Can the UAE Go It Alone?

On the morning of April 8, a squadron of jet fighters struck oil refineries on Iran’s Lavan Island. The attacks came just before the cease-fire that would pause a weeks-long U.S.-Israeli air campaign against Iran, but according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, neither American nor Israeli planes were involved in the sortie. Instead, it was carried out by the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich country just opposite Iran along the Persian Gulf.

Although Emirati leaders have not publicly confirmed responsibility for the attack, the rationale for this strike and prior ones was clear. The UAE had endured weeks of Iranian drone and missile strikes, and it sought to deter further Iranian aggression by demonstrating its capacity to retaliate. Saudi Arabia has also retaliated against Iranian attacks, according to U.S. officials. But the UAE’s hawkish rhetoric during the war and the scale of its retaliation has distinguished its response from that of its neighbors.

Over the course of the war, Emirati officials have touted their country’s resilience, its willingness to act, and its autonomy on the world stage. Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic adviser to the Emirati president, emphasized the need to confront Iran, which he called “the primary threat” to regional security. He lauded the “success of the UAE and its model” in withstanding Iranian attacks and asserted that the country would “continue to overcome challenges with confidence.” During the cease-fire, instead of hunkering down to await the outcome of U.S.-Iranian talks, the UAE chastised other countries in the region for failing to take decisive political or military action against Iran in the earlier phase of the war. Then, on May 1, Abu Dhabi withdrew from OPEC to detach Emirati oil policy from the decisions of the cartel.

The UAE has long been an important regional player, but it wants recognition as a leading power on par with France or Japan—and it does not want a war in Iran to get in the way of that transformation. If anything, Iranian attacks in the Gulf have made Emirati leaders even more committed to their prewar strategy. At least while the war continues without a decisive resolution, the UAE is betting that closer ties with Israel, greater distance from other Gulf countries, and a tight alignment with the United States will help deliver security and influence and that economic expansion into parts of Africa will help deliver prosperity. But in the long run, this strategy risks alienating the UAE from the rest of the Gulf and making it more dependent on powerful partners—restricting the country’s options rather than raising its profile.

THE EMIRATI WAY

For decades, the UAE has endeavored to use its position as a country with competent institutions in a chaotic region to raise its global standing. In security affairs, this meant deploying its small but capable military forces and its immense financial resources to support allies such as General Khalifa Haftar in Libya against Islamist movements whose ideas posed a threat to the Emirati monarchy’s hold on power. In economics, it meant using sovereign wealth funds and national corporate champions, such as the logistics firm DP World or the artificial intelligence giant G42, to attract trade, capital flows, and advanced technologies to Abu Dhabi and Dubai. And in its diplomacy, it meant presenting itself as the United States’ closest and most capable partner in the Gulf while quietly hedging, strengthening economic and technological ties to China and serving as a financial conduit for sanctioned Iranian and Russian capital.

Emirati commentators often argue that big strategic bets, even if they risk short-term volatility, are necessary to protect the UAE in a neighborhood of crumbling states and outdated regional power structures. The political scientist Ebtesam al-Ketbi, for instance, has described the UAE’s interventions in Sudan, Yemen, and elsewhere as “managing disintegration to prevent total collapse.” A similar long-term logic guided the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020, which provoked regional backlash but also earned the UAE political capital in Washington and formalized its ties with the Middle East’s strongest military and only nuclear-armed state.

Normalization with Israel is not the only unpopular Emirati policy. The UAE has backed the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group that since 2023 has been fighting the Sudanese military in a horrific civil war. The country justifies its support for the RSF as a means of checking the influence of Islamist groups over the Sudanese Armed Forces, but ultimately it hopes for a friendly Sudanese government that will facilitate an Emirati economic and military presence in the Horn of Africa. In the meantime, Dubai’s gold markets are benefiting from access to RSF-controlled mines. The UAE’s policy has drawn rebukes from abroad: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, at his confirmation hearing in January 2025, described it as “openly supporting an entity that is carrying out a genocide.”

