A former Qatari prime minister has said that the war on Iran is part of decades-long Israeli efforts to violently reshape the region, and that a unified “Gulf Nato” must be urgently established.
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, who is also the former Qatari foreign minister, made the comments in a wide-ranging interview on Al Jazeera’s Al Muqabala programme.
“We are witnessing a major restructuring of the region,” Sheikh Hamad said.
He said that hardline Israelis, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had been trying to get the US to go to war with Iran over its nuclear programme since the 1990s under President Bill Clinton’s administration.
The veteran diplomat said that previous US governments had been hesitant for a full scale war, including Donald Trump’s first administration.
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He said that Netanyahu had finally succeeded in selling Washington an “illusion”.
“He convinced the US administration that the war would be short and swift, and that the Iranian regime would fall within weeks,” he said, and made reference to the US’s capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Greater Israel
“America’s true power has always been in its ability to avoid using force, not in deploying it,” Sheikh Hamad added.
He said that Netanyahu was the biggest beneficiary of the war on Iran, and added that the leader was using it to reshape the region and to market a vision for a “Greater Israel” with expanded borders.
Since the US and Israel launched its war on 28 February, Iran has responded by attacking every country in the Gulf including Qatar. The strikes have targeted US military bases, as well as energy and civilian infrastructure.
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Sheikh Hamad condemned Iran’s attacks on energy, industrial and civilian infrastructure in the Gulf, and added that Gulf states had explicitly opposed the conflict.
He said that despite anger over Iran’s strikes, Iran’s geographic proximity meant that coexistence was necessary and that dialogue was needed between the Gulf and Tehran.
The influential former leader said that Gulf disunity was a bigger threat than Iran, Israel or foreign bases in the region.
To address this, he said that a “Gulf Nato” needed to be created, made of strategically aligned Gulf states with Saudi Arabia as the backbone.
He said that while US bases in the region had provided deterrence for decades, Washington pivoting its focus to Asia and China meant that the Gulf could not rely indefinitely on the US security umbrella.
Instead, he noted, Gulf states needed to develop strategic partnerships with powers such as Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt.
Elsewhere, Sheikh Hamad condemned Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, and said that intelligence showed that Israel was plotting to depopulate the enclave by encouraging Palestinians to leave.
He said that discussions around the disarmament of Hamas must come with a political horizon for an independent Palestinian state.
Sheikh Hamad praised Saudi Arabia for not normalising relations with Israel unless such a roadmap occurred – a position he said had disrupted Netanyahu’s calculations.
