President Donald Trump’s proposal to end the war in Gaza overshadowed another seismic foreign policy decision. In an executive order signed this week, Trump extended NATO-style protections to Qatar—a tiny emirate of 300,000 citizens now enjoying a security umbrella once reserved for Europe, Japan, South Korea, and, de facto, Israel. No Arab country has ever received such status. And the question is why.
To find answers, we should consider the context. The world now awaits Hamas’ answer to the proposal announced Monday at the White House, which has the backing of both Israel and the Arab League: hand over the hostages, disarm, and surrender control of Gaza to Palestinian technocrats backed by regional states and the West. Expect Hamas to try to equivocate, buy time, soften language, and insist on impossible guarantees while preserving levers of power. The Qataris’ leverage—financial, diplomatic, and logistical—could force the choice if they choose to deploy it.
The timing of this executive order could not have been more loaded, coming just weeks after an Israeli missile strike aimed at Hamas leaders gathering in Doha, under Qatar’s protection. The official story is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acted recklessly, blindsiding Washington and infuriating his indispensable patron. Trump then forced Netanyahu into an apology to the Qatari premier in a call from the White House on Monday—and then, astonishingly, rewarded Doha with a pledge that the U.S. would treat any attack on Qatar as an attack on itself. It would appear Israel had been punished and Qatar elevated.
But this account beggars belief. Are we really to believe that Israel—utterly dependent on U.S. arms, financing, and diplomatic cover—would strike inside Qatar, America’s closest Gulf partner, without notice? The strike passed through airspace that the U.S. effectively controls given its sprawling presence at Al Udeid Air Base, which the Pentagon calls its forward headquarters for Central Command. The U.S. Navy, too, relies on Qatar for part of its Gulf footprint, alongside Bahrain. To imagine Israel blindsiding Washington in this most sensitive theater strains credulity.
If Netanyahu really went rogue, it would have amounted to the most reckless gamble in Israeli history. In my experience as someone who has interviewed Netanyahu numerous times, he is not quite this stupid. Moreover, Washington’s response, if it truly had been blindsided, was curiously muted.
The only other plausible explanation is that everything—the strike, the semi-apology, the elevation of Qatar, and the proposal to end the war on Israel’s terms—is part of an elaborate choreography in which everyone eats just a bit of humble pie: Trump looks like Netanyahu blindsided him, Netanyahu is forced to apologize, and Qatar restores Israel to its lukewarm graces. And maybe, just maybe, forces Hamas to surrender in Gaza.
Either way, Qatar has vaulted into the front rank of U.S. allies. The September 29 executive order, titled “Assuring the Security of the State of Qatar,” declares that the United States will regard any armed attack on Qatari territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure “as a threat to the peace and security of the United States” and respond with “all lawful and appropriate measures—including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military” action. The implication, incredibly, is military action against Israel, if Netanyahu were to attack again. Normally, such a sweeping security guarantee would require the approval of Congress through a formal treaty—which in the Trump era is, of course, a fantasy.
For decades, Washington’s security guarantees in the Middle East were left deliberately ambiguous. Israel enjoyed unmatched backing but never a NATO-style pledge. The Gulf monarchies were protected in practice but never in codified manner. Egypt and Jordan received aid, not umbrellas. Now Qatar—a state that shelters Hamas leaders, bankrolls Muslim Brotherhood offshoots, and runs influence operations the world over—enjoys the protection of an American guarantee. For Doha, this is the jackpot.
At this moment, maximal pressure is needed on Hamas, and few actors have more leverage over it than Qatar. The emirate has funded its governance in Gaza (at times at Netanyahu’s unwise request) and hosted its leaders in exile for years. If the implicit bargain of Trump’s executive order is that Qatar severs those ties at last, and leaves Hamas in complete isolation, then the price may not only be defensible but strategically shrewd.
The American guarantee could force Doha to choose, once and for all, the West over Islamists, pragmatism over double games. If that is indeed the deal, the optics of Trump’s move look less like folly and more like calculated risk. Indeed, though Trump’s Qatar guarantee circumvented Congress, probably illegally, therein too lies the U.S.’ new leverage over the emirate: it can be taken away just as fast.
And yet, because this is Trump, many simply cannot believe it is only about strategy. Qatar recently gifted Trump a jet valued at hundreds of millions, intended to serve as a future Air Force One. For a president whose foreign policy has often blurred into personal business, the coincidence is too rich to ignore. To many, the executive order does not merely look like a radical departure in alliance structure; it carries the whiff of barter: NATO-like protections in exchange for a used plane.
The deeper story is about how America now conducts foreign policy. Once, major security guarantees required treaties, debate, and Senate consent—that was the constitutional design. Presidents were not meant to unilaterally commit the nation to war, or the risk of war, without Congress. Yet Trump has pushed this erosion to its extreme: issuing sweeping guarantees by executive fiat, waging tariff wars on dubious legal grounds, sending federal agents into American cities, and launching military operations abroad without meaningful oversight. In all this, Congress has been reduced to a bystander, while Trump counts on a largely sympathetic Supreme Court to indulge his expansion of presidential power.
So what really happened? Did Netanyahu blunder into the most dangerous rupture in U.S.–Israel relations since Dwight Eisenhower forced Israel out of Sinai? Or did he collude in a drama staged to elevate Qatar in exchange for pressure on Hamas to surrender? The hall of mirrors may never clear. But the outcome is beyond doubt: Qatar is the winner, and America has once again demonstrated that its foreign policy under Trump is a matter of presidential whim and fiat.
Dan Perry is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor (also leading coverage from Iran) and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books. Follow him at danperry.substack.com.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
