Ref: AD-3009
Summary: it has been a long time since the UAE and Saudi Arabia have seen eye to eye and the Iran war and subsequent MOU have done little else but paper over the cracks.
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2 thoughts on “Unhappy neighbours: Saudi Arabia and the UAE”
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Ms Lackner writes “the deep split between on the one hand the UAE and Israel and, on the other, Saudi Arabia, other GCC and Arab states, alongside Türkiye is likely to be a lasting feature of regional politics for years to come.” A thought occurs: UAE’s embrace of Israel / the Abraham Accords was said to have been in part to increase UAE closeness to the US, and thus to gain access to weapons systems it would be difficult to achieve under the long-standing, legally mandated U.S. policy of Qualitative Military Edge.
Israel is now a fraught issue in the US, with Netanyahu having made support for Israel greatly more partisan over his attack on the Democrats’ JCPOA; many Democrat candidates are now forswearing AIPAC funding. Even among the Republicans, many of the MAGA persuasion are now questioning support for Israel. (In addition, many Americans under 50 are more supportive of Palestinians than Israelis.) The demographic which agrees with US support to Israel is thus possibly 25%. Should US support end entirely, Israel will no longer be the surrogate of the US in the ME, and UAE will have put all its eggs in one basket.
The assumption that the UAE can emerge as an independent Gulf pole overlooks a fundamental geopolitical reality: the Gulf’s two enduring regional hegemons remain Saudi Arabia and Iran. They possess the demographic weight, territorial depth, military capacity, and historical reach that ultimately shape the regional balance of power.
From this perspective, Abu Dhabi’s deepening integration into Israeli security and military architecture appears strategically risky. Such a policy may have seemed advantageous during a period of regional confrontation with Iran, but the political landscape has been transformed by the destruction of Gaza and Israel’s military operations in Lebanon. As public opinion across the Arab and Islamic worlds has shifted dramatically, association with Israeli regional projects increasingly carries political and reputational costs.
The challenge for the UAE is that geography is permanent while alliances are contingent. Israel may remain an important partner, but long-term regional stability will ultimately depend on relations with the Gulf’s principal powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, rather than on participation in an external security architecture whose legitimacy has been severely damaged by recent events.