Washington will defend Qatar from future attacks, including with military force if needed, according to an executive order that U.S. President Donald Trump signed on Monday.
“The United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States,” the order states.
If the Gulf state is attacked, Washington “shall take all lawful and appropriate measures, including diplomatic, economic and, if necessary, military, to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar, and to restore peace and stability,” the order says.
Jonathan Ruhe, director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told JNS that Trump’s order is “misguided” and “counterproductive.”
“It’s basically rewarding Qatar for a whole slew of policies that run counter to any understanding of U.S. interests in the region—its support for Al Jazeera, its enablement of Hamas and encouragement of Hamas’s intransigence in the Gaza negotiations,” Ruhe said.
The order is “fairly unprecedented,” according to the JINSA official.
“We haven’t had a peacetime guarantee of another state’s sovereignty like this that obliges us to do contingency planning to support them militarily even if they’re attacked,” he told JNS.
The United States has made security guarantees with other countries, but those arrangements have been reciprocal. In this case, Qatar is “getting something for nothing,” according to Ruhe.
“This is in response to Israel’s strike on Hamas targets in Doha last month,” he said.
Simon Henderson, Baker senior fellow and director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told JNS that the executive order is a “huge gesture” supporting Qatar.
It seems to be a “slap down” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said.
