WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed regret for an Israeli attack in Doha to Qatar’s leader on Monday in a three-way call with U.S. President Donald Trump, the White House said.
The White House said Netanyahu also expressed regret for Israel violating Qatari sovereignty and “affirmed that Israel will not conduct such an attack again in the future.”
“The leaders discussed a proposal for ending the war in Gaza, prospects for a more secure Middle East, and the need for greater understanding between their countries,” the White House said before a news conference with Trump and the Israeli prime minister.
Trump hosted Netanyahu for talks on Monday to press him to back a Gaza peace proposal aimed at ending a nearly 2-year-old war that has seen Israel face growing international isolation.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward and Bhargav Acharya; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Donald Trump will host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, with the U.S. president pushing a Gaza peace proposal after a slew of Western leaders embraced Palestinian statehood in defiance of American and Israeli opposition.
In Netanyahu’s fourth visit since Trump returned to office in January, the right-wing Israeli leader will be looking to shore up his country’s most important relationship as it faces growing international isolation nearly two years into its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
He can expect a warm welcome compared to the chilly reception he received when he spoke on Friday before the U.N. General Assembly where many delegates walked out in protest.
Netanyahu went on to deliver a blistering attack on what he called a “disgraceful decision” over the past week by Britain, France, Canada, Australia and several other countries to recognize Palestinian statehood, a major diplomatic shift by top U.S. allies.
They said such action was needed to preserve the prospect for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and help bring the war to a close.
Trump, who had criticized the recognition moves as a prize to Hamas, told Reuters on Sunday he hopes to get Netanyahu’s agreement on a framework to end the war in the Palestinian enclave and free the remaining hostages held by Hamas.
“We’re getting a very good response because Bibi wants to make the deal too,” Trump said in a telephone interview, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “Everybody wants to make the deal.”
He credited leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Jordan and Egypt for their assistance and said the deal aims to go beyond Gaza to a broader Middle East peace.
“It’s called peace in the Middle East, more than Gaza. Gaza is a part of it. But it’s peace in the Middle East,” he said.
Asked whether there is now an agreed deal for peace in Gaza, a senior Israeli official said “it’s too early to tell.” The official added that Netanyahu would give Israel’s response to the proposal when he meets Trump on Monday.
Netanyahu is under mounting pressure from the hostages’ families and, according to public opinion polls, a war-weary Israeli public.
A 21-point peace plan had been circulated to a string of Arab and Muslim countries on the U.N. sidelines last week.
It calls for the release of all hostages, living and dead, no further Israeli attacks on Qatar and a new dialogue between Israel and Palestinians for “peaceful coexistence,” a White House official said on condition of anonymity. Israel angered the Qataris and drew criticism from Trump for an airstrike against Hamas leaders in Doha on September 9.
Previous U.S.-backed ceasefire efforts have fallen apart due to a failure to bridge the gap between Israel and Hamas and Netanyahu has vowed to continue fighting until Hamas is completely dismantled.
GAZA WAR TAKES CENTER-STAGE
The White House meeting follows an annual gathering of world leaders in New York in which the Gaza war took center-stage and Israel was often the target. Netanyahu responded that the world leaders recognizing Palestinian independence were sending the message that “murdering Jews pays off.”
The most far-right government in Israeli history has ruled out acceptance of a Palestinian state as it presses on with its fight against Hamas following the militants’ October 7, 2023, rampage in Israel. Hamas-led fighters killed some 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s military response has killed more than 65,000 people in Gaza, according to local health officials, leaving much of the territory in ruins, a humanitarian crisis deepening and hunger spreading.
The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes in the Gaza war. Israel rejects the court’s jurisdiction and denies committing war crimes.
While Trump and Netanyahu have mostly been in sync and the U.S. continues to be Israel’s main arms supplier, Monday’s discussions have the potential for tensions to surface.
Some of Netanyahu’s hardline ministers have said the government should respond to growing recognition of Palestinian statehood by formally extending Israeli sovereignty over all or parts of the occupied West Bank to snuff out hopes for Palestinian independence.
On Thursday, however, Trump said he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, which the Palestinians want for their state, along with Gaza and East Jerusalem.
Analysts say Israeli annexation of the West Bank could unravel the landmark Abraham Accords, a signature foreign policy achievement brokered by Trump’s first administration in which several Arab countries forged diplomatic ties with Israel.
(Reporting By Matt Spetalnick and Steve Holland, writing by Matt Spetalnick, Editing by Humeyra Pamuk and Diane Craft)
A British couple freed by the Taliban after being detained for nearly eight months have emotionally reunited with their daughter, sharing hugs after landing in Qatar.
Peter Reynolds, 80, and his wife Barbie, 76, who lived in Afghanistan for nearly two decades, were on their way home when they were stopped on 1 February.
The couple were released on Friday morning through Qatari mediation, and later landed in Doha where they were met by their daughter. After medical checks they will travel to the UK, despite their long-term home being in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province.
The Taliban said the pair had broken Afghan laws and were released after judicial proceedings – but has never disclosed the reason for their detention.
There were emotional scenes in Doha as the couple’s daughter, Sarah Entwistle, met her parents as they stepped off of the plane. They shared long hugs before walking together towards the airport building.
Shortly after landing in Doha, the couple were seen greeting Qatari and British representatives.
Mrs Reynolds said it was “wonderful to be here”, and told Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency that she and her husband are Afghan citizens and looked forward to returning to Afghanistan “if we can”.
She added that they had been treated “very well”.
In a statement, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he welcomed the “long-awaited news”, and their release would be of huge relief to the Mr and Mrs Reynold’s four children.
He also paid tribute to the “vital role played by Qatar, including The Amir, His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani” in their release.
Peter Reynolds hugs his daughter Sarah [AFP via Getty Images]
Before her parents landed, Ms Entwistle told reporters she most recently spoke to them last Saturday and they were “ready to come home”.
Earlier, the family said they were “overwhelmed with gratitude and relief” at the couple’s release.
They said it was “a moment of immense joy”, adding in a statement that they were “deeply thankful to everyone who played a role in securing their release”.
“While the road to recovery will be long as our parents regain their health and spend time with their family, today is a day of tremendous joy and relief.”
The family paid particular tribute to the “unwavering support” of the Qatari mediators, as well as the diplomatic efforts of the UK government and the support of the US and the UN.
Peter and Barbie Reynolds married in Kabul in 1970 and spent the past 18 years running a charitable training programme that had been approved by local Taliban officials when the armed group reclaimed power in 2021.
They have been described by family as having a lifelong love of Afghanistan, typified by their decision to remain there after the authoritarian regime seized control in August 2021, when many other Westerners left.
Their release follows months of public lobbying by their family, who have described the harrowing conditions of their detention.
The couple’s son, Jonathan Reynolds, said in July that his father had been suffering serious convulsions and his mother was “numb” from anaemia and malnutrition.
“My dad was chained to murderers and criminals,” he said at the time, adding that they had at one point been held in a basement for six weeks without sunlight.
