Attacks in Qatar point to increased erraticism of U.S., analysts say

On September 9th, Israeli drones struck in Qatar, targeting a senior Hamas official — an unusual event that saw one U.S. partner country attacking another U.S. partner country, and a rare breach in the otherwise stable diplomatic heart of the region.

The strike has been widely viewed by industry and regional commentators as a marked departure from established political norms, a step toward heightened regional security posturing, and a stark display of Israel’s impunity in the eyes of the U.S. government. It has also spotlighted what many see as increasingly unpredictable behaviour from Washington.

“What the Israeli attack has done is it has given the Gulf countries a sharp demonstration of their inability to deter attacks on their soil,” Jim Krane, a fellow in Middle East Energy Studies at the Arab Center Washington DC & co-director of the Middle East Energy Roundtable at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told Gas Outlook.

What unfolded in Qatar is incentivising Gulf countries to establish stronger deterrents, either through reliance on alternate security structures, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council, or more proven forms of defence, such as in-house nuclear deterrents, or nuclear deterrents by-proxy, through weaponised states such as Pakistan, Krane said. Indeed, soon after the attack took place, Saudi Arabia announced a new defense deal with Pakistan.

Even as new alliances may be forming, the incident underscores the hard truth that economic power and trade ties have their limits when it comes to security. Despite deep financial and strategic relationships between the U.S. and several Middle Eastern states, Israel appears to occupy a unique position – one where Washington declines to intervene, even in direct attacks on allied territory.

“The failure of economic ties as a way to retain stability is an underlying theme,” Jacob Mandel, Research Lead for Global Energy Markets at Aurora Research, told Gas Outlook. “Qatar can have all the money in the world but if they can’t use it to prevent things from happening — it shows that there is a limit to that power.”

Mandel said that the military action undertaken over the past two years has shown that to some extent, hard power can be exercised regardless of the benefits or harms that it may cause, and regardless of the scale of the money involved.

While the attacks in themselves don’t reveal much insight into U.S. foreign policy strategy in the Middle East, analysts said that the fact of Israel carrying out such an attack with passivity from the U.S. points to increasingly unpredictable behaviour from the Trump administration.

“The big takeaway is that the U.S. is increasingly erratic and undergoing wild swings in ideology, which make once-solid defence doctrines unreliable,” Krane said.

Meanwhile, the Gulf is trying to project stability in order to lure in foreign direct investment, such as making longer-term plans to be more attractive to investors. This runs in a sticky parallel to its dependence on the U.S. as a security deterrent.

Looking ahead, analysts said regional dynamics have the potential to shift if a new prime minister in Israel is elected and Netenyahu were to leave power.

“What is crystal clear is the bypassing of all norms that apply to war law and international law, including the violation of states’ sovereignty,” said Dr Maria Gloria Polimeno from the SOAS Middle East Institute. “While there are a lot of concerns over Israel’s attempts to craft a new regional role and, likewise, there is a shared agreement on the risks that Netanyahu now poses to the entire region.”

Polimeno argued that Israel is reinforcing its own security at the expense of the entire region, which is now being destabilised, with the former acting under international impunity.

Krane added that when Israel gets a new government we could see things go partway back toward the previous status quo, but that even if this happens, countries in the Gulf will remain wary of U.S. security dependence and a reprise of Israeli military activity in their region.

For now, Qatar is expected to maintain its role as the region’s diplomatic hub, Polimeno noted, both because credible leaders depend on it and because Hamas’ leadership remains headquartered there.

The normalisation of cross-border strikes between allied nations raises concerns about sovereignty and the erosion of diplomatic conventions that once held the region in relative balance. As the rules of engagement grow increasingly opaque, nations might be forced to prepare for a landscape where soft power, neutrality, and economic influence alone may no longer be sufficient to guarantee national security or regional respect.

While the full ramifications of the strike have yet to unfold, the immediate impact on energy security and commodities markets appears minimal. Still, longer-term risks are quietly taking shape on the horizon.

(Writing by Miriam Malek; editing by Sophie Davies)