Qatar carried out strikes inside Iran over the past 24 hours, senior Western diplomatic sources confirmed to The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, as Doha accused Tehran of targeting civilian infrastructure and warned it would respond.
The Qatari action came after the country said it thwarted an attempted attack on Hamad International Airport in Doha, according to remarks by Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari cited by N12. Al-Ansari said Qatar did not receive advance warning from Iran ahead of the missile launches.
An N12 News report on the strikes, also citing Western sources, said the Qatari strike occurred within the last day. The network did not provide details about the targets, the type of strike, or the scope of the reported operation. Qatar also did not publicly announce a strike inside Iran in the statements quoted in the N12 report.
Iran did not immediately comment on the strikes.
Doha: 'Attacks like these will not pass without a response'
Al-Ansari described the thwarted incident at Hamad International Airport as part of a broader Iranian attack pattern that, he said, went beyond military sites.
“We did not receive advance warning from Iran about the missile attacks,” he said, according to N12. “The target is not only military facilities, it includes the entire territory of the state. Attacks like these will not pass without a response.”
In a video circulated by N12, debris was shown falling in Doha after an interception in Qatari airspace.
Thousands stranded in Doha as travel disruptions widen
Qatar said the attempted attack disrupted air traffic and left more than 8,000 transit passengers stranded in Doha, where authorities housed them in hotels, N12 reported.
Al-Ansari added that cruise passengers were also stuck in Qatar and were placed in hotels as well.
Al-Ansari also rejected what he called a mistaken assumption that pressure on Gulf states would push them back into nuclear negotiations with Tehran following Iranian strikes, N12 reported.
Separately, in a statement condemning the Iranian attack on US embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the Qatari Foreign Ministry asserted that it viewed the Islamic Republic's actions as a "blatant violation of international conventions and laws."
The ministry added that Qatar stood in "full solidarity with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Kuwait in all measures they take to safeguard their security."
The Qatari strikes came amid a widening regional confrontation following the US-Israel campaign against Iran and Iranian missile and drone attacks across the Gulf, including attempted strikes on civilian infrastructure in Qatar, as reported by CNN and cited in Reuters coverage carried by The Jerusalem Post.