Reacting to the news of their release on Friday, Mr Reynolds told BBC Breakfast: “I cannot wait to put my arms around them and give them a hug.”
Ms Entwistle previously said her father had suffered a mini-stroke, while the UN warned that without medical care the couple were at risk of irreparable harm.
Just six days ago, an American woman who was detained with them and subsequently released told the BBC they had been “literally dying” in prison and that “time is running out”.
Faye Hall, who was let go two months into her detention, highlighted that the elderly couple’s health had deteriorated rapidly while in prison.
A Qatari official told the BBC the couple were moved from Kabul’s central prison to a larger facility with better conditions during the final stage of negotiations over their release.
The pair have a lifelong love of Afghanistan, family say [Handout]
The official also said the Qatari embassy in Kabul had provided them with medication, access to a doctor and means of communicating with their family while in prison.
Taliban officials maintained they received adequate medical care in prison and their human rights were respected.
The UK does not recognise the Taliban government and closed its embassy in Kabul when the group returned to power.
The Foreign Office says support for British nationals in Afghanistan is therefore “severely limited” and advises against all travel to the country.
A Taliban official said Peter and Barbie Reynolds were handed over to the UK’s Special Envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Lindsay, who was pictured with the couple aboard their flight to Qatar.
The UK’s Middle East minister Hamish Falconer said he was relieved that the pair had now been freed, adding: “I look forward to them being reunited with their family soon.”
He said the UK had “worked intensively” to secure their release, while Qatar “played an essential role in this case, for which I am hugely grateful”.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Monday in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as close U.S. ally Qatar gathered other Arab nations’ leaders for a summit to issue unified condemnation of last week’s Israeli airstrike targeting Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital.
On Sunday, President Trump urged Netanyahu’s government to be “very careful” following the airstrike in Doha.
“They have to do something about Hamas, but Qatar has been a great ally to the United States,” Mr. Trump told reporters at Morristown airport in New Jersey.
Speaking Monday alongside Rubio, Netanyahu heaped praise on the Trump administration for its staunch, increasingly unique international support of Israel’s tactics in its ongoing war against Hamas — which has long been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and the European Union — in the Gaza Strip.
“Your presence here today sends a clear message that America stands with Israel,” Netanyahu said.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands during a visit to the Western Wall Tunnels, underneath the Jewish holy site, in the old city of Jerusalem, Sept. 14, 2025.
NATHAN HOWARD/POOL/AFP/Getty
The Israeli leader has vigorously defended last week’s strike in Doha, saying Israeli fighter jets targeted senior Hamas leaders responsible for the Hamas-led, Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack that killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken as hostages back into Gaza.
Hamas has said that five of its members were killed, but that Israel failed to kill its intended targets — senior members of the group’s political negotiating team, who have long been based in Doha, with the knowledge and backing of both Israel and the U.S.
Rubio, pressed to respond to the anger in Doha over the strike last week, told reporters at the news conference with Netanyahu that “we have strong relationships with our Gulf allies… We have been engaged with them consistently before what happened and after what happened.”
“Irrespective of what has occurred, the reality is we still have 48 hostages. We still have Hamas that is holding Gaza hostage and using civilians as human shields… as long as they are around there will be no peace in this region,” Rubio said.
A senior State Department official told CBS News Monday that Rubio will travel to Qatar after his Israel visit, before flying to the United Kingdom for President Trump’s state visit there.
Addressing reporters Saturday at Joint Base Andrews prior to his departure, Rubio said he would be speaking with Netanyahu to “get a much better understanding of what their plans are moving forward.”
“What’s happened has happened. Obviously, we were not happy about it. The president was not happy with it,” Rubio said, referring to the strike in Doha. “Now we need to move forward and figure out what comes next. Because at the end of the day, when all is said and done, there is still a group called Hamas, which is an evil group that still has weapons and is terrorizing.”
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani issued a fresh condemnation of Israel’s attack on Sunday, and he called “for the international community to stop its double standards and punish Israel for its crimes.”
This handout image provided by Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani chairing a preparatory meeting in Doha, Sept. 14, 2025, ahead of an Arab Islamic summit.
QATARI MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS/AFP/Getty
Qatar is a key U.S. ally and it has long hosted the largest American military base in the Middle East, the Al-Udeid Air Base, where there are thousands of U.S. troops based.
A source familiar with the discussions at the emergency Arab and Muslim leaders summit in Doha on Monday told CBS News a draft resolution would see them condemn, Israel’s “hostile acts including genocide, ethnic cleansing, [and] starvation” in Gaza, which, it will say, threatens “prospects of peace and coexistence” in the region.
A handout image provided by Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows a preparatory meeting in Doha, Sept. 14, 2025, ahead of an Arab Islamic summit chaired by Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani.
QATARI MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS/AFP/Getty
Israel has vehemently denied multiple accusations that its war in Gaza amounts to a genocide against Palestinians, arguing that its military campaign is solely against Hamas militants whom it accuses of putting civilians in harms way by using them as human shields.
The source familiar with the draft statement from the Doha summit said the resolution would call “on the international community to coordinate efforts to impose international sanctions on Israel — suspending the supply of weapons, munitions, and military material, and reviewing diplomatic and economic relations — to stop its crimes against the Palestinian people and attacks on regional countries.”
Israel’s war has killed more than 64,000 Palestinians in the nearly two years since it began, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel rejects that figure but has not offered its own estimate and does not permit foreign journalists to enter Gaza and operate independently.
The United Nations considers the tally from the Gazan health ministry the most reliable information available on the war’s death toll.
Last month, Israel declared Gaza City, the Palestinian Territory’s biggest population center, a “dangerous combat zone” and a Hamas stronghold. In recent days, Israeli military forces have ramped up an aerial assault on the city, toppling several more high-rise buildings on Sunday in what was already an apocalyptic landscape.
Smoke rises following Israeli airstrikes that hit and destroyed multiple buildings and high-rise towers in Gaza City, Gaza, Sept. 14, 2025.
Abdalhkem Abu Riash/Anadolu/Getty
The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly voted Friday to support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict — the long-standing call for an independent Palestinian state to be created alongside Israel as part of a negotiated peace agreement, which has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for decades.
President Trump, who previously voiced support for a two-state solution, has more recently distanced his administration from adherence to that objective, despite rising support internationally for Palestinian statehood.
Israel and the U.S. were among the 10 countries that voted against the resolution, and before the vote, Netanyahu reiterated his government’s stance that, “there will be no Palestinian state.”
The U.N. resolution also condemned Israel’s alleged attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and its “siege and starvation, which have produced a devastating humanitarian catastrophe and protection crisis.”
The non-binding resolution, which 142 nations supported, also called for the release of all remaining Israeli hostages and outlined a vision in which the Palestinian Authority, which currently partially administers the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would govern and control all Palestinian territory, with a transitional administrative committee immediately established under its umbrella after a ceasefire in Gaza.
“In the context of ending the war in Gaza, Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority,” the declaration said.
