The war in the Middle East has not only strained relations between the United States and Iran, but also between the United Arab Emirates and its neighbors.
At the meeting of foreign ministers of the BRICS grouping of states, to which other states have joined in recent years, on May 14 quarrel between Iranian Foreign Minister Arakchi and the delegation of the United Arab Emirates.
The background is the escalation of relations after bilateral attacks as a result of the war in the Persian Gulf. After the start of the war, Iran focused its attacks mainly on Arab partners of the US, such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait, which it wanted to punish for their cooperation with Washington.
The United Arab Emirates alone has been targeted by approximately 500 Iranian missiles and more than 2,000 drones.
However, as it now appears, the Iranian attacks provoked retaliation from the Arab states. American newspaper Wall Street Journal found outthat the United Arab Emirates launched its own retaliatory attacks on Iran after the Iranian attacks, including hitting a refinery on Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf.
Even Saudi Arabia after the Iranian attacks performed “numerous, undisclosed” counterstrikes against Iran, Reuters sources say.
Reuters recalls that the United Arab Emirates has adopted a tougher stance towards Iran, while the Saudis are still trying to “prevent the escalation of the conflict” and remain “in regular contact with Iran, including through Tehran’s ambassador in Riyadh.”
Out of nowhere
Until the 1960s and 1970s, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf were not an object of great interest on the international stage. They were small in population, relatively poor, and few expected that they would be major diplomatic or military players in the future.
The situation was changed only by the sharp increase in oil prices after the oil crisis, when the price of oil first increased more than twofold, and later even fivefold – from two to 4.5 and later even over 10 dollars per barrel.
Back in 1971, only 3.6 million people lived in Saudi Arabia, today there are more than 35 million of them.
The increase is even greater in the neighboring United Arab Emirates, where the population has grown from less than 300,000 at the time of independence in 1971 to more than 11 million today. However, only about a million of them are citizens, the emirates owe most of the population growth to labor migrants from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, as well as Egypt and the Philippines.
Together with the population, but especially the economic growth of the Persian Gulf states, their political power on the international scene also grew. States such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman have built considerable reputations as places where world powers come to negotiate, and Doha and Muscat, thanks to their role as mediators, have been able to play in a significantly higher league than comparably large countries.
Partner of the USA, but also of France
In an effort to survive in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates relied mainly on the USA, which after the Second World War “inherited” the British role as the guarantor power in the Persian Gulf. Independence from the British meant not only benefits for the smaller Arab states, but also challenges – mainly the question of how to defend their independence against larger neighbors such as Saddam’s Iraq or Saudi Arabia.
“The Emirates have always considered the Saudis a predatory neighbor who wants to make them their vassals,” explains the politics of the emirates former US ambassador Patrick Theros for Middle East Eye. “They also traditionally feared the Persians, who were asserting their own sphere of influence in the Persian Gulf.”
“Muhammad ibn Zayd (de facto leader of the emirates since 2014 and president since 2022, editor’s note) has finally decided that it is possible for a small country in the Persian Gulf to stand up to the Saudis and Persians,” explains the more assertive behavior of the emirates in recent years.
But despite its proximity to Washington, the United Arab Emirates did not want to bet only on the American card. Back in 1995, they signed an alliance agreement with France, and since 2009, the French have been operating their own military base in the country (which, despite French neutrality in the conflict, has since been targeted by Iranian drones).
Back in the 1990s, the residents of the emirates bought more than 400 French Leclerc tanks and in 2021 they signed a new agreement to buy 80 French Dassault Rafale fighters in addition to more than 60 older Mirage 2000 fighters.
Own ambitions
In recent years, the United Arab Emirates has strived for its own foreign policy independent of the ideas of regional powers such as Iran or Saudi Arabia. As recently as 2020, together with Bahrain and Morocco, they proceeded to normalize relations with Israel, and Israel helped them in the current war deliveries of anti-missile defense systemswhich shot down dozens of Iranian missiles.
However, the assertive foreign policy of the United Arab Emirates also has a dark side. Although the Emirates officially deny it, they are among the main backers of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the Sudanese civil war. The RSF are known for large-scale war crimes, including the massacre in the city of Al-Fashir, in which an estimated 60,000 people were killed since October.
