Israel and the UAE find common cause as the Iran war cracks old Middle East alliances
By Tal Shalev, CNN
(CNN) — From almost any other country, the answer would have been a firm no. But when the United Arab Emirates came under a relentless Iranian attack during the US-Israeli war on Tehran, Israel agreed to deploy one of its most sensitive military systems.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secretly ordered the Israeli military to send an Iron Dome interceptor battery – and soldiers to operate it – to the UAE after a call with President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a move that demonstrates just how far ties have come.
Now, as the UAE distances itself from its traditional allies because of their stance on the Iran war, Israel sees an unprecedented opportunity to further strengthen its ties, several Israeli officials have told CNN.
The UAE, which in 2020 became the first Arab nation in 26 years to normalize ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords, has said the Iran war could reshape its regional alliances, citing disappointment with some of its closest Arab partners. Abu Dhabi would instead become closer to Israel and nations that supported it during the war, including France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, officials say.
“Amid the limited positive developments to emerge from the Iran war, this relationship (with Abu Dhabi) stands out as ‘good news,’” an Israeli source with close knowledge of relations with the UAE told CNN. “Ties have advanced to a new level, including at the leadership level.”
UAE officials and state-linked commentators have in recent weeks issued rare public rebukes of Arab nations for failing to step up as the country bore the brunt of Iran’s attacks during Tehran’s retaliation in the US-Israeli war.
The stance of fellow Gulf Arab monarchies “was the weakest historically,” Anwar Gargash, an adviser to the UAE president, said at a conference in Dubai this week.
“I expected it from the Arab League and I’m not surprised,” Gargash said, referring to the bloc of 22 Arab states. “But I did not expect it from the Gulf (states), and I am surprised.”
As criticism mounted that Israel and the United States had drawn the Gulf into a war most regional states opposed, Gargash doubled down on the need for ties with both, telling CNN that “Israeli influence (will) become more prominent in the Gulf, not less.”
Israel “did not even envision this closeness when we signed the Abraham Accords,” an Israeli diplomatic source told CNN, referring to the deepening military ties.
“The war brought an unprecedented level of closeness, driven largely by a shared sense of fate – both countries were attacked and the enemy is common,” said another Israeli official. “This will definitely be reflected in the expansion of relations from here on.”
This week, the UAE pulled out of the OPEC oil cartel after nearly six decades of membership. Asked by CNN if the group’s de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, was consulted on the move, UAE Minister of Energy Suhail Al Mazrouei said it was a “sovereign national decision.”
Experts say that while the UAE had felt constrained by the group and had been seeking to exit for years, it chose to remain in deference to Saudi Arabia.
The Israeli official who spoke to CNN cast Abu Dhabi’s departure from OPEC as evidence of a widening gap with Gulf positions and shift toward closer alignment with Israel and the US.
“It increases the UAE’s distance from traditional Gulf policy and transforms them into something entirely different in the region and for Israel,” the official said, adding that the UAE “found themselves alone – and Israel and the United States were there for them.”
First Israeli deployment in an Arab state
The covert Israeli deployment of the country’s vaunted Iron Dome missile defense system in the UAE underscored the nations’ deepening ties, an Israeli source familiar with the matter told CNN last week, confirming a report by Axios. The system was sent during the war with Iran, the source said.
It marked an unprecedented Israeli troop deployment in an Arab state and the first known instance of Israel stationing Iron Dome outside its own borders – even as it came under heavy Iranian fire at home. Israeli officials say the war has pushed security cooperation between the two countries to unprecedented levels.
Israel and the UAE share a common view of radical Islam as the primary threat, the source with knowledge of UAE-Israel ties said, adding that Israel “has also backed the UAE in its tensions with Saudi Arabia over the Horn of Africa.”
Israel has previously concluded several arms deals to sell the Iron Dome system abroad, but this appeared to be the first time it has been deployed to another country and used operationally. The system intercepted dozens of Iranian missiles during the war, Axios reported, citing an Israeli official.
This wasn’t the first time Israel had provided the UAE with its air defense systems, according to two other sources. In 2022, after Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched missiles at Abu Dhabi that killed three people – an attack UAE officials referred to as the country’s 9/11 at the time – Israel transferred a Barak-8 air defense battery to the country following a request to then Prime Minister Naftali Bennett from UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed, the sources said.
CNN has reached out to the UAE foreign ministry about the level of support Israel has provided to it, including Iron Dome batteries. It’s unclear whether the batteries remain in the UAE.
Yoel Guzansky, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies and former official at Israel’s National Security Council, said the UAE was now one of the closest countries to Israel globally. “It’s not just security. It’s tourism, science, investment, trade. There is no Arab country closer,” he said, citing the UAE’s decision to keep its ambassador in Tel Aviv and air links open during the Gaza war. He added that it was likely targeted most heavily by Iran because of that closeness.
“In that sense, the UAE is paying a price for the relationship,” he said.
But the war has also exposed the limits of Israel’s support, as it tries to balance its desire to deepen ties with Gulf states against its own security needs. An Israeli security source told CNN that Israel was forced to turn down a request from Abu Dhabi for more Iron Dome batteries. “Every battery that would be deployed there means one less for our aerial defense,” said the official.
The UAE in turn helps Israel with signals intelligence, the source added, which is gathered by intercepting and analyzing electronic signals – mainly communications and other emissions – from people, systems or equipment.
The UAE has ‘outgrown the region’
In the hours before the UAE announced Tuesday it would withdraw from OPEC, Emirati social media figures were abuzz with speculation that a major decision was imminent. An unscheduled meeting of Gulf leaders that day in Saudi Arabia fueled rumors that Abu Dhabi was preparing to exit the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Saudi-headquartered bloc of six Gulf monarchies, but that did not happen.
Since then, speculation has turned to whether the UAE could withdraw from other multilateral bodies, including the Cairo-based Arab League and the Riyadh-based Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, both of which Abu Dhabi has belonged to for decades.
Observers say the UAE had already been feeling increasingly distant from its Arab neighbors before the war, and that the conflict accelerated that drift.
“The Emirates hadn’t realized how much it had outgrown the region,” Tareq Alotaiba, a fellow in the Middle East Initiative at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, told CNN. He cited the country’s “complexity,” which he said was more in line with Western and Asian states than its own neighborhood. “It’s logical to think that once the Emirates conducts its exercise of reassessing its relationships, the real allies and real points of focus will emerge.”
For now, the UAE isn’t considering any further withdrawals from multilateral organizations, an official told CNN on Wednesday. Abu Dhabi is revising “the relevance and utility of its role and contribution” in some organizations but is “not considering any withdrawals,” the official said.
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