The US-Israeli war on Iran is not the result of a sudden escalation but the culmination of a long-term Israeli agenda to forcibly reshape the Middle East, former Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani said, as quoted by Al Jazeera.
The veteran diplomat gave a stark assessment of the region's rapidly changing geopolitical landscape. He warned that the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is the most dangerous consequence of the conflict. Al Thani warns of Netanyahu's ambition for a "Greater Israel". The Qatari politician called for the urgent creation of a unified defense pact in the Persian Gulf.
"We are witnessing a major restructuring of the region," he said, noting that the current geopolitical upheavals will dictate the shape of the Middle East in the coming decades. As early as 2025, the sheikh warned of an impending conflict in the Persian Gulf and urged countries in the region to turn to diplomacy to avoid new military strikes.
According to him, Israel, led by Netanyahu, has been trying to drag the United States into a war over Tehran's nuclear program since the time of President Bill Clinton's administration. While previous US governments, including during the first term of President Donald Trump, hesitated to start a full-scale war against Iran, Netanyahu finally succeeded by selling Washington "an illusion", Sheikh Hamad claimed. According to him, Tel Aviv convinced Washington that the war would be short and that the Iranian regime would collapse within a few weeks.
The former Qatari prime minister criticized Washington's dependence on military power. "America's real strength has always been in its ability to avoid the use of force, not in its application," he believes. According to him, the current war has forced all parties to return to the negotiating table. The sheikh believes that the only winner of the war is Netanyahu. According to him, the Israeli prime minister is using the chaos to push his vision of a "Greater Israel".
Assessing Tehran's strategy, Sheikh Hamad said that Iran successfully took the initial military strikes during the war and subsequently delayed reaching an agreement after realizing that it could take advantage of a new strategic advantage - the Strait of Hormuz. According to him, Iran treats the vital sea route as its sovereign territory. He stressed that this poses a more immediate and serious threat to the global economy than Iran's nuclear program.
The former prime minister of Qatar believes that the Gulf states, not Washington, have borne the brunt of the crisis. He condemned Iranian attacks on energy, industrial and civilian infrastructure in the Gulf under the guise of targeting US interests. The sheikh added that the Gulf states oppose war.
He said Tehran has exhausted much of its political capital in the Gulf. He pointed out that geography dictates coexistence and called for frank, collective dialogue with Tehran, rather than fragmented, one-sided communications.
Sheikh Hamad said that the biggest threat to the Gulf is not Iran, Israel or foreign military bases, but internal disunity in the Gulf. To counter this, he proposes the creation of a "NATO in the Gulf" - a joint political and defense project starting with a core group of strategically aligned Gulf states, with Saudi Arabia serving as a natural backbone.
He said US bases in the region had provided a crucial deterrent for decades. But he warned that Washington's strategic pivot to Asia and the containment of China meant the Gulf could no longer rely indefinitely on the US security umbrella, and he called on Gulf states to develop long-term, interest-based strategic partnerships with regional powers such as Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt.
The Qatari politician also touched on the subject of Gaza. He condemned the killing of civilians by all sides but accused Israel of wreaking a "moral and political catastrophe" in the enclave. Sheikh Hamad warned of an Israeli plot to depopulate the Strip, citing intelligence. He said Palestinians were being offered money to leave the enclave.
He has firmly rejected any discussion of disarming Hamas without a guaranteed political horizon for an independent Palestinian state. Sheikh Hamad praised Saudi Arabia’s steadfast refusal to normalize relations with Israel without a roadmap for that—a position that deeply upsets Netanyahu’s regional calculus.
He is pleased with the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The former Qatari prime minister praised the new Syrian leadership’s pragmatism in avoiding Israeli provocations and urged it to focus on economic and institutional reconstruction after nearly 14 years of civil war.
Sheikh Hamad revealed that in the late 1990s, the Qatari leadership sent him to Tehran to deliver a message from the Clinton administration. The United States demanded that Iran hand over its nascent nuclear program to Russia or submit to international agreements. While Qatar acted strictly as an ambassador, Tehran considered Doha to be in line with the American position, he added.