Speaking during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdelrahman Al-Thani urged diplomatic efforts over military resolutions when tackling regional conflicts. (screengrab)
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdelrahman Al-Thani stressed the need to address the central issue in Gaza, which is causing the rest of the small conflicts
Qatari PM said Red Sea escalation was the “most dangerous” because it was affecting international trade
Updated 16 January 2024
Sherouk Zakaria
DAVOS: US and British military strikes will not contain attacks by Yemen’s Houthis on commercial shipping lanes in the Red Sea but will risk further regional escalation, said Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdelrahman Al-Thani.
Speaking during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Al-Thani urged diplomatic efforts over military resolutions when solving the expanding regional conflicts, noting that the escalation in the Red Sea was the “most dangerous” because it was affecting international trade.
Last week on Thursday, the US and UK launched strikes against the Iran-backed militia in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen in retaliation to the recent attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
The Houthis responded by striking a US-owned container ship with a ballistic missile off the coast of Yemen on Monday, less than a day after they launched an anti-ship cruise missile toward an American destroyer in the Red Sea.
Al-Thani, who also serves as Qatar’s foreign minister, stressed the need to address the central issue in Gaza, which is causing the rest of the small conflicts.
“If we are focusing only on symptoms and not treating the real issue, (solutions) will be temporary.”
He said Qatar believed that defusing the conflict in Gaza would stop the escalation on other fronts, adding that the current regional situation is a “recipe for escalation everywhere.”
Al-Thani reiterated that diplomacy and the two-state solution are the only way forward in Palestine, noting that no amount of Israeli force throughout the years brought the path closer to peace.
Requiring Israel to agree to a time-bound, irreversible and mandatory path to a two-state solution is key to future stability in Israel and the Palestinian territories, he noted.
“There are some politicians who thought that the Palestinian issue can be put under the rug, but what happened after Oct. 7 shows that Palestine is a central issue, not for the region but for the entire world.
“We need something that makes resolution mandatory for any party who will come to power in Israel,” added Al-Thani.
He said that Palestinians must be the ones to decide if the Hamas movement that runs Gaza will continue to play a political role in the future.
Without a viable, sustainable two-state solution in Israel and Palestine, the international community will be unwilling to finance the reconstruction of Gaza, Al-Thani said.
Conflict has spread to other parts of the Middle East since the war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 7, with groups allied to Iran carrying out attacks in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
The US and British retaliatory strikes drew criticism in the Middle East and at home, with several UK MPs questioning why Parliament was not recalled to debate the action first.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told Parliament on Tuesday that the strikes were “successful” as Houthis vowed to continue targeting ships.
Israel says it has launched ‘broad wave’ of strikes on Iran, as Tehran widens its response across the region
US military says 17 Iranian navy ships destroyed, struck nearly 2,000 targets in Iran thus far
US and Israeli attacks have killed 787 people in Iran: Iranian Red Crescent
Updated 33 min 37 sec ago
Agencies
JERUSALEM/DUBAI/TEHRAN: Israel early Wednesday launched new attacks on Iran as the US military said it has hit nearly 2,000 targets inside the Islamic republic, which tried to impose a cost by expanding a missile and drone barrage across the region.
With global energy prices on the rise, President Donald Trump said the US Navy was ready to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the vital chokepoint into the Gulf that Iran has threatened to seal off.
Israel’s military said it launched a “broad wave of strikes” after midnight across Iran, which in the hours before had launched three separate missile barrages at Israel, causing mild injuries to a woman in Tel Aviv.
The US military has destroyed 17 Iranian ships, including a submarine, and struck nearly 2,000 targets in Iran, the commander of the US Central Command said on Tuesday.
“Today, there is not a single Iranian ship underway in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, or Gulf of Oman,” US Central Command’s Brad Cooper said in a video posted to X.
Cooper said the US military has “severely degraded Iran’s air defenses” and taken out hundreds of ballistic missiles, launchers and drones.
The video showed missiles and jets launching from US ships, and targets exploding on the ground.
Cooper noted that Iran has launched over 500 ballistic missiles and more than 2,000 drones in retaliation.