Emmet Lyons is a news desk editor at the CBS News London bureau, coordinating and producing stories for all CBS News platforms. Prior to joining CBS News, Emmet worked as a producer at CNN for four years.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as close U.S. ally Qatar gathered other Arab nations’ leaders for a summit to issue a unified condemnation of last week’s Israeli airstrike targeting Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital. Elizabeth Palmer reports.
Rubio in Israel as fallout from IDF strike on Qatar continues – CBS News
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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in Israel on Sunday night despite President Trump’s unhappiness over an Israeli airstrike that targeted a Hamas negotiating team in Qatar last week. Leigh Kiniry reports from London.
JERUSALEM — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Israel on Sunday, as Israel intensified its attacks against northern Gaza, flattening another high-rise building and killing at least 12 Palestinians.
Rubio said ahead of the trip that he will be seeking answers from Israeli officials about how they see the way forward in Gaza following Israel’s attack on Hamas operatives in Qatar last week that upended efforts to broker an end to the conflict.
His two-day visit is also a show of support for the increasingly isolated Israel as the United Nations holds what is expected to be a contentious debate on commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly opposes the recognition of a Palestinian state.
Attack on Qatar
Rubio’s visit went ahead despite President Donald Trump’s anger at Netanyahu over the Israeli strike against Hamas leaders in Doha, which he said the United States was not notified of beforehand.
On Friday, Rubio and Trump met with Qatar’s prime minister to discuss the fallout from the Israeli operation. The dual, back-to-back meetings with Israel and Qatar illustrate how Trump administration is trying to balance relations between key Middle East allies despite the attack’s widespread international condemnation.
The Doha attack also appears to have ended attempts to secure an Israel-Hamas ceasefire and the release of hostages ahead of the upcoming U.N. General Assembly session, at which the Gaza war is expected to be a primary focus.
Deadly airstrikes mount
On Sunday, at least 13 Palestinians were killed and dozens were wounded in multiple Israeli strikes across Gaza, according to local hospitals.
Local hospitals said Israeli strikes targeted a vehicle near Shifa hospital and a roundabout in Gaza City, and a tent in the city of Deir al-Balah that killed at least six members of the same family.
Two parents, their three children and the children’s aunt were killed in that strike, according to the Al-Aqsa hospital. The family was from the northern town of Beit Hanoun, and arrived in Deir al-Balah last week after fleeing their shelter in Gaza City
The Israeli military did not have immediate comment on the strikes.
As part of its expanding operation in Gaza City, the Israeli military destroyed a high-rise residential building on Sunday morning, less than an hour after an evacuation order posted online by the military spokesman Avichay Adraee.
Residents said said the Kauther tower in the Rimal neighborhood was flattened to the ground. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
“This is part of the genocidal measures the (Israeli) occupation is carrying out in Gaza City,” said Abed Ismail, a Gaza City resident. “They want to turn the whole city into rubble, and force the transfer and another Nakba.”
The word Nakba is Arabic for catastrophe and refers to when some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled by Israeli forces or fled their homes in what is now Israel, before and during the 1948 war that surrounded its creation.
Israeli strongly denies accusations of genocide in Gaza.
Starvation in Gaza
Separately, two Palestinian adults died of causes related to malnutrition and starvation in the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours, the territory’s health ministry reported Sunday.
That has brought the death toll from malnutrition-related causes to 277 since late June, when the ministry started to count fatalities among this age category, while another 145 children died of malnutrition-related causes since the start of the war in October 2023, the ministry said.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, abducting 251 people and killing some 1,200, mostly civilians. There are still 48 hostages remaining in Gaza, of whom 20 Israel believes are still alive.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,803 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or combatants. It says around half of those killed were women and children. Large parts of major cities have been completely destroyed and around 90% of some 2 million Palestinians have been displaced. ___
Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.
The White House confirmed that President Donald Trump had dinner with Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in New York on Friday. The prime minister also met with the vice president and the Secretary of State. The meetings follow Israel’s attack on Qatar’s capital. The attack targeted Hamas leaders, Israel said.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani will meet with members of the Trump administration in Washington, D.C. on Friday. CBS News senior foreign correspondent Imtiaz Tyab has more details.
BEIRUT — For years, Persian Gulf nations staked their defense on one thing above all: A U.S.-supplied security umbrella, paid for with tens of billions of their petrodollars and agreements that allowed the U.S. to dot the Middle East with some of its largest military facilities.
The thinking was that being users of U.S. weaponry and having a U.S. military presence was a virtual guarantee of protection if enemies came to call.
That thinking was upended on Tuesday, when Israel, arguably the U.S.’s top ally, dispatched warplanes and hurled 10 missiles at Hamas’ political office compound in the Qatari capital Doha.
The attack, which targeted the Palestinian group’s senior negotiation team as it was discussing a ceasefire proposal from President Trump, killed five Hamas members and a Qatari security officer. Hamas denies any of its senior leadership was killed.
But whether the targeting succeeded is irrelevant to Gulf leaders pondering the effectiveness of decades-old security arrangements with the U.S.
“The message to the region appears to be, ‘If you think close ties with and major military support for Washington provides protection… think again,’ ” said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute.
“They’re all vulnerable to attack by larger and more powerful neighbors, and they expect a commitment that helping the U.S. militarily comes with a certain degree of protection. It clearly doesn’t,” he said.
This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC taken on Wednesday shows damage after an Israeli strike targeted a compound that hosted Hamas’ political leadership in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday.
(Planet Labs PBC via Associated Press)
Qatari officials were apoplectic after the strike, calling it cowardly and a violation of the country’s sovereignty.
Especially galling to Qatar — which houses the Al Udeid Air Base, the largest American military installation in the region — is that it allowed Hamas officials to openly live in a well-appointed district of its capital at Washington’s request, just as it had with the Taliban during the group’s negotiations to end America’s war in Afghanistan.
“Everything about that meeting [with Hamas] is very well known for the Israelis and for the Americans. It’s not something we’re hiding,” said Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in an interview with CNN on Wednesday.
“I have no words to express how enraged we are from such an action [by Israel]. This is state terror,” he said.
Other Gulf leaders — even those harboring lingering reservations about Qatar and its regional policies — presented a united front on Qatar’s behalf.
Saudi Arabia called the strike a “brutal aggression” and said the kingdom would “stand with Qatar without limit.” Bahrain expressed its “full solidarity.”
Mohamed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, traveled to Doha the next day to meet the Qatari emir — a surprise given how assiduously the UAE has worked to improve ties with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords, the Trump-brokered agreements that saw a number of Arab and Gulf nations normalize relations with Israel in 2020.
“The Gulf states view an external attack on one member as an attack on all,” said Yasmine Farouk, the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Project director at the International Crisis Group.
Farouk added that trust in the U.S. was already diminished in recent years when Washington failed to defend or respond to attacks on Saudi Arabia in 2019 and the UAE in 2022 by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Qatar, which suffered through an Iranian missile assault on Al Udeid in June, now has the dubious honor of having its territory become a proxy battleground for both sides of the larger U.S.-Iran conflict.
