DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israeli fighter jets over the Red Sea launched ballistic missiles to target Hamas leaders in Qatar last week, a U.S. defense official said, in what was a novel method likely designed to overcome the energy-rich country’s air defenses and avoid entering any Mideast nation’s airspace.
The Sept. 9 attack, which killed six people in Qatar's capital, Doha, upended months of diplomacy mediated by the Arabian Peninsula nation to reach a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war that has devastated the Gaza Strip over nearly two years. Just over a week after the missile launch, Israel began a ground offensive targeting Gaza City. That has reignited anger in the region over the war, while the Doha attack has raised fears in other countries that they, too, could be struck.
The Israeli military took advantage of the element of surprise by firing in a direction probably not anticipated by Qatar or the United States, whose Mideast forward headquarters operates out of Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
Even if those countries did know, experts say the Patriot missile batteries in Qatar likely would have been unable to intercept the missiles traveling through space at multiple times the speed of sound.
“We're probably talking about a few minutes from fire to impact, so not long at all,” said Sidharth Kaushal, a missile expert and senior research fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank. “Even if (Patriot batteries) did pick it up, interception would have been dumb luck at that point."
Missiles fired from the Red Sea
The U.S. defense official told The Associated Press that the missiles were fired by Israeli fighter jets over the Red Sea, with Hamas leaders gathered in Qatar to consider a Gaza ceasefire proposal. The official had direct knowledge about how Israel conducted the strike and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
Another U.S. defense official, who similarly spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Israeli strike was an “over the horizon” attack from outside Qatar's airspace. The American military typically uses the term to describe airstrikes conducted from great distances.
By launching ballistic missiles into space, Israel kept their missiles out of the airspace of surrounding Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, with which Israel long has wanted to reach a diplomatic recognition deal.
There is “the political factor, you're not flying over Saudi airspace and violating their sovereignty in the process, which is obviously useful if you do harbor the hope of ... normalizing things with the Saudis,” Kaushal said.
They also came west to east in a direction likely not being monitored by air defense systems in Qatar run by either the Americans or the Qataris. The main regional threats that Gulf countries have been worrying about broadly come from either the north in Iran, which earlier launched an attack on Qatar, or from the south in territory held by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Ballistic missiles fly up into the upper atmosphere or even space before coming back down at multiple times the speed of sound. While a Patriot battery cannot hit at those heights, a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, can. Qatar ordered one during President Donald Trump's visit in May.
The United States has said it called Qatar as soon as it learned of the Israeli attack, but officials in Doha say the warning came only after the missiles hit.
An Israeli official, speaking only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the attack, has said about 10 planes participated in the mission and launched about 10 missiles. Israel has not acknowledged the weapons used or the precise details of the strike.
The Israeli military, the Qatari government and the Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment. The White House declined to comment, referring questions to the Israeli government.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the means Israel used to attack Hamas in Qatar.
Air-launched ballistic missiles fielded by China, Israel and Russia
The use of air-launched ballistic missiles has been common by Russia in its war on Ukraine as Moscow seeks to protect its aircraft from Ukrainian air defenses. China showcased a nuclear-capable, air-launched ballistic missile this month during its Victory Day parade.
Israel has several variants of air-launched ballistic missiles, publicly known after the leak of U.S. intelligence documents last year. They include the Golden Horizon and the IS02 Rock, which the intelligence documents suggested Israel likely could use to target Iran.
Israel launched a 12-day war against Iran in June that included the use of “standoff” weapons, which allow an aircraft to fire on a target from far outside a country’s airspace. The weapons used included air-launched ballistic missiles, experts have said, pointing to missile debris later found on the ground in Iraq.
Jeffrey Lewis, a missile expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, suggested that the missiles used in Doha could be either the Golden Horizon or a variant of Israel's Sparrow.
The Sparrow includes an option with an inert warhead, which might explain the limited damage done and that a gas station abutting the site of the strike did not explode. It has an estimated range of some 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles). A Red Sea launch to the site would have been a distance of as much as 1,700 kilometers (1,055 miles).
"Even an inert warhead should hit with a lot of force — say a few hundred kilograms (pounds) of TNT," Lewis said.
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Toropin reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.
