Bloomberg: Israel’s recent attack on Qatar ended in Iran’s favor.
Bloomberg offers an in-depth analysis of the implications of Israel’s attack on senior Hamas figures in Qatar this week for the dynamics of the entire Middle East, with an emphasis on the policies of the Gulf states.
According to Bloomberg, the attack undermines Gulf states’ confidence in American security guarantees. Among other things, this doubt could lead Gulf states to distance themselves from Western countries and form economic, political and military alliances with other powers, including Iran.
According to the report, the attack has damaged one of President Trump’s key foreign policy goals: weakening Iran and promoting greater integration between Israel and Arab states. In response, Bloomberg says, countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar are finding greater incentive to normalize relations with the Zionist regime while distancing themselves from what they call a “more hegemonic Israel,” which is perceived as an actor that undermines regional security stability.
“When Arabs feared Iran, it threatened the Gulf states, which led some of them to turn to Israel,” Egyptian commentator Mustafa Fahas told Bloomberg. “Now, Israel, which is out of control, is causing them to back away from normalization and may even deepen their good relations with Iran.”
According to the report, and in line with yesterday’s controversial remarks, Bloomberg quoted an official in the country as saying that the UAE was not prepared for such an attack on Qatar and believes that Israel is increasingly moving towards Iranian interests by becoming a threat to regional stability.
Meanwhile, it was reported today that Israeli arms manufacturers have been banned from participating in one of the world’s largest aerospace exhibitions, scheduled to be held in Dubai in November. The incident is a sign of the deterioration of relations between Israel and countries in the region.
Kuwaiti scholar Abdulaziz Al-Anjari emphasized to Bloomberg what he called the irony of the event: “Israel carried out the same attack that it had previously warned the Gulf states that Iran would launch. In other words, it turned Iran’s warning into its own action.” He claimed that the attack would lead to the perception that “the U.S. security umbrella no longer provides full coverage.” The attack would effectively reduce Israel’s defenses against its actions, and that this situation is irreversible.
However, Robert Staloff, senior director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the fact that the Gulf states only responded rhetorically might indicate that the attack “is being viewed as a one-time event caused by unique circumstances, not a fundamental shift in strategy.”
According to a European diplomat in the Gulf, the Gulf states (Robert W.) are now thinking that Israel could attack any of its perceived enemies in the region, and that the entire Middle East is a potential battlefield for it. “So it makes them ask: Where is Israel’s next target? Riyadh or Abu Dhabi?”
“It was very clear that the Trump administration gave Netanyahu a blank check, and now you are seeing the results,” he added. “The lack of American leadership in Gaza and many other places seems to be hitting the Gulf states hard and worrying them,” he said.
“Israel has now proven to be a direct threat to the security of the Gulf states, and they are not prepared to deal with it,” Hassan al-Hassan, a Middle East policy researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Bahrain, told Bloomberg. “The attack on Qatar should make the Gulf states rethink how they view their relations with the United States.”
Al-Hassan added that the Gulf states’ proximity to Moscow or Beijing would anger the Trump administration, but the Gulf states could consider countries that have “friendlier relations with the US,” such as Turkey, Pakistan, India, and Indonesia, to improve their security and even accelerate their weapons production.