But he said the US is “hunting” Iran’s last remaining mobile ballistic missile launchers to eliminate their “lingering launch capability.”
Cooper said the operation has involved more than 50,000 troops, 200 fighter jets, two aircraft carriers and bombers, and “more capability is on the way.”
“We’ve just begun,” Cooper said, adding that the US military is targeting “all the things that can shoot at us.”
“These forces bring a massive amount of firepower, representing the largest buildup by the US in the Middle East in a generation,” he said in the video message, describing the first day’s barrage as bigger than the so-called “shock and awe” against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003.
U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers are delivering unrelenting, overwhelming firepower from regional waters. DAY and NIGHT. pic.twitter.com/3YTiFkFc1V
The US and Israeli attacks have killed 787 people in Iran, according to the Iranian Red Crescent, a toll that could not be independently confirmed.
Iran vowed to inflict a heavy price in retaliation. Drones struck adjacent the US consulate in Dubai, starting a fire but inflicting no casualties, and against the US military base at Al-Udeid in Qatar.
The attacks came a day after strikes on the US embassies in Riyadh and Kuwait City and on a US air base in Bahrain.
“We are saying to the enemy that if it decides to hit our main centers, we will hit all economic centers in the region,” Islamic Revolutionary Guard General Ebrahim Jabbari said.
Iranian attacks have killed at least nine people and wounded dozens in the Gulf region, according to various reports quoting local authorities.
Mourners gather at Kuwait's Sulaibikhat cemetery on March 3, 2026, during the funeral of Kuwait Army soldiers who were killed in an Iranian strike. (AFP)
Among the latest death was an 11-year-old girl who was killed after shrapnel fell in a residential area in Kuwait City, health authorities said Wednesday.
The Kuwait army said in a statement the shrapnel fell over a house and left casualties while forces were intercepting “several hostile aerial targets” over the country.
The Health Ministry said in a separate statement that the child died of her wounds at the hospital.
The child’s mother and three other relatives were injured and being treated at the hospital, it said.
Vessel hit in Gulf of Oman
A vessel was hit by a projectile early Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman off the United Arab Emirates, an agency of the UK military said.
There were no reported casualties.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center said the vessel was struck 8 miles east of Fujairah, one of the UAE’s seven emirates.
The attack damaged the vessel’s steel plating.
No fire or water intake was reported, it said.
Tankers are seen off the coast of the Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, on March 3, 2026. President Trump said the US Navy was ready to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz , which Iran has threatened to close. (REUTERS)
Iran hits US embassies
The US State Department said Tuesday it’s preparing military and charter flights for Americans who want to leave the Middle East. Several other countries also arranged evacuation flights for their citizens.
An attack from two drones on the US Embassy in Riyadh caused a “limited fire,” according to the Saudi Arabian Defense Ministry, and the embassy urged Americans to avoid the compound.
An Iranian drone struck a parking lot outside the US consulate in Dubai, sparking a small fire, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Washington. He said all personnel were accounted for.
The United Arab Emirates said it has intercepted the vast majority of more than 1,000 Iranian missile and drone attacks against it.
US embassies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Lebanon said they were closed to the public.
The US State Department ordered the evacuation of non-emergency personnel and family in Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. And US citizens were urged to leave more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, though many were stranded because of airspace closures.
The US military has confirmed six deaths of American service members.
Four of the American soldiers killed were identified as Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and Sgt, Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa, who received a posthumous promotion in rank. They were assigned to the Iowa-based 103rd Sustainment Command.
Ghost town
In Tehran, residents who have not fled remained shut away in their homes for fear of the US-Israeli bombardment.
The Iranian capital is normally home to around 10 million people, but in recent days “there are so few people that you’d think no one ever lived here,” said Samireh, a 33-year-old nurse.
Authorities had previously urged people to leave the city, and police officers, armed security forces and armored vehicles have been stationed at main junctions, carrying out random checks on vehicles.
In the more upmarket north of Tehran, the meowing of cats and chirping of birds replaced the usual din of traffic jams.
Iranian authorities said a strike on a school in the city of Minab on the first day of the war killed more than 150 people.
