UAE: Globally Trusted, Regionally Under Strain

• Med this Week Middle East and North Africa
  by Sara Isabella Leykin
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The MED This Week newsletter provides informed insights on the most significant developments in the MENA region, bringing together unique opinions and reliable foresight on future scenarios. Today, we shed light on the Emirati foreign policy at the global and regional levels.

The past few days have been especially hectic for the United Arab Emirates and its President, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (MBZ). From Monday, 26 January, to Thursday, 29 January, Italian President Sergio Mattarella paid an official visit to the country, continuing the diplomatic re-engagement initiated by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The visit fits squarely within the framework of the historic UAE-Italy strategic partnership announced in February 2025 during MBZ's visit to Rome, when a USD 40 billion investment agreement was signed. Meanwhile, last week, Abu Dhabi hosted the US-led peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, once again underscoring its role as a trusted diplomatic hub for discreet, high-level negotiations. This also reflects the neutral position the UAE has adopted on the war in Ukraine, further confirmed by MBZ's scheduled visit to Moscow on Thursday, 29 January, for a bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Put simply, the UAE remains a trusted and respected partner on the international stage, but its posture within the broader MENA region is perceived as increasingly problematic. Since 2025, the UAE's decade-long geostrategic projection in the Red Sea region has entered a difficult phase, coinciding with growing political divergences - now increasingly aired in public - with Saudi Arabia, particularly across the broader Red Sea macro-region. For different reasons, Emirati influence is currently under strain in three countries: Yemen, Sudan and Somalia. In Yemen, the Emirati-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC), along with the UAE's remaining military presence, has been pushed back by Saudi Arabia, as the STC's territorial gains came to be perceived by Riyadh as a national security threat. In Somalia, Israel's recognition of Somaliland's independence in December 2025 - criticised by Saudi Arabia - triggered a strong reaction from Mogadishu, which subsequently cancelled bilateral agreements with Abu Dhabi. While the UAE has not formally recognised Somaliland as a state, it continues to cultivate strong economic, infrastructural and security ties with the separatist region. In Sudan as well, repeated allegations by the Sudanese government of Emirati military support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are generating tensions with Saudi Arabia, which continues to back the Sudanese Armed Forces. This situation is raising concerns across the region. However, a scenario similar to the 2017 Qatar crisis - when Doha was subjected to a GCC-imposed blockade - appears highly unlikely at present, as the two countries continue to maintain strong economic and political interdependence.

Experts from the ISPI network discuss the Emirati foreign policy at the global and regional levels.

For Abu Dhabi, the Iranian crisis serves as a reminder of the need for stability

"From Abu Dhabi's vantage point, the crisis in Iran is not approached as a spectacle of collapse or an opportunity for strategic gain, but as a sober reminder of how fragile regional equilibrium can be. Geography and history impose a certain realism: Iran is a permanent neighbour across a narrow waterway, not a distant problem to be theorised about. For the UAE, what matters most is not who prevails internally in Tehran, but how instability there reverberates outward. The principal concern is spillover. A deterioration inside Iran could quickly translate into pressure on maritime security, insurance costs, and energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz - the quiet arteries of the global economy on which the UAE's own role as a commercial and financial hub depends. Less visible, but equally consequential, is the risk of miscalculation: asymmetric responses, cyber disruptions, or proxy activity that thrive in moments of internal stress and blur the line between domestic crisis and regional confrontation. This explains Abu Dhabi's instinct for restraint. The UAE reads the Iran crisis through the lens of risk management rather than ideology, privileging de-escalation, open channels, and strategic patience over rhetorical positioning. Stability, even imperfect stability, remains the overriding interest."

Ebtesam Al Ketbi, President and Founder, Emirates Policy Center

Emirati aspirations and Saudi redlines

"The rift is deep because it is structural. The Saudi and UAE leaderships understand that competition between them is inevitable, but the issue is then what constitutes crossing redlines, and what constitutes strategic objectives in this competition. Geography here, and not necessarily size per se, is the key structural issue prolonging this rift. The Saudi-UAE rift to continue for two reasons: the UAE's aspirations and the scope of Saudi redlines. The UAE will not slow down its aspiration of being a dominant regional actor, shaping an order that serves its geostrategic vision of being the main logistics hub for and around the region. In order for such a vision to materialise, the spill over of tensions (and war in the case of Sudan) is inevitable. The UAE's geography and location shield it from many of the direct spillover effects of shaping a preferred order; therefore, it sees more opportunities in the region. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia's geography (and size) means there are simply more national security redlines for them. The latest Saudi-UAE rift in Yemen was a culmination of both Saudi frustration in not just Yemen, but Sudan, Syria and Gaza as well. Not only do Saudi Arabia and the UAE have different (and sometimes overlapping) visions in Yemen and Sudan, but this geopolitical competition is playing out either on or very close to Saudi borders. Since the Saudi-UAE intense coopetition is playing out in the region, and both states are two regional powerhouses respectively, and both states have sought US help for their respective regional policies, the US is the only actor positioned to be a mediator for Saudi-UAE relations, but only in the mid-to-long-term."

