When a missile ripped through a residential compound in Doha on Sept. 9, it did more than shatter windows. It detonated a geopolitical fuse whose blast radius runs from the Persian Gulf’s LNG terminals to the balance sheets of Wall Street. The strike on Qatari soil — which killed Qatari personnel and members of a negotiating delegation — propelled the Gulf from the periphery of the Gaza war into its active center and forced an uncomfortable reckoning about the regional architecture that has undergirded global capitalism for four decades.

For the past 40 years the liberalized global economy has quietly relied on an uneasy division of labor in the Middle East: Gulf petrodollars and sovereign wealth to stabilize global finance, and Israeli innovation to power Western military and high-technology ecosystems. That tacit bargain has been a hidden pillar of globalization — until now.

Doha’s emergency summit and the Gulf’s subsequent statements made one thing painfully clear: Gulf leaders perceive an attack on Qatar as an attack on the Gulf. The GCC’s formal communiqués condemned the aggression, affirmed that the security of member states is indivisible, and directed joint defence mechanisms to be readied — language calculated to signal collective deterrence without immediately naming the perpetrator in blunt terms. Qatar, having paused its mediation role in the Gaza talks and demanding an official apology, warned that its patience and its role as a broker were being mortally endangered.

That restraint in diplomatic drafting — the choice to condemn and mobilize without explicitly naming Israel in every line — is tactical. It is intended to preserve options: to mobilize collective Gulf pressure while keeping room for mediation,........

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