This week’s strike also represents a setback for the anti-Iran coalition the U.S. has worked to forge with its Arab allies and Israel. But the feeling among many in the Gulf is that Israel is just as belligerent and destabilizing an actor as Iran.
“Israel has misinterpreted the willingness of Gulf countries to normalize relations with it as an acknowledgment of its dominance in the region,” Farouq said.
“The Gulf states do not want to live in a region dominated by either Israel or Iran,” she added. “They reject that kind of behavior, rather than rejecting a specific country.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the immediate motive for the strike was Hamas claiming responsibility for the killing of six Israelis by Palestinian gunmen in Jerusalem earlier this week. He insisted the operation was planned and conducted entirely by Israel.
At the same time, the more than 1,000-mile distance between Israel and Qatar means Israeli warplanes flew over multiple Arab countries, almost all of them with U.S. bases presumably able to detect incoming aircraft. (The U.S. has 19 bases across the region.) The building the Israelis struck is less than 20 miles away from Al Udeid.
Trump said he learned about the attack shortly before it began and instructed members of his administration to “immediately” inform the Qataris. But Al Thani said the call from the U.S. came 10 minutes after the planes lobbed their missiles on Doha.
In May, when Trump visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, they feted him with grandiose events heavy on the pomp and circumstance and pledged trillions of dollars for investments in the U.S. The expectation was that this would buy some leverage, but Trump is reported to have done little more than scold Netanyahu over Tuesday’s strike, even while stopping short of condemning his actions. (Also in May, Qatar donated a luxury Boeing 747 aircraft for Trump to use as Air Force One.)
The conclusion for Gulf countries expecting U.S. protection from all threats, said Abdulaziz Al-Anjeri, founder of the Kuwait-based think tank Reconnaissance Research, is that some threats are more equal than others.
“U.S. security assistance is effective against Iran or its allied armed factions, but it does not extend to Israel,” he said, adding that historical alliances with the Gulf don’t carry the same weight for Trump as they may have in the past.
The issue, said Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University, is that there’s little specificity as to what a U.S. security umbrella actually entails.
“America’s No.1 ally is now striking another American partner, and all they got from Trump is that they ‘felt badly.’ That it happened this way is not in America’s favor,” Al-Saif said.
He added that Gulf nations, especially Saudi Arabia, have been pushing for more formal — and well-defined — defense pacts, but that the relationship with the U.S. needed to reflect recent changes. “You’re here as a security guarantor,” he said of the U.S. “We cannot be cash dispensers if we feel that our basic security is not guaranteed.”
As the people killed in Israel’s surprise strike on a Hamas meeting in the Qatari capital were buried at Doha’s Grand Mosque on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to launch new attacks on the country — a close U.S. ally — if it refused to eject the U.S.- and Israeli-designated terrorist group’s political representatives.
Qatar’s government has condemned Israel’s Tuesday strikes, saying the “criminal attack constitutes a blatant violation of all international laws and norms, and poses a serious threat to the security and safety of the State of Qatar and its people.”
The U.S. has relied on Qatar to act as a go-between with Hamas, with which it has long had ties. Working through Hamas’ political office in Doha, both the Trump administration and the Biden administration before that have pushed hard, along with Egypt, to broker a ceasefire in the nearly two-year war between Israel and Hamas, sparked by the Palestinian group’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack. Senior Israeli officials have also traveled to Qatar many times to take part in these negotiations since the war began.
Qatar also hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, the Al-Udeid Air Base, where thousands of American military personnel are stationed.
Security camera video captures the moment of an Israeli strike targeting Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 9, 2025.
Security Camera/Anadolu/Getty
President Trump, in a post on his Truth Social network on Tuesday, said the White House had been “notified by the United States Military that Israel was attacking Hamas which, very unfortunately, was located in a section of Doha.”
American officials told CBS News that the U.S. was notified of the attack by Israel as it was about to happen, and that the U.S. did not coordinate with Israel on planning the strikes.
“This was a decision made by Prime Minister Netanyahu, it was not a decision made by me,” Mr. Trump said in his social media post. “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 called “eliminating” Hamas “a worthy goal,” but added that he had spoken with both Netanyahu and leaders in Qatar, and had assured the prime minister in Doha, “that such a thing will not happen again on their soil.”
For his part, Netanyahu has continued to defend the attack and suggested Israeli could launch another one.
“I say to Qatar and all nations who harbor terrorists, you either expel them or you bring them to justice,” Netanyahu said Wednesday. “Because if you don’t, we will.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the scene of a shooting attack on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem, Sept. 8, 2025.
Ronen Zvulun/REUTERS
Netanyahu drew a parallel between Israel’s attack in Doha and the U.S. invasion of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2002 terrorist attacks on the United States.
“We went after the terrorist masterminds who committed the October 7th massacre. And we did so in Qatar, which gives safe haven, it harbors terrorists, it finances Hamas,” Netanyahu said.
President Trump said in his social media post that, in their phone calls, Netanyahu “told me that he wants to make Peace,” but some regional officials have said the attack in Doha doomed any chances for a brokered end to the war in Gaza.
Qatar’s prime minister said Netanyahu had “killed any hope” of returning the remaining 48 Israeli hostages held by Hamas, 20 of whom are believed to be alive in Gaza.
Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said, before appearing Thursday at the United Nations, that Israel’s attack had inflamed anti-Israeli sentiments among many Arab nations in the Middle East, telling CNN: “I think that what Netanyahu has done yesterday (Tuesday), he just killed any hope for those hostages.”
Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani addresses a press conference following Israeli strikes in Doha, Sept. 9, 2025.
KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty
Al Thani spoke as thousands of Palestinians continued to flee Gaza City ahead of Israel’s ongoing offensive there. The numbers leaving the city have grown in recent days, though many have not heeded Israel’s orders to leave because they say they no longer have the strength or money to relocate.
The Israeli military’s plans for the next phases of its operation in what it calls Hamas’ last remaining stronghold are aimed at taking over the largest Palestinian city, which is already devastated from earlier raids and is now experiencing famine, according to the world’s leading expert body on food crises.
The plans have drawn widespread condemnation and added to Israel’s global isolation, which intensified further this week following the strike on Qatar.
Al Thani was expected to attend a U.N. Security Council meeting later Thursday, part of a diplomatic push by Qatar after the strike. The Foreign Ministry in Doha also said Thursday that it was convening an emergency Arab-Islamic leaders summit next week in Qatar to discuss the attack.
People attend a funeral held for those killed by an Israeli attack in Doha, including Corporal Badr Saad Mohammed Al-Humaidi Al-Dosari, a member of the Qatari Internal Security Force, at the Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab Mosque in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 11, 2025, in a screengrab obtained from a video feed.
Qatar TV/REUTERS
Hamas said Tuesday that its top leaders survived the strike but that five lower-level members were killed, including the son of Khalil al-Hayya — Hamas’ leader for Gaza and its top negotiator — as well as three bodyguards and the head of al-Hayya’s office.
