Israel's strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar shatters Gulf's faith in US protection | Hacker News Reader

Israel's strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar shatters Gulf's faith in US protection

theguardian.com

40 pointsNomDePlum30 comments

I'm surprised that anyone can believe to be protected from Israel. Neither the US or European countries demand accountability when Israel kills their any of their citizens; the EU and even the US have curtailed freedom of speech to benefit Israel; in its favour they send the police against their own citizens to disrupt protests, and betray their deepest values and international law. It's clear that in the West, Israel's interest comes before everything else.

Theo whole situation is so messed up. Israel declares Hamas as the enemy and invades Gaza, the US supports and declares Hamas a terrorist organization. US has friendly relations with Qatar, Qatar gives the US a 747 while also hosting Hamas. The whole Middle East is f…ed up and nothing that’s done makes sense.

And if there wasn't any oil there, most of these problems wouldn't exist (for the US anyway).

There would still be Israel but it definitely be much easier to navigate.

The US is has been a net exporter of oil and gas since the fracking revolution during the Bush administration.

Could you share your source? The USA only became a net exporter of total energy in 2019, ten years after the end of George W Bush's administration, and remains a net importer of crude oil: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/imports-...

The United States has been an annual net exporter of natural gas since 2016, 7 years after the end of George W's administration: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/imports-and-...

Israel attacked 6 countries within 72 hours during "cease fire" talks. If all neighbors are a "threat" I wonder who the real problem is.

But ... nobody should have faith in air defense for an area bigger than a few square kilometers. If anybody promises that, their only option is a separate air defense system for every few square kilometers. I don't know but I doubt that sort of thing is deployed anywhere outside of Ukraine or Washington. And in Ukraine only the places that are currently engaged in active warfare. Not even Brussels or Israel has that. In Israel, only specific borders and some city centers are protected (much like in Ukraine) but the grand total of protected areas is not going to be that much. Even Tel Aviv airport did not have active air defense systems, partly because that's much harder, though probably now a few of smart Israeli have been told to solve the hard problem.

And if anybody has faith that even the best such systems would protect against a cruise or ballistic missile with a nuke on board, they don't.

>But ... nobody should have faith in air defense for an area bigger than a few square kilometers. If anybody promises that, their only option is a separate air defense system for every few square kilometers.

It's not about their faith in air defense from the US. It's about their faith in the US defending them (not through air defense, through deterence, diplomacy, and so on), since it colluded with Israel to let it bomb their territory.

That said, not sure how much is the faith of their leaders "shaken". They probably already knew at the top level.

If they didn’t learn from Ukraine (which was supposed to be protected by the US in return for giving up nuclear weapons), hopefully this lesson sticks. US security guarantees are of no value due to political whims.

Uh, Qatar has colluded with hamas, in fact they are colluding with hamas, who have killed US civilians and attacked the US army. So the Qatari government has done worse to the US ... so what? Are they claiming the moral high ground? Seriously? Oh right, they see themselves as superior, they are god, and the entire world needs to be punished in revenge for this "disrespect" to their "power". Yes, raising a stink about this is clearly necessary to protect some Al-Thani ego, but a stink is all they can have.

Qatar is an ally of the US for one reason, and one reason only: to sell their oil. Both to have an export market and because they have absolutely zero hope of getting their oil dug up in the first place, and safely past Iranian waters without US military support. Oh and they have some somewhat conveniently located land the US uses for that deal. Frankly, neither Iran nor Russia or China can offer a deal 10% as sweet as the US offers them, plus you'd have to be totally insane to trust these them.

So when it comes to Qatar's position, the cold analysis is simple: this does not matter, does not change anything.

Here's a fun little corollary. Israel has nuclear weapons, and Iran is working on it. Gulf states, so far, appear not to have been pursuing this path. They probably felt effectively protected by the US, and felt they would lose their relationship with the US if they did pursue this path.

But now, that's gone. US is not protecting them, and they are between two belligerent nuclear powers.

1, 2, 3, what's the natural conclusion? And what happens when a fractioned region enters a nuclear race?

All Qatar had to do was to look at Ukraine to see how some of US promises are worth in the current administration. Better luck next time.

That's a simplistic take. If the US decried the attack, then all that would change is this article would say something about the US supporting hamas, and someone else instead of yourself would have called out the US for antisemitism.

Swings and roundabouts. As someone above said, the whole place is a basket case.

> If the US decried the attack

There would have been no attack to decry

Exactly. The last two years have proven to bibi that no matter who rules the US, they'll let him do whatever he wants

Either the Qataris knew about it and threw one of their citizens under the bus or they didn't know about it and they won't do anything to avenge one of their citizens. Either way their reputation amongst the Arab word as the U.S.' useful idiot stands.

Imagine having all the money in the world only to let people walk all over you, phew.

I think these countries have to somehow balance their reputation amongst Arabs while maintaining oil revenue, supporting terrorist organizations, buying western weapons, not getting attacked by Israel and not having an internal revolution that overthrows their dictatorships. A very difficult task.

You never can tell if text is satire, but I assume you mean like how the US currently lets China walk all over.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com