President Donald J. Trump has issued an executive order that provides Qatar with a U.S. security guarantee.Footnote ¹ The order came three weeks after Israel launched airstrikes against senior Hamas officials meeting in the Qatari capital, Doha, to discuss a Gaza war ceasefire proposal endorsed by the presidentFootnote ² and three months after Iran fired missiles at a U.S. military base in Qatar in retaliation for the United States’ bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities.Footnote ³ While the United States has served as the primary security guarantor for the Gulf states for decades, and provided security assurances to Bahrain in a 2023 executive agreement,Footnote ⁴ the explicit security guarantee granted Qatar is unprecedented in the region and the first such commitment since the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1960.Footnote ⁵ Its conferral through an executive order, instead of a treaty, raises critical questions about the commitment’s durability and constitutionality.

Qatar is an important diplomatic and security partner for the United States in the Middle East and beyond. The country, which has positioned itself as an international mediator, serves as an interlocutor between the United States and its adversaries in the region.Footnote ⁶ It has acted for the United States as an intermediary with the Taliban, assisted with a prisoner exchange with Iran, and facilitated a truce following the U.S. bombardment of Iran.Footnote ⁷ It has served for years as a go-between with Hamas. At the United States’ request, it has hosted for a decade the Hamas office in Doha that was struck by Israel,Footnote ⁸ and throughout the war in Gaza, Qatar has facilitated negotiations between Hamas and Israel. The Al Udeid Air Base serves as the regional headquarters for the U.S. Central Command and many of its component commands, and Qatar has invested more than $8 billion in the facility since 2003.Footnote ⁹ Qatar is the second-largest partner in the United States’ Foreign Military Sales program, with $26 billion in active sales; it has purchased billions more in military equipment through direct commercial sales.Footnote ¹⁰ In recognition of the close defense and security ties between the two countries, President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. designated Qatar a major non-NATO ally in 2022.Footnote ¹¹

The Israeli airstrikes on Doha, which came without any advance warning from the United States and killed six, but not the intended targets,Footnote ¹² created significant anxiety in Qatar and among other U.S. partners in the region. It validated pre-existing concerns (stemming from the U.S. response, or lack thereof, to a 2019 attack on Saudi oil facilities and a 2022 attack on the United Arab Emirates (UAE))Footnote ¹³ about the reliability of the U.S. security umbrella.Footnote ¹⁴ Gulf states view U.S. protection as essential for deterring aggressors, such as Iran and its proxies, and for maintaining the Gulf states’ “reputations as safe havens for trade, investment and tourism” as they diversify their economies away from oil and gas.Footnote ¹⁵ U.S. allies in the region have long desired stronger security assurances from the United States.Footnote ¹⁶

That Qatar was the target of the Israeli attack was especially jarring given U.S.-Qatari relations. Not only does the country house the largest U.S. military base in the region, it also has positioned itself as a strategic ally of the United States on foreign policy matters. It neighbors Bahrain and the UAE, both signatories of the Abraham Accords, a first Trump administration project that sought to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states.Footnote ¹⁷ Qatar, moreover, has actively cultivated strong personal relations with President Trump since the start of his second term.Footnote ¹⁸ It has assumed a significant role in the U.S.-led negotiations between Israel and Hamas that are prioritized by the president. It has promised over $243 billion in contracts with, and investments in, U.S. companies—a commitment touted by the administration.Footnote ¹⁹ And it has entered business deals with the president’s family and provided him with gifts, including a $400 million Boeing 747 airplane that the president plans to use as Air Force One.Footnote ²⁰ Other countries could not help but consider that if Qatar was not protected by the United States, then none of them would be. The unified reaction of the Gulf states—condemning the attack as a violation of international law and asserting their “readiness … to harness all capabilities to support … Qatar and protect its security, stability, and sovereignty against any threats”—recognized their common position and vulnerability.Footnote ²¹

President Trump’s initial response to the Israeli strike, which he did not clearly condemn, failed to appreciate the existential seriousness of the attack.Footnote ²² Qatar quickly signaled its displeasure by suspending its role as mediator between Israel and Hamas, and it dispatched Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani to Washington for consultations. Qatar insisted on an apology from Israel and assurances from the United States that Israel would not attack again.Footnote ²³ Saudi Arabia sent its own message to the United States by entering into a mutual defense agreement with Pakistan just a week after the Israeli attack.Footnote ²⁴

The Trump administration got the point. The executive order containing the security guarantee was issued, and, at President Trump’s insistence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a phone conversation with Prime Minister al-Thani, apologized for the strikes and pledged that Israel would not “violate [Qatar’s] sovereignty again in the future.”Footnote ²⁵ That same day, the United States released the president’s 20-Point Plan to end the Gaza war, an agreement that Qatar helped secure.Footnote ²⁶ Prime Minister al-Thani endorsed the plan.Footnote ²⁷ Taking place over only a few days, there was no mistaking the interrelationship of these events.

