An “anonymous” Israeli official has told the Kan public broadcaster that Israel’s standing in the Gulf was now at a lower point than it was after the killing of a Hamas official in the United Arab Emirates in 2010, an operation widely blamed on the Mossad, The Times of Israel reports.

“Israel’s regional situation is worse than after the elimination of Mabhouh,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying in the wake of Israel’s attack on Qatar last week.

In 2010, Hamas’s Mahmoud Mabhouh, a “co-founder of Hamas’s military wing”, was found dead in a hotel room in Dubai. “The killing led to a crisis in the then-secret, but growing, ties between Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi,” the report added.