REUTERS, Washington

Less than four months ago, President Donald Trump met with the leader of Qatar, praising his opulent palace and signing a sweeping defense agreement with the Gulf monarchy, a key ally that hosts the biggest US base in the Middle East.

Israel’s surprise attack on Tuesday against Hamas leaders in Doha has jolted that relationship, angering Trump and drawing fierce condemnation from Doha and Western allies.

Ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and targeting the political offices of the Palestinian militant group, the strikes killed a Qatari security agent and five others, but failed to kill the Hamas leaders. Trump said he was “very unhappy about every aspect” of the Israeli operation.

But for all the indignation, the strikes are unlikely to change the president’s fundamental approach toward Israel, analysts and US officials say. If anything, the bombings underlined the cold calculus beneath the Trump-Netanyahu relationship.

Israel has shown it is not afraid to act against US interests. The administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not formally warn Washington of its impending bombing campaign on Tuesday, US officials said.

That lack of warning recalled Israel’s September 2024 attack on Hezbollah, when Israel wounded thousands of the militant group’s members with booby-trapped pagers, without informing then-President Joe Biden.

Trump, for his part, has occasionally expressed displeasure with Netanyahu. But his administration has strongly supported Israel’s campaign to weaken Hamas and allowed it to largely take the lead on key issues such as Iran’s nuclear program.

“On this one, I think Trump is annoyed by Netanyahu’s tactics,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and veteran US peace negotiator.

But, Miller added, “(Trump’s) instinct is that he agrees with Netanyahu’s notion that Hamas cannot just be hollowed out as a military organization. It needs to be fundamentally weakened.”

Asked for comment, the White House referred Reuters to remarks by Trump on Truth Social on Tuesday night, during which he said the bombings did not advance US or Israeli interests.

“However,” Trump wrote, “eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”

The Israeli Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Some analysts declined to rule out the possibility that Netanyahu may yet exhaust Trump’s patience if he springs more surprises on Washington. In practice, that could mean a withdrawal of political cover for Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza, which has provoked outrage among European and Arab nations as famine conditions spread.

Israel’s campaign in the Palestinian enclave was triggered by a Hamas-led rampage in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.