Other countries have also pushed back against Emirati meddling. Last December, when an Emirati-backed militia made a bid for full control of southern Yemen, Saudi Arabia—which saw the move as a challenge to its sphere of influence—publicly blamed the UAE for encouraging the militia and intervened militarily to reestablish the control of the UN-recognized (and Saudi-backed) Yemeni government. In countries such as Egypt and Tanzania, meanwhile, scholars and activists have accused DP World and the AD Ports Group of crowding out local economic activity to the UAE’s benefit. Similar concerns led the government of Djibouti to cancel a 30-year concession to DP World in 2018, kicking the company out of the country and fully nationalizing the port it had operated.

Emirati policymakers have largely brushed off foreign complaints. Ali al-Nuaimi, a member of the UAE’s quasi-parliamentary advisory body, has defended the UAE as the only country willing to act “when others hesitate” and insisted that its policies offer the last best chance to “redefine the region.” Although criticism over Sudan rankled enough that the UAE lobbied hard against censure in Washington and European capitals, the country has been able to evade more significant consequences for its involvement in the conflict by nominally participating in a U.S.-led peace process. And the UAE’s vast financial reserves have enabled Abu Dhabi to ride out public criticism while continuing to build economic relationships with a wide variety of partners. Whatever qualms Washington may have about the UAE’s ties to Chinese state-owned enterprises, Russian oligarchs, or African warlords, the Trump administration has been happy to grant the UAE access to top-of-the-line AI microchips on the promise of future Emirati investments in the United States—and alongside actual Emirati payments to businesses with links to U.S. President Donald Trump.

THE WAR COMES HOME

But now, the war with Iran has challenged the assumption underlying the UAE’s strategy: that the UAE could keep the region’s conflicts safely contained outside its borders. Although tensions between Abu Dhabi and Tehran have ebbed and flowed, Emirati rulers used to calculate that U.S. deterrence and the value of Dubai as a safety valve for the Iranian economy would keep the UAE out of harm’s way. Instead, out of the more than 6,000 Iranian drone and missile strikes launched at the Gulf monarchies, the majority targeted the UAE specifically, hitting commercial infrastructure such as hotels, airports, and data centers along with U.S. military sites.

Emirati forces wielded U.S. air defense technology—and equipment on loan from Israel—to great effect, limiting the loss of civilian life. Yet the UAE’s reputation as a safe haven in the eyes of investors and visitors has been damaged. The country can still ship out enough oil to keep its finances in good order, but the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has clogged Emirati ports and emptied out glittering hotels. Emirati officials have portrayed the Iranian bombardment as a watershed moment. Instead of making a sharp policy change such as breaking with Israel or openly attacking Iran, however, the UAE has responded to the attacks by intensifying core elements of its prewar strategy.

For one, the UAE has become increasingly dismissive of the value of other Arab countries as security partners. In April, Gargash slammed members of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation for failing to clearly condemn Iranian attacks on the Gulf states. Later, he criticized the Gulf Cooperation Council for its “weak” stance—namely, its failure to unite in opposition to Iran. Emirati leaders and commentators have barely concealed their contempt for Saudi Arabia’s conciliatory approach to Iran amid the war. The timing of the UAE’s withdrawal from OPEC, on the same day as a Saudi-hosted summit on regional integration, was a clear snub and an indicator of a widening rift. Egypt has avoided such overt censure, thanks in part to its deployment of a fighter squadron to the UAE in early May. Yet Emirati leaders are still disappointed that despite the financial support the UAE provides to Egypt, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi distanced himself from Israel and prioritized the search for diplomatic off-ramps over a regional effort to push back against Iran.

Meanwhile, Emirati leaders have underscored the importance of the United States to their strategy, despite the questions the war has raised about Washington’s reliability. Before the war, the UAE issued a pro forma statement denying that U.S. bases in the country would be used to attack Iran but otherwise did little to prevent the Trump administration from attacking. Soon after the fighting was underway, Emirati rhetoric matched that of the United States’ most ardent Iran hawks. Nearly a month in, the UAE’s ambassador to the United States wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that “a simple cease-fire isn’t enough” to address “Iran’s full range of threats” and pledging that the UAE would join a coalition of countries that would open the Strait of Hormuz by force.

The Trump administration proceeded to agree to a simple cease-fire, leave the UAE out of subsequent negotiations, and largely shrug at further Iranian attacks on the UAE. But even as the United States has repeatedly brushed aside or ignored the UAE’s security concerns, Abu Dhabi has kept up its pursuit of closer bilateral ties. A mid-April New York Times op-ed by the Emirati envoy Badr Jafar ended in a plea for the United States to remember that the relationship was “far too valuable to leave on autopilot.”

