May 13, 2026 13:30 pm IST

Opinion | The Great Gulf Divorce: The UAE Has Broken From The Arab Order - But For What, Really?

For half a century, the UAE survived by balancing Arabia, America and Iran. Now, it seems to have chosen a side.

Bashir Ali Abbas Bashir Ali Abbas Columnist

Bashir Ali Abbas Columnist

Between May 4 and 10, the UAE was struck by drones and missiles, with vital installations, including the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone, being hit. Even though Iran's Revolutionary Guards formally denied these strikes on May 4, they occurred after the US made a fresh naval attempt to open the Strait of Hormuz (Project Freedom). But while the US suspended the operation by May 6 (after the strikes on Fujairah), skirmishes between US naval forces and the IRGC Navy led to the United States bombing Iran's Qeshm Island and Bandar Abbas port on May 7. Iran's retaliation has specifically targeted the UAE along with US naval forces; the Emirati Defense Ministry issued announcements on May 8 that it was “dealing with missile and drone attacks originating from Iran”. 

Iran's special focus on hitting the UAE has long been clear across this war. According to the Wall Street Journal's May 11 report, this had also led to unprecedented Emirati (unacknowledged) strikes on Iran's Lavan refinery on April 8 as the ceasefire began to take shape (which Iran had responded to with reciprocal strikes). Overall, the UAE has faced more drone/missile strikes than Israel - more than, in fact, what other GCC states have suffered combined. Among other aspects, these Iranian strikes represent a major challenge to the UAE's attempt at “strategic breakout” - a categorical break to decades of geopolitical alignment with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This attempt was crystallized on May 1, when the UAE quit the OPEC after spending 59 years as the second most powerful member of the world's largest oil cartel.

Since its formation in 1971, the UAE has had to contend between two foreign policy objectives - leveraging its economic might to project power and avoiding misalignment with Saudi Arabia on regional geopolitical choices. This equation was established firmly by Riyadh early, when it made the recognition of the UAE contingent upon the concession of the Buraimi Corridor - which otherwise made the UAE a border state to Qatar - through the 1974 Treaty of Jeddah.

For the UAE, this concession was necessary to pre-empt a dangerous rivalry, if not to gain an uneasy and considerably larger ally. Functionally, this meant that the UAE's geopolitical choices would necessarily have to align with Saudi Arabia or keep Riyadh in confidence. This meant that in the decades since, while Iran has been the UAE's most potent threat, the Emirates has consistently sought to build its bargaining power vis-à-vis both Tehran and Riyadh. Indeed, by 2009, US officials assessed that “while publicly expressing close ties with Riyadh, the UAE privately regarded the Kingdom as its second greatest security threat after Iran”. 

In the subsequent decade, the UAE kept Iran diplomatically........

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