Qatar said this was a scheduled refueling training with the UK. So this is probably nothing unless they fully coordinated their own bombing with Israel.
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
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Yeah I mean if they were actually refuelling Israeli planes this close then I think they would have been called out more directly.
I'm so tired of seeing the Canary push this conspiracy theory.
The UK and Israel use completely different (i.e. incompatible) fuelling systems.
This is likely a routine training flight with the Qatari air force, something we do frequently.
E: I was correct:
A British Royal Air Force (RAF) plane spotted over Doha on Monday, around the time of Israel’s surprise strike on the Qatari capital, was participating in an annual joint military exercise and not involved in the attack, according to flight tracker data.
The RAF Voyager KC3 tanker was conducting air-to-air refuelling drills as part of "Soaring Falcon", a regular UK-Qatar exercise, when Israeli fighter jets targeted a meeting of senior Hamas officials in Doha.
Can the UK ever do anything right in The Canary's eyes? The UK is helping the country that Israel carried out an attack on, and still gets accused of helping Israel.
Wait, is this something the Canary has said before? During the Israeli attacks on Iran or something?
They talked of the refueling planes that Palestine Action destroyed the engines of as if they were used to refuel Israeli jets, which was never the case. It was debunked ages ago that the RAF refuel Israeli jets, but they're continuing to say it nonetheless, because they know there's no real repercussions to lying.
Same crap the daily mail, express, etc do.
I'm not certain if they mentioned it in regards to Israel's Iran strikes
I don't think this theory holds up
- The flight in question returned to Al Udeid air base at 1405, over an hour and a half before the explosions. For it to have refuelled the Israeli jets they'd have to have just been hanging about off the coast of Doha for all that time
- The air base it's flying out of is a Qatari one, meaning the tanker would have had to return to the Qatari base immediately after facilitating an attack on Qatar right in Qatar's line of sight
- An RAF tanker flew the same route at the same time for several days beforehand, so it doesn't seem like this was an unusual one
- Israel has plenty of its own tankers
- Surely the Israeli jets would not have refuelled right outside their target?
On top of that, 2,200 km is not the distance for a plane to fly from Israel to Qatar, it's the distance for a car to drive. It's 400 km less than that in a straight line, or 300 km less if you want to approach Qatar by flying over the Persian Gulf
All that is good but it’s quicker to point out that Israeli jets are incompatible with British tankers.
Also that, but I didn't know about it when I wrote this and it wasn't something that I thought to check
One problem with this story: the UK and Israel use different, incompatible midair refuelling systems (Israel uses the US one, IIRC).