President Donald Trump and his administration found an unlikely show of support from Qatari media amid a knockdown-dragout battle to shape the media narrative surrounding Operation Epic Fury.
Al Jazeera, a state media outlet of the Qatari government that is widely viewed as one of the administration’s sharpest critics, published an op-ed on Monday asserting that the “US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working” and explicitly rebuking skeptics.
“Two weeks into Operation Epic Fury, the dominant narrative has settled into a comfortable groove: The United States and Israel stumbled into a war without a plan,” Doha-based academic Muhanad Seloom wrote in the piece published Monday. “But this narrative is wrong.”
Seloom, who works as an assistant professor of international politics and security at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, claimed in his op-ed that Operation Epic Fury has successfully degraded Iranian military capabilities and rendered key nuclear facilities inoperable.
He went on to claim that the U.S. military has broken down Iran’s proxy network into an “uncoordinated, strategically incoherent” confederation that will prove “politically costly for the host states where these groups operate.”
The fact that such a glowing review was published in the pages of a state media outlet tightly controlled by the Qatari government signals that Doha might be making a pivot after calculating the war to be in its favor.
“Seventeen days in, Iran’s supreme leader is dead, his successor is reportedly wounded and every principal instrument of Iranian power projection – missiles, nuclear infrastructure, air defenses, the navy, proxy command networks – has been degraded beyond near-term recovery,” Seloom wrote.
“The campaign’s execution has been imperfect, its public communication poor and its post-conflict planning incomplete. War is never clean. But the strategy — the actual strategy, measured in degraded capabilities rather than cable news cycles — is working.”
The Trump administration quickly jumped on the op-ed, with the president recirculating it via his Truth Social account and the White House “Rapid Response 47” account amplifying it on X. Politico described the article as “going viral in D.C. circles” following its publication.
Qatar has sought to position itself as a neutral third party since the beginning of the conflict in Iran, similar to the other Gulf States who advocated against military action targeting the regime in Tehran.
When Iran launched its scattershot retaliation, it wantonly struck major metropolitan centers across the Middle East, including Doha.
The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs called Iran’s strikes “a flagrant violation of its national sovereignty,” but still continued to push for a diplomatic end to the conflict — reminding Tehran that Qatar “has been and continues to be among the foremost advocates of dialogue with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
These pleas have done little to stop the ballistic missile threats from Iran, which launched its latest round of strikes against Gulf States last week.
“The countries of the region must close down the US military bases; otherwise, we will be forced to attack them,” supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei warned in his first address since succeeding his late father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iranian officials maintain that their strikes “did not attack any residential or civilian targets,” insisting that they are only seeking to damage U.S. and Israeli military infrastructure scattered throughout neighboring countries.
“There may have been collateral damage in residential areas, which is normal in any war, and we took every precaution to avoid it,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told outlet Al Araby al Jadeed.
These explanations have not played well in Doha.
“I find it very difficult to even respond to what Mr Aragchi said in light of the fact that these attacks are ongoing every day,” Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari told the press on Monday. “Since the Iranian attacks have started on Qatar, the threats and the attacks on civilian targets have not stopped.”
Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani received Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Doha on Tuesday for bilateral discussions on the Iranian conflict.