The executive order states that “it is the policy of the United States to guarantee the security and territorial integrity of the State of Qatar against external attack.”Footnote ²⁸ The order specifically provides that “[t]he United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States.”Footnote ²⁹ If there is an attack on Qatar, the United States promises that it “shall take all lawful and appropriate measures—including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military—to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.”Footnote ³⁰ The order also commits the “Secretary of War, in coordination with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence,” to “maintain joint contingency planning with the State of Qatar to ensure a rapid and coordinated response to any foreign aggression against the State of Qatar.”Footnote ³¹

The security guarantee provided to Qatar is sui generis. It is provided in an executive order, not a treaty, the form taken by all prior security commitments of this type, and it thus was not submitted to, or approved by, the Senate. The guarantee is not made in an international agreement, and it is not governed by international law.Footnote ³² The commitments made in the guarantee are all unilateral, not mutual (there is no indication that Qatar has promised to come to the aid of the United States), also unlike prior practice. It contains no language requiring that any action taken by the United States, in response to an attack on Qatar, be “in accordance with … [the United States’] constitutional processes,” the requirement contained in the mutual defense treaties with Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea.Footnote ³³ It also does not include the subjective limiting language “as it deems necessary,” modifying the promised “action” in response to an armed attack, that is included in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.Footnote ³⁴ The Qatar guarantee requires instead that the United States will take “all lawful and appropriate measures.”Footnote ³⁵ Finally, though some of the words and phrases in the guarantee are similar to those made in mutual defense treaties,Footnote ³⁶ others are novel, including the word “guarantee” itself, which has not been used previously.

Since the security guarantee was conferred through an executive order, the commitment made to Qatar would appear, at first glance, to be inherently fragile. The order, like all other executive orders, can be revoked at any time and by any president, including by President Trump. A security guarantee provided through a treaty is thought to have greater resilience due to its status as an international agreement and its receiving the Senate’s imprimatur, though in practice a treaty too is subject to unilateral withdrawal by the president.Footnote ³⁷ But the relative resilience of the treaty form, if any, may be overstated in this instance since the executive order, as a practical matter, may be stronger than what standard expectations would predict. It is highly unlikely that any president will want to revoke Qatar’s guarantee as long as the United States wishes to retain a military base there. From Qatar’s perspective, with the guarantee seemingly ratcheted in place, how it will be applied going forward matters more than the form in which it was made.

That the security guarantee might effectively be permanent does, though, heighten the constitutional concerns regarding the method of its issuance. By conferring the guarantee through an executive order, the president has made significant international security commitments on behalf of the United States without congressional consultation, debate, or approval. That is contrary to the consistent past practice of submitting such commitments to the Senate as a treaty for its advice and consent.Footnote ³⁸ And it ignores the Senate’s long-held view that “a promise to assist a foreign country, government, or people by the use of the Armed Forces …, either immediately or upon the happening of certain events,” can only be made “by means of a treaty, statute, or concurrent resolution.”Footnote ³⁹ That position is founded on Congress’s authority to declare war and to make appropriations and the Senate’s power to approve treaties. These constitutional processes recognize the importance of providing a check on the president given the stakes involved and the value of careful and public consideration of, and deliberation concerning, these types of commitments. It also acknowledges the importance for the United States of depoliticizing security guarantees, so they do not reflect only the decision of a single person or party.

But a treaty was not a practical option. It would have taken too long to gain approval in the Senate, and Qatar’s years of funding Hamas-led Gaza, accusations that it has financed terrorists, claims that it has committed human rights abuses, and its relatively close relations with Iran, would have made it difficult to secure the necessary votes.Footnote ⁴⁰ Reaction from the Senate to the issuance of the security guarantee has been muted.Footnote ⁴¹ Granting the guarantee through an executive order is consistent with President Trump’s general use of that form of lawmaking and his extraordinarily expansive conceptualization of president power.Footnote ⁴² Also consistent is Congress’s failure to object to the president’s incursion on its constitutional authorities.

The issuance of the security guarantee to Qatar raises the prospect of future such executive orders, and it is reasonable to anticipate that other states, including those in the region, will seek the same commitment. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has sought a mutual defense treaty with the United States for some time. The Biden administration insisted that entering into such an agreement would depend, in part, upon Saudi Arabia’s normalization of relations with Israel (a requirement that President Trump did not make of Qatar).Footnote ⁴³ Both Saudi and U.S. officials anticipated that a Qatar-type security guarantee would be made during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington in November 2025.Footnote ⁴⁴ That did not happen. It is not clear why, though Prince Salman’s reluctance to sign the Abraham Accords was reported to be a potential “sticking point.”Footnote ⁴⁵ Instead, during the visit, the two countries entered into, among other deals, a strategic defense agreement to formalize security cooperation.Footnote ⁴⁶ President Trump also announced that the United States would sell Saudi Arabia F-35 fighter jets and that he would designate the country a major non-NATO ally.Footnote ⁴⁷