Finally, the war has brought the UAE and Israel even closer. Although the UAE has occasionally condemned specific Israeli actions, such as the bombardment of Lebanon, it has not publicly questioned Israel’s role in instigating the war with Iran. “I see us continuing that relationship [with Israel],” said UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation Reem al-Hashimy at a media summit in May. “I see us continuing to work closely with [Israel] about how we avert some of the bigger challenges that our region faces.” Israel’s loan of air defenses has further convinced the UAE that it should prioritize partners that provide hard security. Whereas previously the Emirati-Israeli relationship was a means for the UAE to build political capital in Washington, now it is a cornerstone of the UAE’s security strategy. Emirati commentators continue to insist on the paramount importance of the U.S. relationship, but they also fear that Washington may eventually withdraw from the Middle East—something that Israel, of course, won’t do. For the UAE, an ironclad relationship with Israel can compensate for both U.S. unreliability and Abu Dhabi’s strained ties with the region’s other states.

WHICH WAY, ABU DHABI?

The war is creating a dividing line between the UAE and the rest of the Gulf—particularly Saudi Arabia. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh are no longer on the same page about the threat from Iran. Although both have called for greater Gulf unity, they want the region to unite around starkly different strategies: Abu Dhabi prefers collective security and the containment of Iran by force, whereas Riyadh prefers collective diplomacy in pursuit of a negotiated settlement with Iran. These divisions diminish the Gulf states’ diplomatic heft, keeping them on the sidelines of U.S.-Iranian talks. For the UAE, closer ties with Israel might provide some short-term security support, but Israel cannot boost the UAE’s negotiating position the way a unified Gulf bloc can.

The UAE’s model for advancing its global economic position, moreover, is unlikely to succeed under the perennial shadow of war. Wealthy citizens of countries with weak institutions will continue banking in Dubai, and the UAE’s departure from OPEC suggests that the country is planning to raise its income by expanding oil production. Yet international influence will be much harder to attain if the threat of renewed attacks by Iran—or direct warfare between the two countries—scares away the talent and cutting-edge industries whose arrival allowed Abu Dhabi to style itself as the “capital of capital.”

As the country becomes less attractive to foreign investors and workers, Emirati officials and executives may seek out more extractive economic arrangements in places where the UAE has the leverage to drive a hard bargain, particularly in Africa. By offering financial incentives or security assistance to leaders abroad, Abu Dhabi may try to secure greater control of land, supply chains, rare-earth minerals, and data flows. Yet there are limits to this approach. The UAE’s activities in Sudan continue to provoke global outrage, and the United States has sanctioned several UAE-linked firms over their ties to the RSF. Unfair terms prompted the expulsion of DP World from Djibouti, and earlier this year, the UAE’s help brokering formal ties between Israel and the breakaway territory of Somaliland led Somalia to kick out DP World, too. Despite these setbacks—and the additional disruption the war has caused to shipping traffic through Dubai—the company remains bullish on its plans for expanding into Africa. But if the UAE continues to seek political control through economic enterprises on the continent, its activities could undermine regional efforts at conflict resolution and generate further international backlash.

The future of the war in the Middle East is still highly uncertain, so it remains possible that the UAE could once again change course. If negotiations with Iran falter and open war resumes, it is easy to imagine Emirati planes openly flying sorties alongside Israeli counterparts as the UAE goes all in on the use of force to navigate regional conflicts. Alternatively, if the Trump administration forecloses the possibility of a renewed war and signs a deal with Tehran that allows sanctions-free foreign investment in Iran, Abu Dhabi could make nice with the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council, and Emirati firms could race to the head of the queue to invest.

While the United States and Iran drift halfway between war and peace, however, the UAE will likely continue to seek closer security ties with Israel and redouble its efforts to secure U.S. favor. But in its pursuit of safety, the UAE is incurring needless risks. It is antagonizing its immediate neighbors, and those neighbors may ultimately decide they can live without the UAE. Regional cooperation is what will elevate Abu Dhabi’s global position in the long run. Without it, the UAE faces a future not of strategic autonomy as it craves but of dependence on political decisions made in the United States and Israel.

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