Above photo: Jacquelyn Martin.
Qatar’s security cooperation with Israel failed to protect it from an Israeli strike on Doha.
The attack assassinated Hamas leaders in September.
While Arab states condemned Israel’s war on Palestinians in Gaza as a genocide, they were simultaneously secretly expanding military cooperation with the US and Israel to help defend against a war with Iran, leaked documents revealed by the Washington Post on 11 October show.
The documents, written between 2022 and 2025, show that officials from six Arab countries joined their Israeli and US counterparts for a series of meetings in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and Qatar over the past three years.
The documents described efforts by the US military to create the “Regional Security Construct,” which would include Israel, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
The documents refer to Kuwait and Oman as “potential partners” in the project.
The participants met to prepare to protect Israel during a possible war with Iran by integrating their forces with US air defense systems.
The documents show that the “centerpiece of the construct” was “an air-defense plan to combat Iran’s missiles and drones,” the Post wrote.
Israel and the Arab countries agreed in 2022 to coordinate military exercises and procure the equipment to make integration into US air defense systems possible.
By 2024, the US military had successfully linked many of the partner states to its systems, allowing them to provide radar and sensor data to the US military and to view data from other partner militaries.
Arab states were also given access to a US-run secure chat system so that they could communicate with each other and with the US military.
This coordination paid off, as Jordan and Saudi Arabia assisted the US and Israel in shooting down Iranian missiles and drones traveling over their airspace on the way to Israel during the Islamic Republic’s True Promise Operations I, II, and III.
True Promise III was launched in June of this year after Israel and the US attacked Iran and its nuclear facilities over 12 days.
Despite this security cooperation, Israel attacked the capital of its ally Qatar on 9 September in an effort to kill senior Hamas leaders.
The documents included details showing that personnel from US Central Command (CENTCOM) also led planning meetings to launch “information operations” to counter the narrative of Iran being the ‘regional protector’ of Palestinians.
One of the documents leaked to the Washington Post discusses a meeting held in January 2025 at the US Army’s Fort Campbell in Kentucky. The meeting included sessions where US forces trained Arab partners on how to detect and neutralize threats in underground tunnels, which Hamas’s Qassam Brigades and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) Quds Brigades, alongside other factions, have been known to use in their resistance against Israel.
“Another document describes partners from six countries participating in a training to destroy underground tunnels, but did not name the countries,” the Post wrote.
Training to deal with tunnel warfare suggests that the US-led “Regional Security Construct” may also be used to fight a Hamas insurgency in post-war Gaza.
According to the ceasefire plan promoted by US President Donald Trump, which went into effect on Friday, the US will work with Arab and international partners to develop a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) to deploy to Gaza and to train and support a Palestinian police force that will be established.
The secret military cooperation between the US and Israel, on one hand, and Arab states that publicly condemn Israel’s genocide on the other, is a result of Israel’s military power, according to a former US defense official.
Speaking to the Washington Post, the official stated that “They all seem to think the Israelis can do whatever they want, whenever they want, without detection.”
