Doha Wasn’t a One‑Off: What Israel’s 9 September Strike Signals?

Muhanad Seloom

Assistant Professor in Critical Security Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and a researcher in security and military studies at the Strategic Studies Unit, Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies. He is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter (UK). His research focuses on government security policies, strategy and defence studies, and ethno-nationalist conflicts. Dr Seloom previously taught at the University of Exeter (UK) and served as director of the Iraqi Centre for Strategic Studies in London.

Introduction

On 9 September 2025, Israel launched an airstrike in Doha targeting Hamas’s senior political leadership. The strike killed five Hamas-affiliated figures and a Qatari Internal Security Force (Lekhwiya) officer, while Hamas stated its top leaders survived. Washington described the operation as a unilateral Israeli decision and said the White House was notified only after missiles were already airborne, an account disputed by reporting that Netanyahu briefed President Trump shortly beforehand. Trump publicly said he was “very unhappy” about the attack, an unusually blunt rebuke of Israel.

The Doha strike is best understood not as an aberration but as the latest node in a widening campaign of extraterritorial assassinations. It follows the killing of Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut (January 2024) and Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran (July 2024), and it was immediately followed by Israeli strikes in Yemen. Together, these episodes mark an inflection: assassination has shifted from episodic tactic to sustained strategy, reshaping the regional order by normalising sovereignty violations in the name of deterrence.

Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies