The withdrawal of Emirati forces from Yemen following a Saudi Arabian airstrike might help defuse a confrontation between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, but the incident has exposed simmering distrust between two Gulf oil powers with long-running differences.
The airstrike by a Saudi Arabian-led coalition early on Tuesday on the southern Yemeni port of Mukalla was followed by calls on all UAE forces to leave Yemen, and a statement from Riyadh that its national security was a red line.
The UAE said it was surprised by the strike, shortly before announcing that it was pulling its remaining forces from Yemen for their safety. The crisis, precipitated by the surprise advance of UAE-backed separatists through southern Yemen last month, brings to the surface years of divisions between the two Gulf heavyweights on everything from oil quotas to geopolitical influence.
A Gulf source familiar with Saudi Arabian thinking said that the escalation had been triggered by a misperception resulting from talks in Washington in November last year between Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and US President Donald Trump about the war in Sudan.
High-level talks including phone calls between Saudi Arabia and the UAE had taken place since last month, although they had not yet yielded results on the ground, the source said. Any further conflagration between Saudi Arabia and the UAE would bode ill for the financially powerful Gulf, which prides itself on being an island of stability in a turbulent Middle East. Disagreements between Saudi Arabia and the UAE could hamper consensus on oil output decisions. The two are preparing for a virtual meeting with other OPEC+ members on Sunday.
“Relations between the two states are never easy, but the friction does appear to be at its most intense for years,” Chatham House associate fellow Neil Quilliam said.
Following their sudden advance last month, the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces now hold large swathes of land in Yemen, including in strategically important Hadramout Province.
The STC had previously been an important part of the coalition fighting alongside the Saudi Arabian-backed, internationally recognized government against the Iran-aligned Houthi movement, which holds Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, and the heavily populated northwest. Their sweep through the south brought the STC within reach of Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia, in an area to which many prominent Saudi Arabians trace their origins, lending it cultural and historical significance for them. It also put Saudi Arabia and the UAE on opposing sides of a smouldering civil war that erupted in Yemen in 2014.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have publicly said they are in talks with Yemeni groups to try and bring the situation under control, but the coalition has now carried out airstrikes in the province twice in the past few days. The STC has been rejecting calls by the Saudi Arabian coalition for its forces to withdraw from the areas it seized, saying it would continue securing Hadramout and Mahra Province to its east.
In a statement on the strike in Mukalla, the UAE said it had tried to de-escalate since the STC’s advance and denied being behind any operations that would undermine Saudi Arabian security or target its borders.
“Both countries like to play down friction in the relationship and argue that competition amongst states is a normal state of affairs,” Quilliam said. “But the intensity of the competition has certainly sharpened in the past year and is playing out in multiple theaters.”
One such place is Sudan, a country engulfed in civil war and one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises since April 2023. The Quad, which groups Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the US and the UAE, has led diplomacy on the conflict, but the war has raged on.
Sudan is a sensitive issue for the UAE. UN experts and members of the US Congress have accused the country of sponsoring Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who are fighting the Sudanese army. The UAE denies backing either side.
Trump and the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince discussed Sudan at the November meeting in Washington.
The Gulf source said the UAE leadership was angered as they had been “misinformed” that during the November meeting the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince had not just asked for further sanctions against the RSF, but also for more direct sanctions against the UAE for its alleged support to the group.
The misperception led to the escalation in Yemen, the source said.
The Emirati Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not confirm or deny this account and referred to a statement issued last week, in which the UAE had welcomed Saudi Arabia’s efforts to support security and stability in Yemen, and said it also remained committed to backing stability in the country.
Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the Emirati president, on Saturday last week wrote on X that dialogue and political solutions that preserve friendships and alliances were essential in what he called a “critical stage.” He did not clearly reference Yemen or Saudi Arabia in his remarks.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment when asked about the issue.
The Gulf has witnessed instability in the past. In 2017, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Oman and Egypt choked off Qatar’s economy with a boycott, accusing it of backing terrorists, a charge Doha denied. The latest flare-up appears unlikely to spur a repeat of the Qatar crisis.
“We do have differences over Yemen 100 percent, and the difference has gone to a higher level with current escalation,” Emirati academic Abdulkhaleq Abdullah said. “Allies clash ... but they mend their differences and build on what they have in common.”
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