Aziz Alghashian, Associate Fellow, CARPO

A positive agenda for the Red Sea: Emirati-Saudi security interests outnumber power rivalries

"Cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the UAE is essential for the security of the Red Sea region; therefore, Saudi-Emirati geopolitical tensions risk further destabilising this strategic node. In Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have developed distinct power strategies which, as was clear in the case of Yemen, reached a boiling point or are now hard to coexist. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia and the UAE shared security interests in the Red Sea region that largely outnumber rivalries. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi aim at containing Iran's influence in the area and to further weaken the Houthis' offensive capabilities. Both intend to prevent Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) from returning to hold territories in Yemen's Southern regions, and to tackle the growing Houthis-Shabaab-AQAP triangle of weapons smuggling and terror. In such a framework, Saudi and Emirati leaderships share many reasons for re-focusing soon on a positive agenda for the Red Sea".

Eleonora Ardemagni, Senior Associate Research Fellow, ISPI

Yemen: the limits of Saudi-Emirati partnership

"The Saudi-Emirati rivalry drew sustained attention partly because it was widely anticipated, treated as an inevitable adjustment rather than a destabilising rupture, even as it reshaped dynamics on the ground. That divergence became most visible in Yemen, where Saudi tolerance eventually wore thin, not with the UAE itself, but with the escalating demands of its local proxy. For years, Riyadh absorbed the costs of accommodation, folding the Southern Transitional Council (STC) into governing arrangements designed largely around Emirati interests. That restraint was not reciprocated. The STC gravitated toward the patron that validated its ambitions over the one seeking to regulate them. For southerners, the rivalry brought them to the threshold of self-determination, only to remind them they were never the ones holding the door. At a deeper level, Saudi Arabia is no longer contending with a junior partner, but with a state that has outgrown the role once assigned to it. The UAE is now perceived in Riyadh less as an extension of Saudi strategy and more as an autonomous actor whose ambitions can point uncomfortably inward. That recognition, however reluctant, is unlikely to reverse."

Fatima Abo Alasrar, founder, The Ideology Machine; Senior Analyst, Washington Center for Yemeni Studies

The involvement in Sudan is damaging Abu Dhabi's international status

"Mounting investigations, including an April 2025 UN panel report identifying multiple Emirati flights into Chad allegedly carrying arms disguised as humanitarian aid, have reinforced perceptions across Africa and the West that Abu Dhabi has actively sustained one of the world's gravest humanitarian crises. Evidence of Emirati financing and arming of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has severely damaged the UAE's international standing and intensified scrutiny of its role in atrocities in Darfur and West Sudan. Although Abu Dhabi denies wrongdoing, growing pressure has prompted a rhetorical shift: the UAE now foregrounds its humanitarian assistance and its participation in the US-led Quad initiative. Yet its operational ties to the RSF remain largely intact, enabled by regional partnerships with sub-state actors (notably Haftar's Libyan National Army) and a wider logistical architecture spanning the Sahel, Libya, and the Red Sea corridor. The disconnect between Abu Dhabi's messaging and its footprint in Sudan is narrowing the Gulf state's room for manoeuvre, heightening the likelihood of deeper diplomatic fallout as global attention to the crisis intensifies."

Hubert Kinkoh, Mo Ibrahim Foundation Academy Fellow, Africa Programme, Chatham House

India and UAE: two sides of the same coin

"India and the UAE's relationship is both historic when it comes to trade and diaspora, and contemporarily critical as geoeconomics, security, and trade. The 2022 Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) has paved the way for a new era of economic cooperation between Abu Dhabi and New Delhi, with a stated aim of $200 billion by 2032, up from $100 billion today. India and the UAE also find themselves on the same side of the coin as far as the rapid changes in the global order are concerned, both propagating for a multipolar system underpinned by their own respective definition of strategic autonomy. Associated endeavours - whether it is connectivity projects such as the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), announced on the sidelines of the 2023 G20 summit, the I2U2 minilateral with the US, UAE and Israel, and newer constructs within multilateralism such as BRICS+ - point to an abundance of shared interests, including in the realm of international security. Finally, personal care by top leaders of both states has pushed the bilateral relationship on a generally positive trajectory."

Kabir Taneja, Executive Director, ORF Middle East

UAE-Israel ties may undermine Saudi interests

"The renewed escalation in rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) could indeed complicate and further delay the normalisation process between Jerusalem and Riyadh. Even prior to the latest regional tensions, Saudi Arabia's position toward Israel had become noticeably more critical following the outbreak of the war, aligning more closely with the Palestinian cause and with prevailing Arab public sentiment, which remains overwhelmingly anti-Israeli. In recent months, Saudi criticism of Israel has intensified further, influenced by Israel's recognition of Somaliland's independence and by the deepening rift between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. From the Saudi perspective, the UAE is increasingly perceived as coordinating its regional policies with Israel in ways that undermine Saudi interests. More broadly, shifting power balances in the Middle East are compelling Riyadh to recalibrate its strategic posture. This reassessment requires Saudi Arabia to take steps, some of which may run counter to Israeli core interests, in order to strengthen its position vis-à-vis regional threats - including those that Saudi decision-makers increasingly view as emanating, at least in part, from Israel itself."

Yoel Guzanski, Senior Researcher and the Head of the Gulf Program, Institute for National Security Studies (INSS)