The Duran Podcast - QATAR strike. Trump diplomacy and trickery

Episode Date: September 13, 2025

QATAR strike. Trump diplomacy and trickery

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what happened in Qatar. Your thoughts about another decapitation strike, decapitation attempt, because we are hearing that the Hamas leadership, they escaped this decapitation strike. Though there were people that were killed. People were killed in this strike in Qatar, but the negotiating team was not killed in the at least, that's the information that we're getting. The story that we're hearing from Israel, that this was some unilateral operation, a unilateral strike without any, any other country involved, and the story that we're getting from the White

House, which is that Trump was notified about this strike, right when it was happening, there was not enough time to warn the Qataris, who he has a very good relationship with, an excellent relationship with, and he called on Steepwood. off to call the Qataris and let them know. The stories that we're getting just don't add up at all. That's my opinion of it. It's hard to believe that it's hard to believe that I think it was 15 fighter jets or 10 fighter jets, Israeli fighter jets went across Jordan and Saudi Arabia with refueling, most

likely by the UK. That's what they're saying, without the U.S. military and the U.S. president knowing about what was going to happen, along with the U.S. military base, a massive military base and U.S. security guarantees in air defense systems in Qatar as well. Your thoughts on this. Well, I'm going to say straight away that I find the whole story completely unbelievable, and I'm sure most people do, and I'm sure, by the way, that the Qataris don't believe it either. In fact, now we see the same modus operandi playing. out once again. Way back last year, Nazrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, was lured into a meeting with his officials by apparently proposals for a ceasefire. And that brought him out into the open where the Israelis could kill him, which they did. Then a few months ago, back in June, we had the Iranians lulled into thinking that an attack on them wasn't about to happen because Arachi, the Iranian foreign minister, was about to meet Wikov in Oman.

And so they didn't take the necessary precautions, which by the way was stupid of them because reports were circulating all over the media in the US that an attack was coming. But anyway, they were lulled and the attack came and their top military people were all killed, and their top scientists were all killed, and Pezishkan himself, the president, was wounded, and it was just basically good luck that more Iranian leaders weren't killed also. And now the same thing has been tried all over again. The Hamas representatives in Qatar, in fact, the political leadership of Qatah, of Hamas, which is based in Qatar, informed about ceasefire proposals,

basically originating with the United States. They're supposed to meet together to discuss these proposals and the Israelis think they know where they are and they conduct a strike. This time, it turns out that they weren't there and as a result they survived. But as you correctly say, six or some people say seven people were killed, one of whom was a Qatari citizen and security official

who was not even a member of Hamas. So, I mean, this is awful. And I really can't express how bad it is to do this. These Hamas officials might have been utterly ruthless people. They might be people involved in an organization Hamas that commits acts of terrorism. And that narrative is all over the place and I'm not, I don't push back against it. The point is that they were engaged in diplomatic negotiations to conduct a ceasefire on the territory of a sovereign country, which is a friend of the United States,

and which had been asked by the United States, as is now clear, to host them. I mean, you don't kill envoys in the middle of a negotiation. I mean, this is an established, this is an established part of international law. Going back, millennia, you don't, an attack on a sovereign country, the territory of a sovereign country in this kind of way is an established act of war. engaging in this kind of duplicity is awful. It means that your word isn't trusted. And the President of the United States, I'm afraid he's now compromised because he says, oh, well, I didn't know anything. We're asked to believe that the mighty United States, with all its spies and satellites

and radar systems, with all its deep involvement with Israel, with its, officials in Israel, its embassy there, it's military people who are there on the ground in Israel. They didn't know anything at all about the fact that all these aircraft were taking off the Israeli bases. They fly across Jordan. They're refueled by the British and Cyprus. The Americans are present in Cyprus. They have all these radar systems, all of these drones, all of these things that still the president apparently didn't know. And, well, he, he, The attack then happens and people die. And the president, instead of coming out strongly, if he really didn't know,

and saying this is absolutely outrageous, this is absolutely appalling behavior. I want Netanyahu in Washington, in the Oval Office tomorrow. And I wanted to explain to me exactly what happened. and after he hears Netanyahu's explanations about why he deceived the United States, he tells Netanyahu that's it, you go. You can't attack my friends. You can't disrupt my negotiations in that kind of way. That's what a strong president, that's what John Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson even or Eisenhower would have done.