Hamas, which has sometimes only confirmed the assassination of its leaders months later, offered no immediate proof that al-Hayya and other senior figures had survived. Israel has not confirmed the identities of any members of the group killed by its strikes.
Qatar has hosted Hamas’ political leadership for years in Doha, in part over a request by the U.S. to encourage negotiations between the militant group and Israel. Israel had also approved this arrangement and before October 7, 2023, it had also given its blessing for Qatar to channel millions of dollars of cash support to Hamas each month.
Qatar ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has urged U.S. President Donald Trump to back efforts to hold Israel responsible for recent strikes that targeted a delegation of senior Hamas officials who were meeting in Doha on Tuesday.
Why It Matters
Growing discontent with Israel among key U.S. partners have raised concerns about potential strains on Washington’s relationships. Arab leaders are signaling that repeated actions that destabilize the region cannot be allowed to continue with impunity.
Trump said he did not support the location of Israeli strikes and that the actions do not serve U.S. interests. Unlike when Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran in June, Qatar is a major non-NATO ally, which Trump prioritized visiting on his first foreign trip since retaking office, and has been mediating alongside the U.S. for a Gaza ceasefire. It also gifted Trump with a $400-million Boeing 747 jet.
This frame grab taken from an AFPTV footage shows smoke billowing after explosions in Qatar’s capital Doha on September 9, 2025. This frame grab taken from an AFPTV footage shows smoke billowing after explosions in Qatar’s capital Doha on September 9, 2025. JACQUELINE PENNEY/AFPTV/AFP/Getty Images
What To Know
Qatar claimed it received no prior notification of the blasts that hit several locations across the capital, including residential buildings housing Hamas members, stating that information from the U.S. arrived 10 minutes into the attack. Trump, however, said Qatar had been informed of the “impending” attack, but that “it was too late to stop.”
Arab and regional leaders reacted strongly to the strikes and condemned them as a blatant aggression and violation of Qatar’s sovereignty. Hamas confirmed that six people were killed in the Doha strike, including the son of senior leader Khalil al-Hayya, his chief of staff and three bodyguards.
A Qatari security officer was also killed. Israel has not confirmed if senior Hamas officials were killed but Hamas said the attack “failed” to do so and that its leaders survived.
The Qatari emir called on the international community to meet its “legal and moral responsibilities” and punish those involved, telling Trump in a phone call that Washington should support such a “just approach,” according to Qatar News Agency.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said that in the previous days, negotiations had been ongoing with full effort in response to a U.S. demand to discuss its latest ceasefire proposal, which came with an ultimatum for Hamas.
“Yet, the Israeli side has sabotaged every opportunity for peace,” he said in a Tuesday press conference. “Does the international community need more to see who the bully in the region is?” he added.
Backed by the U.S. in its goal to defeat Hamas, Israel hailed the operation, saying it targeted “terrorists” who planned the attack of October 7, 2023. The strikes are believed to have been carried with more than 10 fighter jets, according to media reports.
Qatar also has the support and solidarity of regional countries and beyond as well as from the European Union and the United Nations.
Saudi Arabia, another key Trump ally, said the country is making all its capacities available to support Qatar in whatever actions it pursues and warned of what it described as “grave consequences resulting from the Israeli occupation’s persistence in its criminal transgressions,” its foreign ministry stated.
Khalil al-Hayya, a high-ranking Hamas official who has represented the Palestinian militant group in negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal, in Istanbul on April 24, 2024. Khalil al-Hayya, a high-ranking Hamas official who has represented the Palestinian militant group in negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal, in Istanbul on April 24, 2024. Khalil Hamra/AP Photo
What People Are Saying
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s prime minister and foreign secretary said: “Everyone saw how our air defense deterred a barrage of missiles that were launched from Iran, but unfortunately the Israeli enemy used weapons that this radar did not detect.”
U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday, according to The Associated Press: “I’m not thrilled about it, I’ll be giving a full statement tomorrow. But I will tell you this, I was very unhappy about it. Very unhappy about every aspect.”
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told Al Jazeera Wednesday: “Israel wants to impose its dominance over the region, and the scale of the threat is large and growing.”
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wrote on X on Tuesday: “Israel’s attack today on the Hamas negotiation delegation in Qatar has once again clearly demonstrated the blind rage of the [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu government and its intent to deepen the conflict and instability…Those who make terrorism a state policy will never achieve their goals.”
Anwar Gargash, a senior Emirati government adviser, wrote on X: “The security of the Arab Gulf states is indivisible, and we stand heart and soul with the sisterly State of Qatar, condemning the treacherous Israeli attack that targeted it, and affirming our full solidarity with it in confronting this aggression.”
What Happens Next
Qatar is yet to announce details of its next course of action in response to Israel, which has vowed to continue its mission against “enemies everywhere, at every range.”
It remains to see what steps Trump is taking to de-escalate tensions and maintain relations with partners in the region.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement about Israel’s strike targeting senior Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar. Leavitt said the U.S. military notified the Trump administration about the strike before it happened.
BEIRUT — Israel announced it conducted “a precise targeted strike” on Hamas’s leadership on Tuesday, without elaborating on the strike’s location even as blasts rang out in the Qatari capital Doha and Qatari authorities condemned the “cowardly Israeli attack.”
The attack comes as Israel is ramping up for a full invasion of Gaza City, even as stalled negotiations with Hamas officials in Doha appeared to have regained some momentum after the weekend.
“The members of the leadership who were struck led the terror organization’s activities for years, and are directly responsible for carrying out the Oct. 7 massacre and waging the war against the State of Israel,” said a statement from the Israeli military.
The statement referred to the date in 2023 when the Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people — two-thirds of them civilians — and kidnapped 251 others to Gaza, according to Israeli figures. More than 64,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, Palestinian authorities say, have been killed in Israel’s subsequent campaign on the enclave.
Videos and television broadcasts showed black smoke rising from a series of buildings in Doha’s Katara district, a normally quiet residential area where Hamas and several of its top-ranking members have lived for years. One video depicts pedestrians in Katara running and screaming in fear as a pair of explosions echo through the neighborhood.
Qatari security personnel were seen swarming the area and setting up roadblocks.
Qatar agreed to host a political office for Hamas at the request of the U.S. government, it says. Hamas is one of several groups it has allowed on its soil as part of its growing reputation as a regional facilitator. It has hosted repeated mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel over the last 23 months of the war.
An unnamed Hamas source speaking to Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera said the attack targeted negotiators meeting to discuss the latest ceasefire proposal issued by President Trump. There were conflicting reports as to whether anyone survived, but the meeting is thought to have included senior Hamas officials Khalil al-Hayya, Khaled Mishaal, Zaher Jabarin and Muhammad Darwish.
In its statement, the Israeli military said “measures were taken in order to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions and additional intelligence.”
But Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari, in a furious statement issued on the messaging platform X on Tuesday, described the strike as “a criminal assault [that] constitutes a blatant violation of all international laws and norms, and poses a serious threat to the security and safety of Qataris and residents in Qatar.”
“While the State of Qatar strongly condemns this assault, it confirms that it will not tolerate this reckless Israeli behavior and the ongoing disruption of regional security, nor any act that targets its security and sovereignty.”
The strike on Doha adds to a growing list of Arab countries Israel has struck in the last month, emphasizing the Israeli government’s more belligerent post-Oct. 7 strategy against its longtime adversaries in the region. Aside from its expanding campaign in Gaza, the Israeli military has over the last few weeks conducted strikes in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and now Doha.
The attack coincided with the Israeli military issuing an evacuation order encompassing the entire city of Gaza, the first time it has done so in the run-up to its planned full invasion of the largest urban center in the eponymous enclave’s north.
An unnamed White House official told the BBC that the Trump administration was informed ahead of time of the strike on Qatar, which is home to Al Udeid, the largest U.S. base in the Middle East and the regional headquarters for U.S. Central Command. Some 10,000 U.S. troops are stationed there.
An Israeli official, speaking to Israeli broadcaster Channel 12, said President Trump gave the green light for the operation.
But Netanyahu issued a statement on Tuesday saying “today’s action against the top terrorist chieftains of Hamas was a wholly independent Israeli operation. Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility,” the statement said.
Israel’s military said Tuesday that it had “conducted a precise strike targeting the senior leadership of the Hamas terrorist organization,” amid reports of large explosions in Qatar’s capital city, Doha.
Qatar’s government quickly issued condemnation of what it called a “cowardly Israeli strike,” which it said had violated international law.
The Israel Defense Forces did not confirm the location of the strikes in its statement, but said it targeted leaders of Hamas who, in the IDF’s words, had for years “led the terrorist organization’s operations, are directly responsible for the brutal October 7 massacre, and have been orchestrating and managing the war against the State of Israel.”
The IDF said its operation on Tuesday was called “Summit of Fire.”
Smoke rises after several blasts were heard in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 9, 2025.
Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/REUTERS
The Al-Jazeera television network said an ongoing meeting of Hamas leaders in Doha was struck, as they gathered to discuss a recent U.S. ceasefire proposal to end the war in the Gaza Strip.
“Prior to the strike, measures were taken in order to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions and additional intelligence,” the IDF said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office released a statement Tuesday saying the “action against the top terrorist chieftains of Hamas was a wholly independent Israeli operation. Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility.”
The U.S. State Department and the office of President Trump’s special envoy on the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, did not immediately reply to CBS News’ requests for comment on unconfirmed reports that the Trump administration was given advanced warning about Israeli strikes in Doha.
Hamas, long designated a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union, has maintained a primary political office in Doha for years, through which it has conducted most of its diplomacy since the war in Gaza was sparked by the group’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.
Qatar is a close ally of the United States and also hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, Al-Udeid Air Base.
The Qatari government condemned what it called a “cowardly Israeli attack that targeted residential compounds housing several members of Hamas’ political bureau in the Qatari capital, Doha.”
A damaged building is seen following an apparent Israeli strike targeting Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 9, 2025.
Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/REUTERS
“This criminal act constitutes a blatant violation of all international laws and norms and poses a serious threat to the security and safety of Qatari citizens and residents,” Dr. Majed Al Ansari, spokesperson for Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in the statement. “Qatar reiterates its firm stance that it will not tolerate this reckless Israeli behavior and continued destabilization of regional security, nor any act that targets its sovereignty and safety. Investigations are being conducted at the highest level, and further details will be announced as soon as they become available.”
In a post on social media, the U.S. Embassy in Doha said it was aware of “reports of missile strikes occurring in Doha,” and it announced a shelter-in-place order for embassy facilities.
Tucker Reals is CBSNews.com’s foreign editor, based in the CBS News London bureau. He has worked for CBS News since 2006, prior to which he worked for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C., and London.
Egypt and Qatar have expressed strong condemnation over remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the displacement of Palestinians, including through the Rafah crossing.
In a statement on Friday, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the comments as part of “ongoing attempts to prolong escalation in the region and perpetuate instability while avoiding accountability for Israeli violations in Gaza”.
In an interview with the Israeli Telegram channel Abu Ali Express, Netanyahu claimed there were “different plans for how to rebuild Gaza” and alleged that “half of the population wants to leave Gaza”, claiming it was “not a mass expulsion”.
“I can open Rafah for them, but it will be closed immediately by Egypt,” he said.
Egypt’s Foreign Ministry reiterated its “categorical rejection of forcibly or coercively displacing Palestinians from their land”.
“[Egypt] stresses that these practices represent a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and amount to war crimes that cannot be tolerated,” the ministry added.
The statement affirmed that Egypt will never be complicit in such practices nor act as a conduit for Palestinian displacement, describing this as a “red line” that cannot be crossed.
‘Collective punishment will not succeed’
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry also fiercely criticised Netanyahu’s remarks, calling them an “extension of the occupation’s approach to violating the rights of the brotherly Palestinian people”.
“The policy of collective punishment practised by the occupation against the Palestinians … will not succeed in forcing the Palestinian people to leave their land or in confiscating their legitimate rights,” it said in a statement.
It stressed the need for the international community to “unite with determination to confront the extremist and provocative policies of the Israeli occupation, in order to prevent the continuation of the cycle of violence in the region and its spread to the world”.
The war of words comes as Egypt and Qatar continue to lead mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel, seeking to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the coastal enclave.
Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, said Netanyahu’s comments were “incredibly controversial” since it’s the Israeli government which has outlined that “it wants the Palestinians out of Gaza”.
“The condemnation from both Qatar and Egypt is essentially telling Israel this is all a part of its larger plan, that Israel is the one that waged war on the Gaza Strip, that the continuation of crimes against the Palestinian people and the total closure of the Rafah border crossing is the reason why they’re imprisoned in Gaza, not because of anything else,” she said.
“It is Israel that single-handedly created this policy.”
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The U.S., Egypt and Qatar say cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas will continue in Cairo next week. The three countries, acting as mediators, say they presented both parties with a proposal that “builds on areas of agreement over the past week, and bridges remaining gaps in the manner that allows for a swift implementation of the deal.” President Biden expressed optimism about a potential cease-fire, saying “we are closer than we’ve ever been” after talks in Doha. CBS News foreign correspondent Ramy Inocencio has the latest.
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Along with a surge of combat aircraft and warships, President Biden dispatched three of his top Mideast advisers, including CIA Director Bill Burns, to the region this week to try to delay Iranian and Hezbollah military retaliation against Israel, and to use that borrowed time to craft an offramp from the collision course that ultimately risks a regional war that could draw in U.S. forces.
U.S. assessments are that Iran will not seek to disrupt ongoing cease-fire negotiations in Doha aimed at ending the Hamas-Israel war. Those technical talks could stretch into the weekend, but it is unclear how long Iran and its proxies may hold off. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Thursday that an Iranian attack could come with “little or no warning, and certainly could come in the coming days.”
