The UAE cannot invoke international law while violating it

Quoted in Al Arabiya on 1 May 2026, Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, invoked "the collective international will" as the guarantor of freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

International law is not a decorative language to be summoned when convenient and shelved when inconvenient. It is a system of obligations that binds most tightly those who claim to speak in its name.

The difficulty here is not subtle. The UAE cannot plausibly present itself as a custodian of lawful order while permitting its territory to function as part of the infrastructure of an unlawful use of force, including through the hosting of US military assets used in the war on Iran and its own strikes on Iranian territory - or, in different theatres, in Sudan and Yemen.

At some point, accumulation matters. Conduct ceases to be episodic and begins to define character. A state that repeatedly aids, assists, or facilitates internationally wrongful acts risks crossing a more serious threshold.

In ordinary language, it begins to resemble what might fairly be described as a rogue actor under international law, because the pattern of conduct aligns with the very violations the legal order is designed to restrain.

The International Law Commission's (ILC) framework makes clear that responsibility extends to those who knowingly assist in wrongful acts. The UAE's conduct, therefore, cannot be dismissed as an isolated inconsistency. It reflects a broader pattern.

Patterns of complicity

In Yemen, the UAE's role within the Saudi-led coalition has been widely documented, including allegations of indiscriminate attacks, support for proxy militias, and the operation of detention facilities associated with torture and enforced disappearances.

Amnesty International reported that detention facilities in southern Yemen, including those run by UAE-backed forces, were associated with enforced disappearance and torture amounting to war crimes, while Human Rights Watch has detailed arbitrary detention and abuse by UAE-supported security units.

An Associated Press investigation documented at least 18 clandestine detention sites in southern Yemen run by the UAE or by UAE-trained Yemeni forces

An Associated Press investigation documented at least 18 clandestine detention sites in southern Yemen run by the UAE or by UAE-trained Yemeni forces, with accounts of torture and abuse from former detainees, families, lawyers, and Yemeni officials.

The humanitarian consequences were catastrophic, leading the UN to describe Yemen as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

In Sudan, reporting has similarly traced UAE-linked support to armed actors implicated in atrocities, underscoring the regional entanglements that have deepened the conflict. Reuters reported that cargo flights connected to the UAE were suspected by UN experts and diplomats of supplying arms to the RSF.

Major human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have issued detailed reports on violations of international humanitarian law, including genocide and its consequences. None of this sits comfortably alongside sudden appeals to the sanctity of international law.

Law as theatre

A hereditary system insulated from public accountability and organised around the preservation of ruling authority is not naturally aligned with a legal order premised on responsibility, reciprocity, and constraint.

What we are left with, then, is not an argument but a contradiction. International law is treated as optional when it touches one's own conduct. The language of obligation is recast as an instrument of positioning.

None of this is to suggest that Iran's conduct is beyond scrutiny. But scrutiny is not a monopoly. It is a discipline, and it must be applied consistently if it is to retain its meaning.

The deeper problem is one of credibility. When states entangled in multiple theatres of conflict and gross human rights violations suddenly discover a reverence for legal order, they expose their crass hypocrisy.

A state that persistently enables unlawful force, underwrites proxy violence, and aligns itself with sustained violations of international humanitarian law cannot credibly cloak itself in legality. Instead, it comes to resemble a malign actor operating at the edges of the rules-based order, invoking law as theatre while steadily eroding it in practice.