The Gulf rift gets ugly

For many years, mutual concern about Iran helped to paper over deeper disagreements between Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The two powerful and ambitious Sunni Gulf monarchies have been on opposite sides of the civil wars in both Sudan and Yemen, as well as in fierce competition for regional dominance in AI.

But two months into the so-far unresolved Iran war – which has exposed both countries to retaliatory attacks from Tehran – those differences have become a full scale rupture. The starkest moment of divorce was probably April 28th, when the Emiratis announced that they would be leaving the Saudi-dominated OPEC oil cartel after nearly seven decades.

To better understand the tensions between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, as well as the fallout of the UAE’s decision to “OPEC-xit,” GZERO spoke to one of the top analysts of the Gulf: Eurasia Group’s very own Firas Maksad. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

GZERO: Why has the Iran war only exacerbated the UAE-Saudi rift?

Maksad: The Saudis have adopted a policy of containment, while the UAE is pursuing one of confrontation. The Saudis have come together with the Pakistanis, the Turks and the Egyptians in this new regional powers coalition (the “Islamic coalition”) that is attempting to regain some agency at a time when American power and reliability seem to be uncertain, and that new coalition is their best way of dealing with the dual challenge of both revolutionary Iran but also an unchecked Israel. And they know the Trump administration is going to leave them with a mess, including having to deal with the challenge of Iran’s proxies, ballistic missiles, and drones.

The UAE, in its more confrontational posture, is betting on hard power. You have to hit back, and at a time when the Emirates were at the center of Iranian retaliation, the Israelis showed up in a major way, providing real world solutions with the Iron Dome system and other anti-missile systems. And so the Emiratis, for that reason, are betting on Israel and on the US.

Note: On Thursday morning, the Financial Times reported that Saudi Arabia was discussing the idea of a regional non-aggression pact with Iran, emphasizing the Kingdom’s preference for maintaining relations with the Islamic Republic rather than exerting hard power. It’s not clear that the UAE would be willing to join this pact.

What are the benefits and drawbacks of the UAE forming bolstering ties with Israel and the US while moving further away from Riyadh?

There certainly is risk in being the tip of the spear in the fight with Iran, while also having an adversarial relationship with Saudi Arabia. If you look at just the sheer geography of it, the UAE is a much smaller country sandwiched between two original heavyweights [Iran and Saudi Arabia].

But the upside in being part of the “Abrahamic coalition” [a bloc built partially around the Abraham Accords of 2020, which normalized Israel’s ties with the UAE and Morocco] is very much a bet on on deeper economic integration between two of the leading economies in the region (namely the UAE and Israel), and on access to high tech, including military hardware, through the Israeli-American partnership. That said, popular sentiment around the region is not in favor of coming together with an Israel that is led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

You’ve mentioned elsewhere that the US wants to contain this UAE-Saudi rivalry. Has that position changed since the Iran war began?

I’ve caught wind of individual efforts by officials in the Trump administration to try and tamp down some of the animosity, but there’s no concerted approach. The Saudis and the Emiratis are key players [in the Gulf], but their [growing rift] is part of a broader structural shift in the region where the geopolitical landscape is being altered. This kind of transformation takes place once in a generation, you know, like the Soviet collapse and Gulf war, and that’s what we’re seeing right now.

A few years ago there seemed to be some promise of Saudi joining the Abraham Accords. What are the chances of that happening now?

Certainly one way for Trump to succeed in reshuffling the deck in the region is to bring Saudi, along with other Arab countries with it, into the fold of the Abrahamic coalition through a normalization process. That would be a game changer. But there are many boxes that need to be checked before we can get to such a world. The Israeli elections in the fall are crucial, and what kind of coalition government is formed. It also depends on the US’s ability and willingness to provide something on the Palestinian track that could be a fig leaf for the Saudis [who have demanded that Israel recognizes a Palestinian state as precondition for joining the Accords].

The big carrot is a Senate-ratified defense treaty that commits the US to the Saudi’s defense, whether essentially a lame-duck president at that point in 2027, maybe ‘28, can gather enough votes for that is an open question. But should Trump succeed, it’ll be a game changer for the Middle East.