Qatari air force escorts the plane transporting US President Donald Trump as it prepares to land in Doha from Saudi Arabia on May 14, 2025. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
Israel’s unprecedented airstrike against Hamas’s political leadership in Doha on Tuesday marked the second time Qatar’s territory has come under fire by a regional power in under three months. It also follows a decade of Doha building up its armed forces with huge acquisitions of advanced fighter jets, air defenses, and other weaponry to deter and defend against such attacks.
The Israeli military said it executed a “precise strike” using “precise munitions” against senior Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital. At least 15 Israeli fighter jets fired 10 munitions at a single target. Israeli media reported that drones also participated in the operation, codenamed “Fire Summit,” over 1,000 miles away from Israel.
Hamas confirmed the attack killed five members, including the son of Khalil al-Hayya, but failed to kill any senior members such as Zaher Jabarin, Khaled Meshal, and al-Hayya himself. Qatar also said the strike killed a member of its Internal Security Force. The Israeli ambassador to the U.S. told Fox News that Israel will get any senior members it did not kill in this strike “next time.”
Unsurprisingly, Qatar’s leadership expressed outrage over the attack. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, the country’s prime minister, slammed the strike as “state terrorism” and said Doha “reserves the right to respond to this blatant attack.”
“We believe that today we have reached a pivotal moment,” he told a press conference on Tuesday night. “There must be a response from the entire region to such barbaric actions.”
“There is a legal committee being formed because Qatar says it will respond within the confines of international law, and it will be in consultation with its allies both in the region and beyond,” Al Jazeera reported.
It’s unlikely Qatar will attempt a military response or retaliation. While Doha has built up an enormous air force for such a small country, replete with some of the most advanced Western-built 4.5-generation fighter jets money can buy, Israel is undoubtedly capable of intercepting them before they could reach its airspace.
Qatar also has short-range Chinese SY-400 short-range ballistic missiles that it publicly unveiled in 2017. However, these lack the sufficient range to target Israel.
Having faced its second attack in three months—the other being Iran’s telegraphed ballistic missile attack on the sprawling Al-Udeid airbase at the end of the June Israel-Iran 12-day war—Qatar may now find itself questioning its procurement choices and deterrence strategy.
When Saudi Arabia led a blockade against Qatar in June 2017, Doha found itself hopelessly outgunned. At that time, its military only possessed 12 French-built Dassault Mirage 2000 fighters and six Alpha light attack jets. On the ground, it had only 30 old AMX-30 tanks, also French-made. Had Saudi Arabia’s larger and more advanced military launched an invasion, Doha wouldn’t have even been able to replicate Kuwait’s ill-fated resistance to Saddam Hussein’s infamous August 1990 invasion.
However, when the blockade ended in 2020, much had changed. Qatar had gone on a shopping spree for Western military hardware. It ordered almost 100 4.5-generation fighters of three types—the F-15QA, Dassault Rafale, and Eurofighter Typhoon—and German-built Leopard 2A7+ main battle tanks. It also has AH-64E Apache helicopter gunships and Patriot missile defense systems.
Since it had prior warning of the Iranian ballistic missile attack in June, Qatar successfully scrambled F-15QAs and Apaches on continuous combat air patrols on the lookout for drones and activated its Patriots across its territory. While no drones came that night, Qatari and American Patriot batteries successfully intercepted the limited and largely symbolic Iranian missile barrage on Al-Udeid.
That wasn’t the case on Tuesday, with the Israeli attack seemingly catching Qatar by surprise and off guard. It remains unclear what direction the Israeli jets and drones even came from. It is, of course, possible that they used Iraqi airspace again as they did repeatedly throughout the June war.
Whatever the case, despite amassing a large and advanced military arsenal, Qatar failed to either deter or hinder the Israeli strike, as did the foreign military forces it hosts on its soil.
Doha had long calculated that its official role as a mediator in the Gaza war insulated it from Israeli attacks against the Hamas political leadership, as did its hosting of the largest U.S. airbase in the entire Middle East. Israel’s action on Tuesday shattered these once reassuring and comforting illusions.
Iran’s state-run Press TV caustically questioned why the U.S. did not fire “a single shot to defend Qatar” using its air defenses based in the country.
While Qataris may now indeed question the value of their military cooperation with the United States and its designation of Qatar as a major non-NATO ally, Turkey’s military presence in the country also failed to prevent Israel from attacking.
Turkey reassured Qatar early in the Saudi-led blockade by swiftly increasing its military presence at its base in the country, which could have complicated and raised the stakes of any attack by its Arab Gulf neighbors. The six Turkish F-16s stationed in Qatar since July 2024 recently exceeded 1,000 flight hours in joint exercises with Qatar’s diverse fighter fleet.
“Turkish F-16s have been participating in joint training and exercises with aircraft from the Qatari Armed Forces inventory, directly contributing to the development of Qatar Air Force defense capabilities,” Turkiye Today reported on June 1.
“Israel’s successful operation in Doha indirectly demonstrated that the Turkish presence in Qatar might be insufficient in defending its airspace,” wrote geopolitical analyst Ceng Sagnic in a post on X.
“Regardless of whether Turkey avoided engagement with Israeli jets, failed to detect them, or Qatar demanded neutrality, this development will resonate in Washington due to a potentially serious shift in the Middle East’s power balance.”
Again, Qatar isn’t likely to retaliate militarily against Israel for political and logistical reasons. It’s most likely to arrange a coordinated, multilateral diplomatic response to Israel over this action.
In the long term, Doha may signal its displeasure with the United States and its Western allies over this attack by turning again to China for certain weapons. Doing so would undermine the U.S. goal of limiting Chinese arms sales to the Arab Gulf states. Doha could conceivably seek HQ-22 or HQ-9B strategic systems from Beijing to bolster and diversify its air defenses. Such a move wouldn’t be unprecedented, considering Qatar had studied buying Russian S-400 missiles during the blockade.
While the smoke from Tuesday’s strike has now cleared, the full extent of its fallout almost certainly remains to be seen.