As the Trump administration mulls a diplomatic path to concluding its war with Iran, one Middle East country – beyond Israel – is pushing Washington to take a tougher line.
The United Arab Emirates, the tiny confederation of Persian Gulf ministates hit hardest by Iran’s barrage of missiles in the war, has emerged as the Arab country most determined to confront Tehran.
The UAE is urging the United States to demand greater concessions and restrictions on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. And it is seeking to definitively end Iranian maritime “blackmail,” citing threats not only to the Gulf, but to the global economy for decades to come.
Why We Wrote This
For years, the business-friendly United Arab Emirates had sought regional normalization. Now, after being targeted by Iran, it is pushing the United States to demand greater concessions from Tehran, and is pressing its neighbors to cooperate militarily.
“There’s no point in kicking the can down the road when we’re just going to end up where we started, maybe even with a more emboldened regime,” Reem al-Hashimy, the UAE’s minister of state for international cooperation, told ABC News April 19 regarding U.S.-Iran talks.
It is building up its own military to back up its warnings, adding anti-drone measures to its missile defenses and billions in fast-tracked U.S. arms sales, and pursuing a more go-it-alone posture within the Gulf.
The hard-line anti-Iran stance marks a dramatic shift for a pivotal Middle East power long devoted to regional cooperation and connectivity as a means to contain any potential threat from Iran.
“Today, we are facing an important reassessment,” Anwar Gargash, senior adviser to UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, said Monday at a forum in Dubai. “The first part is that this brutal and preplanned [Iranian] aggression poses a vital threat for decades to come. The second part is that our containment policies have also failed.”
For the last several years, the UAE, a business-friendly country built on interconnectivity, has pushed for regional normalization and peaceful cooperation. It has enjoyed ties with both Israel and Iran.
As part of its strategy of engagement and cooperation with Tehran, it has initiated joint projects and allowed Iran to trade and access global markets through its financial hub, Dubai.
During the pandemic, the UAE even gave Iran half of its vaccine stock.
There was a belief in Abu Dhabi that positively engaging Iran would curb its hard-line tendencies, encourage it to stop its hostile proxy activities in Arab states, and promote cooperation, with Gulf-Iran interconnectedness leading to peace.
From “difficult neighbor” to foe
But for Emiratis, the U.S.-Iran war shattered this illusion, analysts say. The Gulf country that reached out to Iran the most was hit hardest.
“Before the war, many in the UAE viewed Iran as a difficult neighbor whose behavior had to be managed through a combination of deterrence and engagement, while keeping channels of dialogue open,” says Salem Alketbi, a UAE-based political analyst.
“After the war, that perception shifted significantly. Iran came to be seen less as a difficult neighbor and more as a strategic threat willing to take reckless risks that endanger civilians, regional stability, and the broader economy.”
In six weeks of war, Iran struck the UAE with 536 ballistic missiles, 26 cruise missiles, and 2,256 drones, more than any other country targeted by Iran, including Israel, which was an initial belligerent in the war.
Although the vast majority of missiles and drones were intercepted by the UAE’s advanced antimissile defense systems, the barrage and resulting debris killed 10 civilians, two UAE armed servicemen, and one military contractor.
In addition to oil and gas infrastructure, Iran repeatedly targeted airports, finance centers, residential towers in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, tech hubs, and company headquarters.
What took the Emirati leadership aback, according to observers and officials, was not only the scale of Iran’s attack but the fact that these were not hasty wartime targets.
“A premeditated plan”
Rather than a desperate lashing out to pressure the U.S. to stop its offensive, these were “premeditated attacks” on specific targets that took years of intelligence-gathering and meticulous planning – the very years Iran and the UAE were normalizing ties.
“This was a premeditated plan, not a decision made in 24 or 48 hours,” said Mr. Gargash, the presidential adviser. “Iran’s attack on its Arab neighbors is … part of a confrontation scenario devised by the Iranian planners, who built the necessary fortifications and armed themselves accordingly,” he said.
This is causing a deep recalibration in the UAE, as it develops a host of strategies to counter a hostile Iran, now and for years and decades to come.
Containment, the UAE has concluded, is no longer enough. Iran must be confronted.
“In the immediate space we will have to look at Iran right now as a potential foe,” says Mohammed Baharoon, director-general of the Dubai Public Policy Research Center. “Now there is relative calm, but this aggression can come back at any time. They are already signaling they can have a truce but still use their proxies in Iraq and Yemen. Nothing has been solved right now, and Iran continues to be the aggressor.”
This wartime wake-up call has spurred the UAE to take a go-it-alone stance in the region, withdrawing Wednesday from oil cartel OPEC over restrictions it placed on Emirati oil production. Abu Dhabi also has threatened to leave the Arab League and put other multilateral organizations on notice.
“There is a problem that we have always seen with those multilateral organizations that becomes accentuated in a crisis: They are slow; they lack the ability to act, respond, and to take a stand,” Mr. Baharoon says of the UAE’s frustrations.
Diplomacy and defense are insufficient
One of the conclusions in the cautious UAE is that diplomacy and defensive systems are not enough to stop Iran and its agenda for the region.
“You can’t win a game based on defense alone. And dealing with Iran you need to be defensive and [have] the ability to go on the offensive. You need both,” says Mr. Baharoon. “The idea this war has highlighted is that simply having the ability to stop aggression does not mean that the aggression will not happen again.”
Already, the UAE has built up a diverse antimissile defense system, which it developed years before the war, and a potent U.S.-trained military with field experience in Yemen.
Now it has secured Ukrainian anti-drone defense deals and, according to an Axios report, utilized Israeli Iron Dome missile defenses.
Simultaneously, the UAE is undertaking a series of diplomatic efforts to isolate Iran, arguing that curbing Tehran, and not rewarding its military strategy with concessions, is in the direct interests of the international community.
Top Emirati diplomats and officials are using closed-door meetings with counterparts, multilateral forums, talks with the Trump administration, and even U.S. news talk shows to depict Iran as “unhinged” and acting as a terrorist state.
The Strait of Hormuz
Particularly important to the UAE is the Strait of Hormuz, through which, before the war, it shipped 65% of its oil and 96% of its gas exports, as well as the bulk of its imports.
It regards as a nonstarter Iran levying tolls – no matter how symbolic – or requiring permission to pass the strait.
Not only would this allow Iran de facto control over the UAE’s coast and the Gulf, but, Abu Dhabi warns, this could set the precedent for countries and armed groups to close other vital shipping lanes.
One Gulf official, who was not authorized to speak to the press, described the UAE as urging greater military cooperation and integration of defense systems among Gulf Cooperation Council states, while pushing its neighbors to prepare a coalition to strike Iran if Tehran’s attacks escalate.
The UAE’s “stated preference remains de-escalation rather than war, but the logic of deterrence suggests that calibrated offensive options cannot be excluded if serious threats persist,” says Dr. Alketbi, the political analyst. Any potential offensive Emirati military action against Iran would be coordinated with partners, rather than unilaterally, he notes.
“From the UAE’s perspective, any U.S.-Iran deal that sidelines Gulf security would be incomplete and fragile,” he says. “The objective is sustainable calm rather than a fragile pause, because stability is essential to the UAE’s model of openness and prosperity.”