Both Iran and its Lebanon-based proxy force Hezbollah have vowed to retaliate in response to the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran two weeks ago and the July killing of top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, but have not specified when or how. Israel said it killed Shukr in an airstrike. A U.S. official confirmed to CBS News that Israel was responsible for Haniyeh’s killing, though Israel has not publicly acknowledged it.
But multiple sources in the region told CBS News that Iran’s government continues to internally debate whether to use military force as it did on April 13, when it launched hundreds of drones and missiles towards Israel, or whether to conduct a covert intelligence operation. Sources also indicated to CBS that Hezbollah’s Lebanon-based leader, Hassan Nasrallah, does not want to act without Iran’s consent, but also does not seek a wider-scale conflict with Israel. The U.S. assesses that Hezbollah could launch an attack with little to no warning.
The U.S. diplomacy, which includes indirect outreach to Tehran via other governments and to Hezbollah via politicians in Beirut, has been aimed at limiting the regional escalation risk. Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations told CBS News earlier this month that Hezbollah might not limit itself to military targets within Israel this time, suggesting the group could aim “broader and deeper” within Israeli territory at civilian targets. As of 2021, the CIA believed Hezbollah had an arsenal of up to 150,000 missiles and rockets, including some with long ranges that collectively have the potential to overwhelm Israel’s anti-missile defense system and could hit deep inside Israeli territory.
A column of Israeli military armored vehicles leave following a military operation in the West Bank town of Tubas on Aug. 14, 2024.
Majdi Mohammed / AP
At a press conference in Beirut Wednesday, U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein indicated that the centerpiece of the Biden strategy is to use this narrow window of time to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a hostage release and cease-fire deal in the Gaza Strip, which could then help avert a war in Lebanon after 10 months of cross-border attacks between Israel and Hezbollah.
In a furious effort to turn the Biden administration’s Gaza cease-fire framework into an actionable agreement, NSC Director Brett McGurk was in Cairo early this week and traveled on to Doha, Qatar, to help hammer out implementation details. With the U.S. acting as mediator, Burns led talks in Doha with Israel’s Mossad director David Barnea, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and Egypt’s intelligence director Abbas Kamel.
The U.S. is expected to present a final bridging proposal, which was described by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield as ultimately allowing for the release of all hostages, a vaccination campaign to stop the spread of polio, restoration of services including water and electricity to displaced Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, and includes efforts to help halt fighting in Lebanon. Current numbers from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry indicate a grim milestone today of 40,000 Palestinians killed in the bloody 10-month war.
If all of this fails, the U.S. also has a parallel plan similar to when Iran launched its April 13 attack on Israel, to defend Israel with the aid of allies.
During that spring attack, U.K. military jets were scrambled to help protect U.S. and allied forces in Iraq and Syria, who are stationed in the region as part of the anti-ISIS coalition presence. If a similar attack is launched by Iran this time around, the new U.K. government is expected to replicate its role. A U.K. official told CBS News, “Our core focus is diplomatic efforts and de-escalation. But as you’d expect, we also stand ready to defend Israel, and we remain in constant touch with the U.S. and allies on potential scenarios, including active support to backfill U.S. functions as we did in April.”
A French official also told CBS News, “We’ve been calling on all actors in the region to de-escalate. Alongside the US, we maintain strong diplomatic and military coordination in the region and are helping support in assessing and monitoring the situation.”
Parallel to the talks in Doha, French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne was in Lebanon Thursday meeting government leaders, including those close to Hezbollah “to support the ongoing diplomatic efforts in favor of de-escalation in the region,” he stated on X.
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (R) meets with French Minister of Foreign Affairs Stephane Sejourne in Beirut on Aug. 15, 2024, amid regional tensions during the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
JOSEPH EID/AFP via Getty Images
The timing of the Doha meeting, just four days before the start of the Democratic National Convention, also underscores the priority that the Biden-Harris administration is placing on ending the bloodshed and retrieving the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, including five Americans still unaccounted for. The conflict has had a domestic political impact, and polling shows the humanitarian toll has particularly resonated among progressive, Black, Arab and Muslim American voters. The family of U.S. hostage Omer Neutra spoke at the Republican National Convention on July 17 to plead for more public pressure.
Margaret Brennan is the moderator of “Face The Nation with Margaret Brennan.” She is also the Network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent based in Washington, D.C.
Washington — Prosecutors in Sen. Bob Menendez’s bribery trial rested their case against the New Jersey Democrat on Friday, bringing an end to seven weeks of testimony from more than two dozen witnesses they’ve called to persuade a jury that the senator used his political influence to benefit three businessmen and two foreign governments in exchange for bribes.
The allegations date back to 2018, around the time the Democratic senator began dating the woman who is now his wife, Nadine Menendez, whose trial was postponed as she recovers from breast cancer surgery.
Over the last month and a half, prosecutors detailed a wide-ranging corruption scheme in which Menendez allegedly used his influence as the then-chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee to secretly benefit Egypt; pressured a U.S. Department of Agriculture official to protect a halal certification monopoly Egypt granted to a New Jersey businessman, Wael Hana; interfered in a criminal investigations by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office into the associates of a second New Jersey businessman, Jose Uribe; and attempted to influence a federal prosecution of a third New Jersey businessman, Fred Daibes.
In return, prosecutors say, the businessmen provided Menendez and his wife with lavish gifts, including cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, furniture and mortgage payments as Nadine Menendez was facing foreclosure on her home.
Hana and Daibes are on trial with Menendez. All three have pleaded not guilty.
Businessman says Mercedes was bribe
Sen. Bob Menendez leaves Manhattan federal court on June 7, 2024, in New York.
Adam Gray / AP
Uribe, who pleaded guilty in March, was the prosecution’s star witness, telling jurors that he bribed the senator by buying his wife a luxury car for the purpose of disrupting two state criminal investigations into his business associates. Hana, a longtime friend of Nadine Menendez, indicated that the senator and his wife could “make these things go away,” according to Uribe.
The insurance broker testified that he asked the senator directly for his help during two meetings in August and September 2019, months after he said he handed Nadine Menendez $15,000 in cash in a restaurant parking lot for a downpayment on the Mercedes. Uribe made her car payments until June 2022 — the same month the FBI searched the Menendezes’ home and found over $480,000 in cash stuffed in envelopes, coats, shoes and bags, and 13 gold bars worth more than $100,000.
“I paid for the car as an arrangement with Nadine that I will provide a car, in return for her getting Mr. Menendez to use his power to stop [the investigations],” Uribe said earlier this month.
Gurbir Grewal, the then-attorney general for New Jersey,told jurors about a January 2019 call and September 2019 meeting in which Menendez raised a concern “about a pending criminal manner.”
“I can’t talk to you about this,” Grewal recalled telling Menendez.
After the September meeting with the state attorney general, Uribe said Menendez told him, “That thing that you asked me about, there’s nothing there. I give you your peace.” The senator later boasted about saving him twice, Uribe testified.
