar, per official accounts.
Even if Trump did not greenlight the strikes, the objective of them remained the same: to kill Hamas leaders and diplomacy, forcing an end to the war while allowing Israel to move onto its overt plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza. With elections coming in 2026, Netanyahu faces a daunting re-election campaign that he appears likely to lose.
For him, holding on to power and recovering his image post-October 7 is paramount. Hamas continues to stand in the way of those goals – an unacceptable dynamic for the now risk-welcoming prime minister.
That the strikes failed will likely only worsen his electoral chances within Israel amid a widespread and growing protest campaign demanding a ceasefire and the return of the remaining Israeli captives. Whether this leads to an even more risk-prone Netanyahu remains to be seen. Ultimately, U.S. officials and other world leaders must consider that risk given their interest in ending the Gaza war.
The larger issue, however, is that Trump appears either unwilling or unable to prevent incidents like the strike on Doha, just as former U.S. President Joe Biden was unwilling to materially pressure Israel in any meaningful way to cease its military operations in Gaza during his term. Whether Trump was simply unable to prevent the strikes due to the timing of the Israeli notification is relevant but ultimately pointless in this conversation, as the reality is that a junior U.S. partner once again trampled over an American president in ways that clearly go against basic U.S. interests, as Trump himself admits.
Whether Washington was complicit or not, the optics are horrific for Trump. In no scenario should any junior partner operate in such a manner. The fact that Tel Aviv violated numerous international laws to target a close U.S. partner only compounds concern regarding where American policy really stands in this context. While credibility arguments are often overblown, the reality is that Gulf leaders and those around the world will rightly view Trump’s Washington with distrust.
Ultimately, world leaders will increasingly doubt U.S. diplomacy due to this incident, further hampering Washington’s efforts to advance its interests. That conclusion is particularly problematic for the current administration, which desires recognition as a dealmaker. In no policy area will this be more impactful than the Abraham Accords, as Emirati and Saudi leaders are making clear.
That says nothing of the impact on efforts to end the war in Gaza, which should be a primary U.S. interest in the Middle East today. If Israel truly went behind Trump’s back to strike Qatar, the administration should act accordingly to aggressively compel Israel into a real ceasefire that allows the United States to back away from the conflict. Anything short of that is a dereliction of duty and hardly reflective of the so-called “peace” presidency Trump claims to represent.
Alexander Langlois is a Contributing Fellow at Defense Priorities.
