The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Everybody Wants to Bomb Qatar || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

Israeli airstrikes on Hamas targets in Qatar mark a significant shift in Israel's positioning in the region.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/everybody-wants-to-bomb-qatar

Hey, Peter Zine here, come to you from Colorado. And today we're going to talk about what went down on September 9th in the Middle East. Specifically, the Israelis dropped a few bombs and missiles on sites in the country of Qatar. That's a little thumb-like thing in the Persian Gulf, small country, less than a million population. Going after some Hamas targets, Hamas, of course, is the military-slash political group that used to run Gaza and is now on the receiving end of the Israeli occupation campaign of Gaza. Three big things. Oh, my God. So many things.

Three big things that come from this. First of all, let's talk about Israel. Israel has never, ever, ever bombed anyone in the Persian Gulf. I mean, they've gone after Lebanon because it's right there. They've gone after Syria, especially as it's fallen apart. And they've gone after Iran most recently in a big way. But the last time they bombed anyone else was like in the 1980s, they took out a nuclear reactor in Iraq. And before that, you're talking about the Arab-Israeli wars of the 1970s and 1960s and 1950s. This is a significant escalation. There's been an expansion of their capabilities as they've gotten the joint strike fighter. They've gotten better weapons from the United States that have better range. Looks like what happened is they flew down into the Red Sea and launched missiles over Saudi Arabia to hit gutter.

They didn't do a direct overflight, probably. And this level of aggression, this willingness to ramp up, this newborn policy of taking action wherever and why ever is immense because, you know, gutter is a U.S. Saudi Arabia is a U.S. ally. And for the Israelis to just be so brazen. This is something that is going to continue until and unless a significant series of countries that includes up to and in the United States, levies some sort of massive economic or military penalty on Israel for acting like this way. At the moment, it doesn't seem like that is in the cards. And honestly, if you're in the Persian Gulf, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf like Dutter or the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, there's really nothing you can do. So this is the new.

norm of Israel just dropping bombs wherever in the region it wants to. And that will cause any number of political complications and strategic complications because at the moment, they're going after Hamas, but there are other militant groups that the Israelis are not big fans of. And should a government in the region become more hostile, the Israelis have now demonstrated that really doesn't matter what your air defense systems are. The Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Gutter, they have some shiny hardware, but it's clear they don't know how to use it very well. And as the Israelis discovered with Iran, even if you've got stuff that you've integrated over decades, it really can't stand up to the technology the Israelis

can bring to bear. So all the royal houses of this region are now on notice. And if they do things that the Israelis don't like, they can expect visits by explosives. The one thing that was really holding back the Israelis before from doing things like this is the idea if you knock off the government that you could have Sunni jihadists boil up and turn the area into a scarred wasteland that would eventually cause problems for Israel. Well, some version of that has happened in Syria and Israel looks just fine. So if the nightmare situation is not something to be avoided, then destabilizing the neighborhood is something they don't have a problem with. So that all of that is number one, the Israeli side. Number two is the Qatari side. Qatar is a small country. It doesn't have a lot

going forward except for a big natural gas field, a little bit of oil. And in doing so, it's become one of the richest countries in the world in per capita terms because there's very few people. The locals are one of the fatest humans in history because the national security program, as run by Doha, the capital, is to get everybody heart disease and obesity so that they can't protest. So, I mean, these are a whole country of tubbos that basically do nothing but eat all day. And they're serviced by a couple, maybe in four million today, expats who basically take care of their every whim.

As a result, no shock that they don't know how to use their own military equipment. What they do have, however, is ambition and arrogance in just supreme levels. The ruling government of Doha, the ruling family, is convinced that they were ordained by Allah himself to be a major power. And since they were late to the game, they basically went out and cut deals with everyone that nobody else would deal with. So they deal with the Muslim Brotherhood. They deal with Hamas.

They deal with everybody. In order to prove how important they, they were. are and they throw a lot of cash out whatever the issue happens to be. So they are on the opposite side of a lot of the other Sunni governments in the region. And so while no one in the region is thrilled that the Israelis have gone and basically proven how powerless that they are in the face of a superior military force, there are a lot of countries, most notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that are pointing at gun and kind of going, her, because they are not loved at all. And seeing them taken down. And seeing them taken down.

by such a big notch and made to look so incompetent and so impotent is honestly very rewarding to a great number of people. What impact this will have on Qatari foreign policy moving forward is unclear, but certainly Israel is indicating to them that there's certain lines they just can't cross or bombs will fall. The government was not targeted. This was all targeted against Hamas groups, and the Hamas groups were only kind of sort of taken out because they use longer range weaponry but we now know with refueling that the Israelis could easily get there and back with more precise weapons. So something to watch for the future. In the meantime, gutter's on notice. Third, and perhaps most importantly, is how the United States fits into this.

Gutter is the location of CENTCOM headquarters. This is where the United States coordinates everything throughout the entire region, including the recently closed down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And a lot of countries in the region, and up to and including Israel until very recently, until last week, thought that having sentcom headquarters in gutter made gutter bulletproof because the Americans offered an express security guarantee to the country. Well, that has proven to be wrong, and we now have a really interesting situation shaping up. If the United States is willing to allow countries to bomb places where it has bases and not do anything, that makes the United States look two things. And for Israel specifically, Donald Trump is now in a position where he can't get the Israeli government to do or to not do anything.

The Americans were notified of the attack less than 10 minutes before the missiles flew. No way, no way, enough time to get through the chain of command for Trump to say call up Benjamin and Yahoo, who is the prime minister of Israel and say, don't do this. So the United States is now being actively ignored by the country in the region that is supposedly its closest religious demographic and strategic ally in the region. That is not a good look for an administration who thinks that it's tough. And that will have consequences here, there, and a lot of places in between.