Instead of that, he phones up the Emir of Qatar. He publishes a meandering post on Truth Social. He says, oh, well, you know, I wasn't informed. I didn't know this wasn't right. It shouldn't have happened. Killing Hamas people is fine. But doing it in this way isn't the way it should be done. It won't happen again.

Of course, the Israelis are already coming out. There was an ambassador, Israeli ambassador, talking on Fox, and saying, absolutely. we're going to do it again. Netanyahu said it too. He said, if Qatar or any country doesn't remove the people that we don't like, we're just going to go in and kill them. That's pretty much what he said. Absolutely.

So, I mean, the president looks shifty and weak. And, you know, in some ways, if he'd been involved, and I'd tell the Qataris afterwards, look, this is, I'm backing the Israelis to the hills here. You get rid of Hamas people. You're no longer friends as the United States if you don't. Well, I wouldn't have agreed with it. I would have said that was terribly wrong, but it would have been a strong line,

even one that I disagreed with completely. But instead, he has, he tries always, as I said, to split the difference. and he looks weak and he looks in Netanyahu's pocket and the impression given around the world and in the Middle East in particular is that this is a president who can't be trusted and his negotiators can't be trusted and you can't really expect anything in the end definite and concrete from him. And what a terrible look just a few months after Trump visited the Gulf states

went to Saudi Arabia, gave a very impressive speech. The best speech he gave as president repudiating what the neocons were doing, seemed to be on the best of terms with the Gulf rulers. Apparently, there's word that they're already saying to each other, we can't rely on the United States. The United States isn't providing us protection. Israel is as dangerous to us as Iran ever was, we need to find other friends. And we know who those friends will be.

Yeah, but I mean, Saudi Arabia must have known something. I mean, the planes are flying over Saudi Arabia. They're being refueled by the UK. I mean, wouldn't Saudi Arabia have taken action? I mean, the whole thing is. It just seems implausible that this was just Israel working on its own. It's even implausible that this was just Israel and the United States. I mean, and I say the UK, because the UK will do whatever the United States tells it to do when it comes to stuff like this.

So, I mean, you know, could this have been only Israel in the United States? It doesn't seem like that's the situation. Well, well, indeed. I mean, there is the other view, which is that, of course, that they were all in, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and even Qatar. I don't know about Qatar. Yeah, I've heard that view.

I've read that view. Yeah, I know. But definitely has to be more countries than just Israel and the United States. Well, obviously. Well, obviously. But again, we come to the presidency. Well, first of all, even if more countries were involved,

it doesn't make what was done. right. I realized that people were killed in Jerusalem the previous day, but this is not the way to respond to an event like that. Absolutely not. And as I said, even if there are more actors in all of this that we know, that just makes it even more of a conspiracy. And in so ways, it makes it even more worse. It still damages the whole nature of international relations and especially diplomacy in the Middle East, where the situation seems to be drifting ever further towards war. So that's one thing to say. But secondly, if Saudi Arabia was involved, let's say Saudi Arabia was involved, let's say Jordan was involved. Saudi Arabia has had very difficult relations

with Qatar. I mean, very difficult relations with Qatar. At one point, they even came close during Trump's first term to go into war with each other. So, you know, they have that issue between them. Is it really wise for the United States, assuming Qatar was not involved to intensify into Arab conflicts in that kind of way? Qatar is on very good terms with Erdogan. Erdogan is Qatar's ally. He has previously sent troops to Qatar. Might he do that again now? I mean, however you look at it, this wasn't well thought out. And of course, what the other thing that it has done is that it has surely destroyed any possibility now of a ceasefire being negotiated in Gaza. So the big question that I have is, is why did the Trump administration do this?

