Since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United Arab Emirates has consistently chosen confrontation over cooperation. Rather than pursuing the kind of neighborly relations that geography and shared interests might suggest, Abu Dhabi has repeatedly aligned itself with the United States, Britain, and Israel in ways that have worked against Iranian interests. The following account traces the most significant episodes of this pattern of hostility.
1. Reviving a Closed Territorial Dispute
In the early days of the 1979 Revolution, at British instigation, the UAE moved to reopen the question of the three Iranian islands — a matter that had effectively been settled before the Revolution. Manouchehr Behnam, Iran's first Pahlavi-era ambassador to the UAE, recalls in his memoirs, published under the title Emarat Ma'amour, that during negotiations with senior Emirati officials, Sheikh Zayed himself stated he had no objection to Iranian sovereignty over the islands — a position Behnam duly reported to the Foreign Ministry through coded telegrams. Yet the UAE continued to challenge Iran's sovereign rights in international forums. It also persistently used the politically charged term "Arabian Gulf" in official settings and state media, in deliberate disregard of the internationally recognized name "Persian Gulf."
2. Covert Support for Saddam Hussein
When Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime launched its full-scale invasion of Iranian territory, the UAE declared neutrality while quietly doing the opposite. Through the framework of the newly formed Persian Gulf Cooperation Council, Abu Dhabi actively participated in channeling over $120 billion in aid to Baghdad. This support proved decisive: after the liberation of Khorramshahr in June 1982, when Saddam's regime was on the verge of collapse, financial backing from states such as the UAE helped sustain it. The declared neutrality was, in practice, a cover for material support to the aggressor.
3. Deliberate Economic Pressure Under the Cover of Sanctions
Throughout the prolonged period of US sanctions against Iran, considerable evidence points to the UAE's active role in amplifying economic pressure on Tehran — often through financial channels rather than official policy. By manipulating banking access, tightening remittance networks, and exerting informal pressure on currency flows, Abu Dhabi worked to destabilize the Iranian economy while maintaining the appearance of a neutral trading partner.
David Miller, a sociologist and university professor in the US, has noted that the United States was not the sole actor in the sanctions regime: certain Washington allies, including the UAE, pursued the same objective with their own independent motivations, with Abu Dhabi playing a particularly active executive role in coordination with Israel. The cynicism of this arrangement was striking — a state with enormous commercial interests in Iran was simultaneously working, at low cost to itself, to increase the economic burden on the Iranian people.
Reports also indicate that at moments when Iran's Central Bank attempted to stabilize the currency by injecting foreign exchange into the market, individuals connected to the UAE embassy in Tehran were in contact with brokers and moved to purchase large currency volumes, deliberately sustaining market instability. Among Iran's neighbors, the UAE has been the most cooperative partner of Washington and European capitals in making the sanctions regime effective.
4. Military and Intelligence Cooperation with Israel
The UAE's security ties with Israel, directed against Iran, was well established long before the wars of recent years. Israel transferred advanced laser and missile defense systems to the UAE on multiple occasions, including components of Rafael's Iron Dome system, designed to intercept short-range missiles and drones. The Financial Times confirmed this and reported the arrival of dozens of Israeli military personnel in the UAE to train Emirati forces.
In a telling diplomatic exchange, an Emirati official once assured the late Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian that the UAE would not permit Israel to use its soil or airspace to strike Iran. Amir-Abdollahian's reply was characteristically measured: he agreed — while noting quietly that Israel would not think to ask permission in the first place.
5. Inciting a US Military Strike on Iran
There is substantial evidence that the UAE, in coordination with Israel, worked to feed misleading intelligence to Washington with the aim of pushing the Trump administration toward military action against Iran. The Israeli network Kan reported that the UAE urged the Israeli ambassador to press Tel Aviv to increase pressure on Trump to take military action. UAE Ambassador to the United States Yousef Al-Otaiba reinforced this effort in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, amplifying baseless claims about Iranian threats and explicitly criticizing the "Death to America" chant as evidence of Iranian hostility — framing that was clearly intended for a US domestic audience ahead of any military decision.
6. A Coordinated Information Operation
The media landscape surrounding the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran revealed another dimension of UAE involvement. The Arab Post noted that the wave of pro-war digital content that coincided with the attacks bore none of the hallmarks of spontaneous public sentiment. Instead, it appeared to originate from a coordinated operations center working with precision: dozens of accounts — many presenting as residents of Persian Gulf Arab states — systematically promoted the military strikes on Iran throughout the course of the war. The fingerprints of a managed information campaign were unmistakable.
7. Logistical and Operational Support During the Ramadan War
Among all the Persian Gulf states, the UAE provided the most extensive support — logistical, informational, political, and cyber — to US and Israeli forces during the Ramadan War. In the early phases of the conflict, US military bases in the region were heavily involved in strikes on Iran. After several of those bases were hit, Emirati authorities played a significant role in sheltering American military personnel from Iranian counterattacks. More recently, the UAE's cooperation in allowing US vessels to operate from the shores of Fujairah port and to assist passage through the Strait of Hormuz stands as the latest — and perhaps most unambiguous — expression of Abu Dhabi's continued alignment against the Iranian nation.
MNA
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