The postwar UAE and the remaking of Gulf politics

The United Arab Emirates’ decision to quit the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is the latest expression of a strategic shift accelerated by the Iran war. Abu Dhabi has spent years pursuing geopolitical and geoeconomic influence on its own terms, and is now increasingly unbound by Arab and Muslim consensus politics or inherited institutions such as OPEC.

The Iran war has given Abu Dhabi a sharper security justification for this. Iran’s attacks are perceived in Abu Dhabi as existential. They have struck at the UAE’s core state model: a secure global hub for commerce, finance and logistics. While other Gulf states remain cautious about provoking Tehran further, the UAE—which suffered more attacks than all other GCC states combined—has decided to retaliate to demonstrate its sovereign deterrence capabilities. Iran’s attacks on Fujairah in May, targeting the UAE’s only oil export terminal outside the Strait of Hormuz during a nominal ceasefire, reinforced the view that Iranian hostility is deep, and that the other Gulf states’ strategy of accommodation was failing.

These dynamics have collapsed the UAE’s traditional hedging formula. While Dubai may still value its longstanding role as Iran’s commercial lung, officials in Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s economic and political powerhouse, now reject that logic[1]. With Dubai’s war-hit economy potentially headed to another Abu Dhabi bailout, an Abu-Dhabi-led, security-first national line is likely to prevail. Like Israel, the UAE will not accept a shallow US-Iran deal that leaves Iran’s coercive military capabilities intact, including missile launchers, stockpiles, factories and supply chains.[2] Emirati leaders believe that regional war could continue even after a US exit and are determined to do their bit to ensure that Iran is permanently weakened.[3]

In this context, Israel’s growing role in the UAE’s hard-security architecture is critical. While the core of the UAE’s overall strategy is an ever-closer relationship to the US, the Iran war has triggered an unprecedented alignment with Israel. For the UAE, Israel offers resources, networks, defence capabilities, technological prowess and influence in capitals around the world. At a time of US retrenchment and declining regional trust in Washington’s reliability, closer alignment with Israel is also seen as a way to lock in more enduring and comprehensive US commitment.

Israel’s counter-drone lasers and its Iron Dome system were crucial in intercepting over 95% of Iranian projectiles targeting the UAE. For Abu Dhabi, this stands in stark contrast to what many Emirati officials see as a complete lack of tangible Arab solidarity during the crisis. As a result, confidence in institutions such as the Arab League and the GCC membership has eroded further.

While Saudi Arabia’s outreach at the extraordinary GCC summit in Jeddah in late April helped prevent a deeper rupture, the UAE is nevertheless likely to continue distancing itself from institutions it views as ineffective, constraining and slow. It will also continue to distance itself from Saudi Arabia, whose rivalry with the UAE has already been intensifying across multiple regional theatres. In that sense, leaving OPEC is also highly symbolic: it is yet another blow to Riyadh’s regional leadership, while freeing the UAE from production quotas and giving it greater financial flexibility to fund its own vision for the Middle East.

For the UAE, being part of a US-Israeli security constellation is not solely about containing Iran. It is also about realising a mercantilist and futurist vision, animated by a fascination with technology, speed, military power, grandeur, and a rejection of inherited conventions, institutions and the status quo. This project seeks to redraw the map of the Middle East and build new networks of geopolitical and geoeconomic influence centred on Abu Dhabi.

In Gaza, the UAE is likely to support a post-war order designed to prevent Hamas from re-emerging, using reconstruction, humanitarian access and housing as tools of political leverage. In the West Bank, Abu Dhabi will seek to shape Palestinian succession politics through elite co-optation.

In the Red Sea, Israeli backing could encourage Abu Dhabi to become even more assertive: consolidating influence in Sudan, deepening ties with Somaliland and Puntland, using its longstanding alliance with Ethiopia, and attempting to regain a foothold in South Yemen to secure control of key ports.

In the eastern Mediterranean, the UAE could use existing engagement platforms with Cyprus and Greece, including the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, to counterbalance the influence of Turkey, whose influence in Syria it also opposes.

Ultimately, the UAE will inevitably position itself in opposition to another emerging bloc centred around Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. This is unlikely to become an alliance: Egypt and Turkey remain cautious of alienating Abu Dhabi because of Emirati investments in both countries, and Pakistan continues to be preoccupied with India, another very close partner of both Israel and the UAE.

However, Saudi Arabia sees the UAE-Israel alignment as a fundamental challenge to its regional primacy, particularly as Riyadh continues to perceive Israeli normalisation efforts as part of a strategy of normalisation through coercion. A more confident UAE is even less likely to accept Saudi leadership. Riyadh, in turn, may become more inclined to impose it.

This will further fracture the GCC, whose unity remains the best way to escape the binary the US is now imposing: align with Iran or align with Israel. Just across the UAE’s borders, Oman is already unsettling GCC countries by offsetting its alignment with Israel by deepening its long-standing ties with Iran. Europeans should pay close attention to these evolving dynamics as they take stock of the geopolitical impact of the US-Iran war.

For Europeans, the Emirati realignment presents both opportunities and risks. The war is a Zeitenwende for the Gulf. These states are now seeking predictable and dependable partners and abandoning their traditional hedging with Russia and China, as both clearly favoured Iran and refused to take any responsibility for de-escalation.

The UAE is likely to deepen ties with countries that provided tangible support during the Iranian strikes, including Australia, France, Italy, South Korea, the UK and Ukraine. Europeans should view this group as a potentially useful platform for cooperation on shared interests, especially security. Ukraine’s growing capabilities in counter-drone technology, combined with Russia’s deepening military ties with Iran, also creates an opening for more Europe-UAE cooperation on restricting the flow of dual-use technology that sustain both Russia’s war effort against Ukraine and Iranian attacks on the UAE. Europeans should act as a financial and industrial multiplier of the Ukraine-UAE defence technology partnership.

At the same time, Europeans should be very wary of the risks that come with Israel becoming the main non-US security actor in the UAE, as this would produce permanent confrontation with Iran and deepening regional polarisation. Although Europeans cannot realistically push Israel out completely, they should help shape a credible alternative security framework.

Both Iran and Israel have an interest in making the GCC divided and dependent; Europe by contrast has a string interest in a unified and stabilised GCC. As such, Europeans should throw their weight behind new regional security talks after any future US-Iran agreement, pushing for a comprehensive and sustainable regional accord that reduces the risk of continued war. Saudi Arabia’s proposal for a non-aggression pact between Middle Eastern states and Iran is one such avenue. Europeans should support the initiative and persuade the UAE that regional stability ultimately depends on de-escalation.

A decades-old Gulf order is fading, and another is taking shape. Europeans should get ahead of the shift.

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