On October 29 alone, more than 400 patients and accompanying persons were killed at the Saudi Arabian hospital in Al-Fashir, which led to a new wave of criticism in the Arab states against the Emirates, which the Sudanese government also blames for the RSF’s military successes.
Failure in Yemen
Abu Dhabi also plays a very active role in other conflicts in the region. After a broad Arab coalition intervened in Yemen’s civil war with little success since 2015, the United Arab Emirates has attempted an independent policy.
Although initially members of the Saudi coalition supporting the internationally recognized government-in-exile, in 2019 the emirates changed course and began supporting South Yemeni separatists and their model of dividing the country into a predominantly Shiite north and a Sunni south.
Their strategy looked promising for a long time, with the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) quickly taking control of the country’s old southern capital Aden and most of the country, while Saudi-backed government troops held out only in the country’s sparsely populated east.
When STC troops launched an offensive into the Hadramaut region in December 2025, it briefly seemed that the idea of a unified Yemen had been put to rest for good. However, neither Abu Dhabi nor the South Yemeni separatists counted on the reaction of Saudi Arabia, which ran out of patience.
After a wave of Saudi airstrikes, not only did the STC advance stop, but the Emirates had to announce the withdrawal of all forces from Yemen. Government troops subsequently launched a lightning counter-offensive, which culminated in the capture of Aden in early January.
Leaving OPEC
The Saudis and Emiratis are also at loggerheads over Somalia, where the UAE is close to the breakaway republic of Somaliland in the north, while the Saudis support preserving the African country’s territorial integrity.
The simmering crisis between Saudi Arabia and the Emirates took on a new dimension at the end of April, when the Emirates announced their withdrawal from the OPEC oil cartel. The latter determines the volumes of oil that its members are allowed to produce, thereby trying to influence the price in favor of the exporting countries.
The emirates have long been among the critics of OPEC’s policy, because they perceived it as too favorable to the interests of Saudi Arabia, and they wanted higher quotas, which would lower oil prices, but would allow them to export more of this raw material.
“The Iran war, the current volatility in the oil markets, high prices, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the reduction of production by the Persian Gulf states – all these circumstances offer the perfect opportunity to make this move without causing chaos in the oil markets,” explains Bachar El-Halabi, a Dubai expert on energy markets, for the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).
“We don’t need high oil prices to balance our budget. So what we need to do is try to sell as much oil and gas as possible right now so that we can invest the proceeds in economic transformation in the future,” El-Halabi sums up the Emirati logic.
Crisis of the economic model
Nevertheless, it is hardly possible to consider the Emirates as some kind of winners of the crisis in the Middle East. In the past decades, the United Arab Emirates has invested hundreds of billions in the diversification of its economy – mainly by supporting airlines, developing the financial sector and tourism.
This economic strategy made sense in many ways. The Emirates do not have many other mineral resources besides oil and gas, they lack the manpower and experience to develop the industry.
On the contrary, the United Arab Emirates was ideal for the development of air transport. Not only are they in an ideal geographic location between Europe and East Asia, thanks to domestic oil and the ability to process it, they are able to offer their airlines plenty of cheap kerosene, which, unlike others, they do not have to import for expensive foreign exchange (although the country denies subsidized fuel access).
Emirates airline is therefore considered by analysts to be one of the least expensive in the world.
What’s more, although until recently various military conflicts in its wider neighborhood (Syria, Iraq, Nagorno-Karabakh, Afghanistan) forced airlines to take various detours, the UAE was considered safe enough for airlines to rely on.
In addition, the development of Dubai as a transport hub offered additional opportunities for the emirate to develop tourism and related sectors such as construction. And the influx of tourists has also helped the gold industry, for example – an estimated 20 to 30 percent of the world’s gold trade passes through the emirates each year, including gold from war zones such as Sudan.
Last month’s International Monetary Fund estimates they count with the fact that, unlike Bahrain, Qatar or Kuwait, the emirates will avoid recession this year – even if their growth will also slow down significantly.
In the long run, however, the war leaves several question marks. It threatened the image of Dubai as a safe harbor – and with it the future of an entire economic model.
Source: Postoj
