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On Thursday, Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, led a funeral at the state mosque. Flanked by officials in white thobes, he prayed over six caskets – one draped in a Qatari flag and five bearing Palestinian flags.
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 Gulf states, beginning with Saudi Arabia, believe that their security and stability still depend on America. For them, preventing an Israeli attack on Qatar was a no-brainer – the US could have done it without barely lifting a finger,” he added.
The message taken from the strike was not that Washington cannot control Israel, which it arms and equips to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, but it does not want to rein it in. Trump’s ability to call back Israeli jets on their way to bomb Tehran showed he has leverage when he chooses to.
“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.
If the US has stopped holding its side of the quid pro quo, the Gulf could quietly re-evaluate the return it is getting on its investments. By the time the US notices, it might be too late.
“It will be the little things being turned down, but they will accumulate. We won’t notice at first, but Qatar will stop taking chances on our behalf,” said Theros.