But Uribe’s credibility also came under fire during cross-examination by defense attorneys. He admitted to a long list of lies that have culminated in a number of criminal charges over the years.
An agent for Egypt?
Another piece central to the alleged scheme was a New Jersey startup owned by Hana, which prosecutors say was used to funnel bribe payments to the senator and his wife.
In April 2019, Egypt granted a lucrative monopoly to Hana’s halal certification company, setting off alarms at the Department of Agriculture. Before that, four companies had split ensuring that meat exported from the U.S. to Egypt was prepared according to Islamic law. The abrupt change confused U.S. officials because Hana’s company did not have any prior experience in halal certification and had few employees. The decision increased meat costs in Egypt and was seen as detrimental to U.S. businesses, according to several officials who testified.
The U.S. was stonewalled when it sought answers from Egypt, which officials said was unusual for the country — one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid.
“When the Americans request a meeting, we get meetings,” Bret Tate, a former agricultural attaché in Cairo, said.
As the U.S. continued to press Egypt, Ted McKinney, a former top agricultural official, said he got a call from Menendez with the message: “Stop interfering with my constituent.”
“I felt he was telling me to stand down and stop doing all of the things that we were doing to try to revive some sense of competition in the U.S. beef market,” McKinney told jurors in May. “It was the first time I’d ever had a call that we thought would clearly harm elements of the U.S. food and [agriculture] industry.”
Menendez’s lawyers challenged the characterization of the conversation, saying he was doing his job by helping a constituent.
By that time, prosecutors alleged, Menendez was doing favors for Egyptian officials that he knew through his wife and Hana, including secretly helping the country lobby his colleagues to release $300 million in aid that had been held up over human rights concerns and providing it with details about U.S. Embassy employees in Cairo, which prosecutors argued was sensitive information.
On May 21, 2019, soon after Egypt granted the monopoly, the FBI was surveilling an upscale steakhouse near the White House, waiting for their target who had come from New York to arrive, according to two FBI agents who testified.
Two agents, undercover as a husband and wife on a date, sat on the restaurant’s patio near a group that included an Egyptian official, Hana and his business associate. Then Menendez and his wife showed up. It’s unclear who the FBI’s target was, though an agent testified that the senator was not the intended subject of the surveillance. The undercover agents snapped photos and took silent footage with a concealed video camera.
One of the agent’s testified that she heard the senator’s wife ask the other group, “What else can the love of my life do for you?” The agent did not hear the response.
With the assistance of the senator, Nadine Menendez set up a shell company in summer 2019, which was used to receive payments from a “low-or-no-show job” at Hana’s company, according to prosecutors. At the time, she was tens of thousands of dollars behind on her mortgage and facing foreclosure. Hana wired her $23,000 to save her home from foreclosure and then put her on the company’s payroll for $10,000 a month, a former lawyer for the businessman’s company testified.
Sarah Arkin, a former senior aide to Menendez, testified this week about a number of incidents involving the senator and Egyptian officials that she considered to be unusual.
Arkin told jurors that Menendez held meetings with Egyptian officials that she had not been told of, a deviation from normal practice.
For one of the meetings she was aware of, she said the senator had handwritten the invitation for the Egyptian defense attaché in Washington and Hana to visit his office. The handwritten invite was “an unusual item,” she said. When the meeting happened in March 2018, Nadine Menendez, who had just begun dating the senator, was also there.
In September 2021, when Arkin was helping Menendez prepare for a congressional delegation trip to Egypt and Qatar, she said the senator instructed his staff to plan the visit with an Egyptian intelligence officer posted in the country’s embassy in Washington. The trips, she said, were normally planned by the State Department.
“All of this Egypt stuff is very weird. I’ve never seen anything like it,” another staffer texted Arkin as they planned the trip.
Menendez’s lawyers have portrayed his interactions with Egyptian officials as another part of his job as a member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Menendez stepped down from his role as committee chair when he was indicted last fall.
Gold bars and Qatar
Prosecutors say Daibes, the third businessman indicted, bribed the couple with cash and gold bars in order for the senator to try to influence a federal bank fraud case against the real estate developer.
The case came up as Menendez was considering recommending his longtime friend, Philip Sellinger, to be U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey.
Sellinger, who now holds the job, said the senator told him he thought Daibes “was being treated unfairly” by the U.S. attorney’s office and “hoped that if I became U.S. attorney that I would look at it carefully.” Sellinger testified that he told the senator he may have to recuse himself from the case if appointed because of an unrelated lawsuit his law firm had handled related to Daibes.
Sellinger said their longtime friendship ended shortly after that and Menendez told him he would no longer nominate him for the role.
But Sellinger said he “never believed [Menendez] to be asking me to do anything unethical or improper,” and the senator did eventually recommend him for the position.
As Menendez was trying to help Daibes, he was researching the value of gold online, according to evidence introduced by the prosecution. An FBI agent testified that he reviewed records including the senator’s internet search history dating back to 2008. The senator’s first search about gold was in April 2019, the agent said. After that, he repeatedly researched the price of gold.
“One kilo gold bar,” one of those searches read.
The online searches also happened as the senator allegedly used his influence to help Daibes secure a $95 million investment from a Qatari investment fund by taking actions favorable to Qatar’s government.
Nearly a dozen envelopes of cash with tens of thousands of dollars bearing the fingerprints or DNA of Daibes were found in the Menendez home, according to expert testimony and evidence shown to jurors. Prosecutors have linked some of the gold found inside the senator’s home to Daibes and Hana through serial numbers.
But a New Jersey jeweler, who testified Wednesday about selling tens of thousands of dollars worth of gold for Nadine Menendez, said he did not record the serial numbers of the gold he sold for her. The jeweler recalled that she first asked him to sell two one-kilogram bars of gold in March 2022, which fetched nearly $60,000 each.
“She said she needed to pay the bills,” he recalled, adding that Nadine Menendez told him the gold was from her family. “She had expenses in, like, home bills.”
In May of that year, she asked him to sell four one-ounce gold coins worth $7,200 and another two one-kilogram gold bars, the jeweler said. They didn’t discuss where she got them from or why she wanted to sell them, he said. The requests came weeks before the FBI executed a search warrant at the Menendez home.
Jurors also heard this week from an FBI specialist about when some of the bills found among the nearly half a million dollars in cash stockpiled in the senator’s home were issued. Evidence showed hundreds of the bills entered circulation starting in 2018, when the alleged corruption scheme began. But defense attorneys said the newer bills made up only a fraction of the stash.
What happens next
Lawyers for Menendez, Hana and Daibes have said they could call more than a dozen witnesses, beginning Monday, but haven’t said whether any of the defendants will testify themselves.
The judge told jurors last week that he expects the case will be in their hands by the end of the week of July 8.
In their opening statement and during cross-examination over the last seven weeks, the senator’s attorneys have shifted the blame to his wife, which legal experts say could backfire with jurors.
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
