Netanyahu calls Qatar ‘hostile state’ as Doha pushes back against Iran
Qatar Faces Pressure From Two Directions as Netanyahu Labels It a "Hostile State" and Tehran Disputes Strike Accounts
Poinews.com – Doha found itself caught between two fronts this week: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly branded the Gulf emirate a "hostile state" in a televised interview, while simultaneously pushing back against Iranian claims about missile and drone strikes that hit Qatari soil earlier this year. The twin pressures underscore how tightly the small, gas-rich nation is drawn into regional fault lines despite its repeated insistence that it is not a belligerent party.
Netanyahu's Interview and the Doha Bombing
Speaking to Israel's i24NEWS, Netanyahu dismissed suggestions that Qatar had shaped Israeli decision-making during the Gaza war. He acknowledged the emirate's adversarial posture but insisted it had never dictated policy in Jerusalem.
"Qatar is a hostile state, but Qatar is not a state that dictated anything here," Netanyahu said.
He went further, explicitly referencing the September 2025 airstrike on Doha itself.
"I attacked Qatar — I also bombed it," he added.
That strike, carried out in September 2025, targeted senior Hamas negotiators who were in the Qatari capital at the time, engaged in talks over a US-backed ceasefire framework for Gaza. Six people lost their lives in the attack, including one member of Qatar's own security forces. Hamas later confirmed that its senior negotiating team survived the bombardment. Doha condemned the operation as a breach of its sovereignty, a characterization that carried particular weight given that Qatar had hosted multiple rounds of mediation between the warring sides.
The diplomatic fallout was swift. Later that same month, Netanyahu offered an apology during a trilateral phone call involving US President Donald Trump and the Qatari prime minister, stating that Israel would not repeat such an operation. The episode remains a sore point in bilateral relations and frames the backdrop against which his latest remarks land.
The Qatari Funds Question
Netanyahu's interview was prompted by a domestic Israeli debate over the transfer of Qatari money into Gaza in the period before the 7 October 2023 Hamas assault on southern Israel. He defended his government's handling of those transfers, explaining that the money was earmarked for humanitarian distribution and that the flow had been endorsed by Israeli security agencies.
Qatar has consistently rejected the implication that its aid channels funded Hamas. Doha maintains that its contributions reached Palestinians in Gaza through mechanisms fully visible to both Israel and the United States, and that no portion was diverted to the militant group. The issue resurfaces periodically in Israeli political discourse, particularly ahead of elections or when questions arise about pre-war intelligence assessments.
No immediate public reaction came from the Qatari government to Netanyahu's latest characterization.
The Qatar–Iran Dispute Over Strike Targets
While Netanyahu's words occupied headlines in Jerusalem, a separate diplomatic confrontation was unfolding between Doha and Tehran over the nature of Iranian missile and drone attacks that struck Qatari territory beginning on 28 February.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei cited a Qatari security assessment prepared for the International Telecommunication Union, arguing the document demonstrated that Iranian strikes were aimed primarily at US military installations and had not targeted civilian zones. He noted that nearly all attacks were directed at American facilities, with the sole exception being a March strike on gas-processing infrastructure at Ras Laffan. Baghaei contended that those Ras Laffan facilities had been supporting US military operations against Iran, thereby placing them within the scope of a legitimate military response.
Qatar's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari pushed back sharply on Friday, accusing Tehran of cherry-picking language from the same document to suit its narrative.
"If the Iranian side wishes to reference official documentation, we invite it to refer to the record formally submitted by the State of Qatar to the United Nations," Al Ansari said.
He pointed to Qatari filings with the UN that documented Iranian missiles traversing civilian, commercial, and residential airspace, and noted that prior strikes had produced physical damage and injuries among non-combatants. Al Ansari also objected to Iran's characterization of the Ras Laffan incident as merely "alleged," stressing that the strike had been formally recorded and verified by Qatari authorities.
"The State of Qatar is not a party to this conflict," he stated, adding that attacks on Qatari territory and civilian infrastructure could not be justified as legitimate responses.
Diplomatic Channels and Forward Trajectory
On the same Friday, Qatar dispatched letters to the UN Secretary-General and to the president of the Security Council, formally rejecting Iran's legal justification for the campaign of strikes that commenced on 28 February. Doha affirmed that Tehran remained accountable under international law and that Qatar retained both the right to self-defence and the right to seek compensation for documented damage.
The emirate also signalled that it would continue pursuing diplomatic avenues aimed at de-escalating tensions across the region. For a country whose economy depends heavily on liquefied natural gas exports routed through the Persian Gulf, maintaining neutral ground while absorbing the collateral effects of a larger confrontation is a persistent strategic challenge. The simultaneous pressure from Jerusalem's rhetoric and Tehran's contested strike narratives places Qatar in an uncomfortable position: expected to remain aloof from a conflict it did not start, yet unable to ignore the physical and diplomatic costs of being in its crossfire.
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