San Marcos, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Within the span of 24 hours in early September, Russia deployed drones into Polish airspace, and Israel launched an aerial attack in Doha, Qatar.
Although few commentaries were made connecting the two events, both states deployed airpower to regional collective security organizations, specifically the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), respectively.
Both aerial attacks showed that there are no consistent U.S. security guarantees to the Gulf States or European countries, at least during the Trump administration. Juan Cole examines how Riyadh sought security guarantees from Pakistan, creating a hybrid “Islamic NATO.” Yet, this is a bilateral alliance, not a collective security organization, just yet.
The Trump administration has made multilateral alliances tenuous, in the face of two actors, Russia and Israel, that act with unilateral belligerence, which is not checked by the U.S. In the process, both attacks represented the culmination of a strategy where Putin and Netanyahu are seeking to shape, control, and configure Eastern Europe and the Middle East from the air, reshaping their respective regions from miles above their soil.
From Terrestrial to Aerial Assassinations
Both Israel and Russia have a long history of covert operations and on-the-ground assassinations. For example, in 2018, the Novichok nerve agent was used to poison Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. In 1997, then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu targeted the political leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, in Amman, Jordan, with an opioid-derived poison. In both cases, the assassins were apprehended, highlighting the risks associated with these operations.
Israel has targeted members of Fatah, Hamas, and weapons scientists working for Saddam Hussein’s super cannon or Iran’s nuclear scientists on the ground. It has never been confirmed that its intelligence agency, Mossad, was responsible.
Since then, Israel’s policy of aerial assassinations has become a deeply embedded part of its foreign policy that threatens the regional order. Israel has carried out aerial assassinations of Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh in Iran and Hizballah’s Nasrallah in Beirut in 2024, and in September also targeted high-ranking members of the Houthis in Sana’a. This has been Netanyahu’s preferred method of “counterterrorism.”
He also pursued “counter proliferation” instead of non-proliferation of Iran’s nuclear program. Non-proliferation included the talks between Iran and the U.S. in Oman to resolve issues related to Iran’s nuclear enrichment on its soil.
Counter-proliferation involves using military force to destroy nuclear-related materials. Not only did Israel attempt to bomb Iran’s stockpiles and nuclear facilities from the air over 12 days, but the U.S. also assisted by deploying its own B-2 stealth bombers and its so-called Mother of All Bombs. However, it remains uncertain whether either Israel or the US succeeded in implementing counter-proliferation, or if Iran’s nuclear stockpiles of enriched uranium were dispersed to other unknown sites.
Similarly, the US permitted Israel to carry out aerial strikes against Hamas in Doha while negotiations for a ceasefire were ongoing. In this instance, the operation also failed, with Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s chief negotiator, being wounded but surviving.
America’s Abdication of Gulf Security Guarantees
In September 2019, a barrage of cruise missiles and drones damaged two Saudi Aramco facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais, an attack claimed by Yemen’s Houthis. During the first Trump administration, the US did little to defend Saudi Arabia or offer any future security guarantees.
During the second Trump administration, Doha remained vulnerable to external attacks, despite the US having aircraft stationed at al-Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar. This showed that even an American presence on the ground cannot fully protect a nation’s sovereignty against Israel’s regional hegemonic ambitions.
For the first time since Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, a member of the GCC, a collective security organization, had been attacked by another country. Back then, the US provided security for the other Gulf states, restored Kuwait’s sovereignty, and went to the United Nations to gain diplomatic support for America’s six-week air war over Iraq.
When the US attacked Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, one of its goals was to destroy Iraq’s nuclear program, which it failed to do completely, even after a six-week attack. This past failure should serve as a lesson for Israel and the US, which tried to achieve the same goal in a 12-day war, during which Qatar found itself in the crossfire.
Punishing the Mediator
Serving as regional mediators is often a thankless task. Algeria took on this role in the 1970s, mediating between Iraq and Iran over the disputed shared waterway, the Shatt al-Arab, for example, Oman mediated between Iran and the U.S., only to have its efforts undermined by the 12-Day War, and Qatar also assumed this role in the 21st century for other conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
File. Doha, Qatar. © Juan Cole, 2025.
It is because of Qatari mediation during the first Trump administration that the U.S. was able to extricate itself from its Afghanistan quagmire. Yet, Trump repaid Qatar by first inviting Iranian retaliation on Qatari soil after he attacked Iran in June 2025 and then allowing Israel to violate its sovereignty once again.
While Iran has turned to China to strengthen its air defenses after the 12-day war, other nations in the region now have the incentive to go beyond both American assurances and anti-aircraft weapons to defend their skies.
The GCC, despite meeting after the Qatar attacks, has yet to respond coherently to Israel’s assaults. In this case, an arms race will begin in the region, especially for aerial defense systems, to protect a nation’s sovereignty against Israel’s regional hegemonic ambitions for air superiority over the entire Middle East.
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