As the US-Israeli war against Iran spilled into the Gulf this year, Israel’s chief ally in the Arab world found itself in an uncomfortable position.

Facing some of the heaviest Iranian attacks of the conflict, the United Arab Emirates deepened military ties with the Jewish state, reportedly cooperating on both defensive and offensive measures. But the fighting also sharpened existing political tensions for the Emiratis, who had been the linchpin of the US-brokered Abraham Accords normalization framework, while creating new friction points as well.

Washington’s ultimate decision to pursue a diplomatic off-ramp, with the Iranian regime intact and poised to recover, has pushed key Gulf states back toward accommodation with Tehran, complicating Abu Dhabi’s relationships with both the US and Israel, experts say.

The war has yet to prompt a clear shift in Emirati policy, but reduced trust in US military protection and a growing recognition that it will need to coexist with the regime in Tehran — as well as longstanding political disagreements with Israel — make it harder for the prominent Gulf state to visibly embrace Jerusalem.

While UAE-Israel security cooperation is likely to continue quietly and even deepen, it may be some time before the Emiratis are ready to openly heat up relations with Israel. Exactly how long it takes and how warm ties get may be determined to a significant degree by which Israeli government emerges from the upcoming election.

Public diplomacy between Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi — which inked the Abraham Accords at the White House in 2020, along with Bahrain — had already grown more complicated after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022.

Under Netanyahu’s right-wing government, Emirati officials become unsettled by Israeli actions and rhetoric surrounding the Temple Mount, the West Bank, and the actions and rhetoric of far-right ministers, particularly National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. Under the previous government under Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, by contrast, ties had been more openly displayed.

During the war against Hamas in Gaza that began with the terror group’s massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023, Abu Dhabi maintained its commitment to normalization. But it faced growing domestic and regional sympathy for Palestinians and was itself frustrated with what it saw as Israel’s lack of a coherent postwar strategy.

Similarly, the Iran war failed to either turn the Emiratis against Israel or put them in Jerusalem’s corner.

On one hand, Gulf states felt “the Americans and the Israelis acted in a way that threatened the Gulf states’ interests without taking those interests enough into account,” said Joshua Krasna, a fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University and a former Mideast strategic analyst for the Israeli government.

But once Iran began striking the Gulf in response — especially the UAE — the attacks made clear that Tehran was the main aggressor, and exposed vulnerabilities that boosted the value of Israeli security cooperation for Abu Dhabi, Krasna continued.

“They might have........

© The Times of Israel