US President Donald Trump denied knowledge of Israel’s strike on Qatar, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took full responsibility for the attack. On Tuesday (local time), the Israel Defence Forces announced that they had attacked Doha to target “the senior leadership of the Hamas terrorist organisation.”
Shortly after the development took centre stage, the American leader completely washed his hands clean off the “unfortunate” strike. Taking to his social media platform, Truth Social, he affirmed, “It was not a decision made by me.” Trump further divulged that he didn’t hear about the attack from Netanyahu, rather his administration officials shared the news about the Israel attack.
Trump denies involvement in Israeli strike on US ally Qatar
“Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a Sovereign Nation and close Ally of the United States, that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker Peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” he said on social media.
However, in the same breath, he drew attention to the potential elimination of Hamas as a “worthy goal.” Despite claiming to have any knowledge on the issue beforehand, he foregrounded his belief that as “unfortunate” as the incident was, it “could serve as an opportunity for PEACE.”
Extending his solidarity with the Qataris, Trump said that as he got to know about the quite late, his administration couldn’t employ any counter measures to prevent Israel’s doing.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared with the reporters on Tuesday that the Republican politician “immediately directed special envoy Witkoff to inform the Qataris of the impending attack, which he did.” She also divulged that Trump assured the Qataris during his call “that such a thing will not happen again on their soil.”
In an updated statement on his platform, Trump remarked that United States Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff‘s call to the Qataris was “unfortunately too late to stop the attack.” Speaking to reporters on Tuesday evening, he said he was “not thrilled about the whole situation.”
Simultaneously, he called on for the hostages to be released, still reiterating “we are not thrilled about the way that went down.” He subsequently told them a “full statement” would be issued on Wednesday.
US Vice President JD Vance has since also spoken out against the Israeli attack in Doha. “I mean, look, the president made very clear today that he’s not happy about that – we just left the Oval Office and spoke about that,” he told One America News Network. “You saw Karoline Leavitt, our great White House press secretary, talk about this – he doesn’t think this serves Israel’s interests or the United States’ interests, and so he’s not happy about it, but we’re going to keep on working for peace despite it.”
Much like Trump, Vance drew attention to “a silver lining” to the strike, saying, “it looks like it probably eliminated a couple of very bad guys from Hamas… even though we disagree with the underlying decision.”
Qatar vs Israel on what happened
Contrary to Leavitt’s statement, a senior Qatari official claimed that no information of the strike was relayed to them in advance, as cited by CNN. The official further added that by the Qatar found out about the impending threat, bombs had already started dropping in Doha.
Netanyahu called the resulting aftermath a “surgical, precision strike,” as Hamas members have long used the Qatari capital as their headquarters outside Gaza. The target country’s foreign ministry said the attack had impacted residential buildings that were home to multiple members of the Hamas political bureau. Qatar’s interior ministry added that a member of its security forces was also killed in the attack by Israel. Its UN ambassador has since condemned the strike, calling it a “criminal assault” and “cowardly” act.