Trump Calls Off Iran Strike After Qatar Mediation; Israel Left Out of Loop

On Saturday evening, President Trump posted to Truth Social that he had called off a major military strike against Iran. The announcement came as a surprise to nearly everyone—including Israel, which was supposed to be part of the operation. Senior Israeli officials learned the strike had been canceled the same way the rest of the world did: through the president's social media post.

The attack had been in the works for less than a week. On Wednesday, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Trump at the White House, planning began in earnest. The US Central Command drew up a detailed strike plan targeting Iranian energy infrastructure. Israel was to participate in the operation, and had made clear to American planners that the mission needed to inflict serious economic and strategic damage to be worth undertaking at all. By Friday, the operation was set to proceed within 24 hours.

What changed was Qatar's diplomatic intervention. Over Friday and Saturday, Qatari officials conducted intensive negotiations with Iran, the United States, and Oman, all aimed at preventing the strike and resolving the underlying dispute over the Strait of Hormuz. The strait had become the flashpoint after a US-Iran memorandum of understanding, signed just weeks earlier, collapsed under competing interpretations. The agreement had required Iran to keep the waterway open for 60 days, but the two sides disagreed fundamentally about what that meant—whether Iran could control shipping routes or whether the passage had to remain genuinely unrestricted.

On Saturday, Qatar told Trump they needed one more day to broker a solution. Trump agreed to wait. Hours later, Qatari officials returned with word that Iran had accepted a proposal: the Strait of Hormuz would remain open for 60 days without fees, and a ceasefire between the two countries would be renewed. Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman also called Trump that day, urging him to abandon the strike. Trump then posted his announcement: the attack was off, Iran had agreed to open the strait, and Tehran had committed to ending its nuclear program.

Israeli officials were blindsided. Neither Israel nor US Central Command had been informed of Trump's decision before he announced it publicly. For hours, senior defense and diplomatic officials in Jerusalem operated in what one described as "real uncertainty." Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and their teams initially wondered if the president's statement was a deception tactic meant to catch Iran off guard. Eventually, Israeli military and diplomatic officials managed to reach their American counterparts and confirm that Trump had genuinely reversed course. The relief was mixed with frustration. "The feeling was that they left us behind," one senior Israeli official told Channel 12. "For hours, we were in real uncertainty. President Trump left us in the fog. Senior officers were updated about what was happening via Trump's social media."

The operational cost of the reversal weighed heavily. Israeli forces had mobilized across multiple theaters, committing substantial resources to support what was supposed to be a coordinated strike. Suddenly, all that preparation was unnecessary. "The moment we lower our alert level, it takes a lot of time to reorganize," the official continued. "It is frustrating to commit all our resources to one theater, and then to discover that we had been on high alert for nothing. We don't understand what the president's endgame is."

Yet Israeli military planners are not treating the cancellation as permanent. Trump could reverse his decision again at any moment, officials believe, so Israeli forces remain on high alert. Meanwhile, negotiations are underway to formalize a new US-Iran memorandum of understanding that would codify the 60-day opening of the Strait of Hormuz and restore the ceasefire. Iranian state media reported that talks with Oman over a mutual mechanism to govern the strait were in their final stages. The diplomatic path forward exists, but the trust that might have accompanied it has been fractured by the abruptness of Saturday's reversal and the way it was communicated.

The episode also exposed divisions within the Gulf states themselves. While Saudi Arabia had lobbied Trump to avoid a major strike, the United Arab Emirates pushed in the opposite direction. According to the Wall Street Journal, UAE officials argued that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps would not compromise without a significant escalation from Washington—potentially including American control of the Strait of Hormuz or even a ground incursion. The UAE, which has conducted its own strikes against Iran and hosts Israeli air defense troops, saw restraint as a strategic mistake.