Research Fellow, Baker Institute
More than any other act in the post-October 7, 2023 world, the Israeli airstrike on a busy residential neighborhood of Doha on Tuesday has the potential to upend prevailing assumptions on Persian Gulf security.
The likely impact of the attack against a meeting of Hamas political leaders will be at least as consequential as the September 2019 Iranian missile and drone strike on Saudi oil facilities.
That attack on Abqaiq and al-Khurais, during the first Trump presidency, caused shockwaves in Riyadh and other Gulf capitals after President Trump publicly drew a distinction between US and Saudi interests in remarks he made two days later.
Leaders in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates reached out to Iranian counterparts to engage in a process of regional de-escalation that culminated, in the Saudi case, in a March 2023 China-brokered agreement to restore diplomatic relations with Iran that had been cut in January 2016.
Now, during Trump’s second administration, the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states find themselves at a similar inflection point.
Qatar has come under attack from Israel a little more than two months after it took ballistic missile fire from Iran on June 23. Yet, whereas the Iranian attack was aimed at the Al Udeid US airbase away from urban areas, the Israeli attack struck at the heart of Doha in the middle of the afternoon.
CENTCOM in focus
While the Iranian strike was a response to US airstrikes the previous day against three nuclear facilities in Iran and was thus the act of an adversary - from the US if not necessarily the Gulf perspective - Israel is not only the closest US ally in the region but has also been, since 2021, included in the Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility.
Leaders in Qatar and the other Arab states around the Persian Gulf will likely be reaching out with urgency to the White House to assess who in the administration knew what and when in the run-up to the attack, as well as to determine the impact both for CENTCOM and the US security umbrella.
One CENTCOM member has undertaken a strike that violated the sovereignty of another and, moreover, within the near vicinity of the very airbase in Qatar that houses the forward headquarters of CENTCOM and is the largest and most important US base in the region.
Questions may be asked as to what information was picked up by the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at Al Udeid and whether the strike used US-manufactured jets that showed up as friendly aircraft.
Reports that the US military spotted Israeli jets flying toward the Gulf and sought clarification from Israel may also generate additional questions as to why a facility designed to detect and deter aerial threats failed to prevent the strike.
While it remains improbable that GCC leaders will move away from the deep network of security and defense relationships with the US, the fallout from the attack is likely to trigger tense conversations within CENTCOM and between the US and Persian Gulf partners.
Invective shift from Iran to Israel
Although President Trump assured Emir Tamim of Qatar that such an attack would not recur, there is a risk that the president has backed himself into a corner should Israel indeed act again.
Set against this backdrop, leaders and senior defense and security officials across the GCC are likely to reassess the security landscape and regional threat perception and may declare that an attack on one GCC state is an attack on all, paving the way for a collective response.
Should this be the case, pressure may mount on the UAE and Bahrain to downgrade their ties with Israel that were established in 2020 when the countries signed the Abraham Accords in a White House ceremony presided over by President Trump.
Statements from officials and public figures in GCC states have in recent months described Israeli actions in the Middle East in language formerly used about Iran, as a spoiler and a major threat to regional stability.
While Iran is unlikely to be a beneficiary of the estrangement between GCC states and Israel, the fact that further normalization is, for the moment at least, very much off the table is an indication of how far the regional landscape has shifted in the 23 months since October 7.
