Strikes on Qatar, Poland shake US sway among friend and foe

The shock Israeli strike against Hamas officials in Doha, followed by Russian drones piercing the airspace of NATO ally Poland, delivered twin blows to President Donald Trump’s longtime boast that friends and foes respect the U.S. under his leadership like never before.

Trump voiced unhappiness with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for sending warplanes to attack the capital of Qatar, a major U.S. ally, but has otherwise resisted getting more involved. He has declined to denounce Russia’s drone incursion into Poland, saying Thursday it “could have been a mistake but regardless I’m not happy about anything having to do with that whole situation.”

Trump’s removed attitude contrasts sharply with his repeated claims about his unique ability to solve the world’s intractable conflicts. While he has conceded that Russia’s war in Ukraine — which he once pledged to resolve on his first day back in office — has been more difficult than anticipated, he recently said President Vladimir Putin “wants to make a deal for me.”

“The problem here is there is too much ambiguity in U.S. policy,” said Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “On the one hand we could not be more strongly against Hamas and Hamas terrorism, but on the other hand, we let the Qataris get away with supporting it.”

Abrams, a senior official in the first Trump administration, added that more clarity also is needed on the U.S. policy toward Russia, since “this isn’t just a war between Russia and Ukraine, and our position is we want peace. It’s a war of aggression against a friend by an enemy.”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk pushed back against Trump’s assertions on Friday, saying in a post on X that the “drone attack” by Russia “wasn’t a mistake.” Speaking to reporters a day earlier, Tusk said that the country’s president had received assurances about the U.S.’s “absolute allied commitment and full support for Poland” in a call with Trump earlier this week.

In response to questions about the president’s ability to influence the actions of allies and adversaries, the White House said Trump had boosted global stability and security by leveraging the “power of peace through strength and American economic might.”

Israel’s strike in Qatar, which the White House has said was conducted without U.S. approval, also thrust Trump into an awkward position between two allies, prompting the president to express regret and promise that it wouldn’t happen again — a tough pledge to keep since Netanyahu said the strike was “a wholly independent Israeli operation.”

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, meanwhile, told CNN the strike “killed any hope” for the release of remaining Israeli hostages seized by Hamas in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack against Israel.

At the same time, and in a sign that the U.S. support for Israel hadn’t been broken, the White House pointed to the incident as an “opportunity for peace” — echoing Netanyahu’s statements even as Trump said he was “very unhappy” with the unilateral strike.

Regarding actions of his friends, the risk is that Trump is seen as tacitly green-lighting what’s actually against U.S. interests.

The strike on Qatari soil is “a clear sign that the Israeli government is concluding that there are no rules, just capabilities,” said Jon Alterman, Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Israel is seeking to completely destroy Hamas, which many of its allies have cautioned is impossible.”

Qatar is a major non-NATO ally and hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East. Qatari air defenses were key to the defense of Al Udeid Air Base from an Iranian strike in June. The fact that the U.S. alerted the Qataris immediately after discovering the operation was underway could explain why Israel did not inform the U.S. beforehand.

“It is clear now to all that Washington’s stated focus on so-called quiet diplomacy not only is failing to yield results, but this is fraught with generating new risks and further escalating tensions in the already fraught atmosphere,” Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, said at a Security Council meeting on Thursday.

Trump already has bucked political norms by engaging directly with Putin, who had been shunned by the West since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. After hosting the Russian leader in Alaska, Trump suggested that a ceasefire and eventual permanent settlement could be close.

Instead, Russia has launched a series of devastating strikes against Ukraine, and prompted NATO ally Poland to shutter a major airport and scramble jets in response to a Russian drone incursion into its airspace.

The latest turn of events has allies growing more nervous that Trump isn’t being aggressive enough with Putin and using the U.S.’s full leverage. It’s also prompting European countries to take action. France and Germany pledged to reinforce Poland’s defenses. On Friday, France announced it would summon Russia’s ambassador to protest the “absolutely unacceptable” drone incursion, according to Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot.

“One does not accidentally launch multiple drones at Poland,” Gabrielius Landsbergis, former foreign minister of Lithuania said on X Wednesday. “This was a deliberate act of aggression. If NATO’s response is only the usual mumblings – such attacks will be normalized, and then more dangerous possibilities for further frog-boiling escalations will open up to Putin.”

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Congress is prepared to authorize “bone-crushing new sanctions and tariffs” for Trump to deploy, while urging European nations to impose their own sanctions against India and China for purchasing Russian oil.

“The U.S. president should say that these kinds of incursions are unacceptable, whether intentional or not,” said Christopher Chivvis, director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “At the same time, we would obviously want to treat a mistake differently than an intentional incursion.”

—With assistance from Claudia Cohen.