US President Donald Trump signed a NATO-like security guarantee for Qatar, part of efforts to reassure the emirate after an Israeli strike on Hamas leaders in Doha last month.
The executive order pledges to take all measures, including US military support, to defend the Gulf state, though its legal and practical value is in question. Such agreements have historically required the approval of the US Senate, and the announcement was met with criticism from some of Trump’s conservative supporters.
The move was ostensibly made to reassure Washington’s Gulf allies following the Israeli strike — Saudi Arabia has already reached a mutual-defense pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan — but Politico nevertheless called it a “shocking departure from the administration’s America First approach.”