I mean, first of all, this is becoming a pattern. This is absolutely becoming a pattern. Decapitation strikes, tricking your negotiators, your adversaries. Call them whatever you want, tricking the other side into believing that there's some sort of hope for some sort of a negotiation or some sort of peace or some sort of a ceasefire. I'll call it what you will. Getting them into one location and then going after them. I mean, this is a pattern.

No doubt about it. And most likely, Trump's going to use this over and over again, for example, Venezuela, might be the next use case of this decapitation strike strategy that he has going on. So in the case with Qatar, what does he benefit from this? What is the United States benefit from this? Why is he operating the United States, the Trump administration? Why is it operating in such a way? Have they sat down and decided, you know what?

Instead of trying to just, instead of trying to talk to country, instead of trying to use diplomacy, instead of worrying about boots on the ground, and instead of going through the difficult process of a color revolution or regime change, let's take the route of decapitation strikes. Yeah, that's what we'll do. and we'll trick countries into believing that we're good actors and that we're operating in good faith and then we'll just take them out and that that that that's like a shortcut of into a full regime change so we don't have to go through all the protests and the marches and the funding of NED and all these things. I mean, is this what they're thinking? Yeah. It seems like it is. That's incredible to believe that this is what they're thinking and then they can brand this as peace through strength and stuff like that.

I mean, this is just crazy stuff. It is exactly what they're thinking. And the reason they're thinking it is because the Israelis have told them after the attack on, the attacks on Hezbollah, the killing of Nazrallah and other members of the Hezbollah leadership, the Israelis have told them that it works, that this is the way that you solve these problems. I do believe it works. Either the opposite, I think it's going to make the situation. much, much worse in the end. It's also going to make leaders around the world extremely careful and wary of having any dealings with the United States. If you're in conflict with the United States now, you don't negotiate with them or have meetings with them because if you do, I mean, it's dangerous for you.

It is actually physically dangerous for you. So bear in mind that, say, during the Vietnam War, the United States did not conduct decapitation strike. against the Vietnamese leadership because eventually they wanted to negotiate with them. Just one example. Now that's been taken off the table. The Americans now have been persuaded that decapitation strikes work. You don't have to worry about boots on the ground. You don't have to worry about all the apparatus of color revolutions and NGOs and all of that,

which you don't really want to fund. So you just trick people into meetings and kill them in that way, and you think that solves the problem. Now, it hasn't. It doesn't solve the problem. I read an article in a media outlet, which we have in Britain called the Free Press, which is very, very much, I should say, on the neoliberal regime change side of the envelope. and a journalist there went to Lebanon and found that Hezbollah has recovered from the decapitation strikes that the Israelis conducted. And I should make it clear, this is a journalist who is very hostile to Hezbollah. In fact, he called them evil.

But nonetheless, he said that they're back. So I don't think removing leaders in that kind of way. ultimately solves any problems. I think in the long term it makes it worse. And when decapitation strikes were attempted in Iran in June, they failed. And, well, I don't think decapitation strikes are going to solve the other problems that Israel has or the United States has. But I think they've been persuaded that it does. And I think that's why they're embracing it. And in the case of the Middle East, I think the agenda is absolutely clear now. It is to seek military solutions for Israel's various problems, in other words, to seek victory.

Right. Okay. So we're heading towards more war. Absolutely. More decapitation strikes, more instability, more war, more, this stuff, yeah. Absolutely. And to repeat again what we've been saying in other programs, I am sure that there will be another attack on Iran within the next few months.

I don't have any doubt of it. Yeah. I don't think anyone doubts it. Yeah. Okay. The durand.locals.com. We are on X and Rumble and Telegram. Go to the Duran Shop.

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