'Ideology, family and history': The UAE-Saudi Arabia feud explained

“'Ideology, family and history': The UAE-Saudi Arabia feud explained Submitted by Sean Mathews on Fri, 05/08/2026 - 21:16 Saudi Arabia sees itself as a leader in the Arab and Muslim world, and the UAE sees itself as a global power constrained by old Gulf links This handout picture shows UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (R) meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at Qasr al-Rawdha in Abu Dhabi, on 1 December 2024 (Abdulla al-Bedwawi/UAE presidential court/AFP) Off Saudi Arabia tried to bribe a prince of the UAE’s al-Nahyan family to cede control of a desert oasis suspected of containing vast quantities of oil. The sheikh rejected the offer to betray his family, and Saudi Arabia launched a failed invasion of the territory. That is how the late journalist David Holden summed up the legendary 1950s Buraimi dispute between the Saudi royal family, Oman, and the Trucial States, which would become the United Arab Emirates, in his classic 1966 book, Farewell Arabia. The sheikh the Saudi Arabians tried to bribe, by Holden's telling, was Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, then known as the “Lord of Buraimi” but remembered in history as the founder of the UAE. His son, President Mohamed bin Zayed, is now locked in his own nasty spat with another Saudi family member, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “If you put ideology, family and history together, you can understand the Saudi-UAE feud,” Patrick Theros, a former US diplomat and ambassador who first arrived in the Middle East when the Buraimi dispute was still warm to the touch, told Middle East Eye. Right now, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are at loggerheads in almost every theatre imaginable, from the deserts of Libya to global energy markets. Diplomats, businesspeople and analysts say their feud will, in large part, define the Middle East’s future, particularly as the US’s staying power in the region is called into question by the US-Israeli war on Iran . The divergence will even impact the pocketbooks of consumers in Asia, Europe and the US. UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, left, meets Saudi King Faisal in Riyadh in February 1975 (Wam/AFP) This month, the UAE left the Saudi-led oil cartel, Opec. Abu Dhabi vowed that it would pump millions more barrels of oil per day as a result, potentially setting the stage for a future price war with Saudi Arabia, experts tell MEE. The UAE’s Opec break is symbolic of the wider rift. On the surface, Abu Dhabi left Opec after 60 years because it differed with Riyadh over how to manage production. The UAE wants to pump more oil faster to take profits now, while Saudi Arabia wants to manage global supply to support prices long term, energy analysts say. But beneath that technical difference is a bigger sore point. Opec is effectively a group of oil-rich, Muslim-majority countries converging around energy policy under the guidance of Saudi Arabia. The kingdom has more then two times the oil reserves of the UAE. It is also home to the two holiest cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina. Its population of 35 million towers over that of the UAE, which is home to 10 million people, only 1 million of whom are Emirati nationals. “Saudi Arabia wants to project its power through Opec and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Because of its size and resources, it sees itself as the natural leader of the Gulf,” Rob Geist Pinfold, an expert on international security at King's College London, told MEE. “The UAE is small, but it has undergone a remarkable transformation to become a larger-than-life global brand. The UAE feels deferring to the Saudis prevents it from exercising power on the world stage,” he said. Standing up to Saudi Arabia and the Persians The Gulf trading communities that became the UAE were historically stuck between the Persians to the east and the tribes of Najd to the west. Najd is a region of the central Arabian Peninsula from which the Saud family originally hails. President Mohamed bin Zayed’s approach to the region, some analysts say, is a 21st-century spin of older rivalries, turbocharged by oil wealth and technology. “The Emiratis have always viewed the Saudis as a predatory neighbour who want to make them their vassals,” Theros, the former US ambassador, told MEE. “They have also, traditionally, been wary of the Persians asserting their own zone of influence in the Gulf.” 'The Emiratis have always viewed the Saudis as a predatory neighbour who want to make them their vassals' - Patrick Theros, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia “MBZ finally decided that it’s possible for a small Gulf country to stand up to the Saudis and the Persians,” Theros told MEE, using an acronym for the Emirati president. The UAE has emerged as one of the most vocal Gulf states urging Israel and the US to continue their war on Iran . As Iran pummelled the UAE with thousands of missiles and drones, Israel deployed air-defence systems to defend the UAE. Likewise, the UAE has asked the US for emergency access to US dollars. Another way the UAE has tried to make up for its small size is by finding local partners in strategically placed countries to its West. This has riled Saudi Arabia, which is wary of the Gulf state intervening beyond its borders. The Gulf neighbours are also backing opposing sides in Sudan’s civil war. MEE was the first to reveal how seriously their ties were strained in Sudan, with a report that Saudi Arabia lobbied the US to penalise the UAE for backing the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary. Just before the war on Iran broke out, Saudi Arabia launched strikes against the UAE’s secessionist partners in Yemen . Riyadh even teamed up with Oman to combat an Emirati power-grab in Yemen’s far east. Success in all of these war zones could give the UAE the strategic depth it lacks. If the Rapid Support Forces are successful in Sudan, the UAE would have an ally on the Red Sea coast across from Saudi Arabia. Likewise, the Southern Transitional Council in Yemen wants to create an independent state out of valuable territory on the Arab Gulf side of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz underscores how critical the Red Sea is to Saudi Arabian oil exports via the East-West pipeline. The UAE has also supported the breakaway Republic of Somaliland, which was recognised by Israel. But there is another layer to these conflicts. 'Obsessive, narrow emphasis on rivals' Yemen, Libya, and Sudan all fell into internal conflict after the 2011 Arab Spring protest movement. Whereas the UAE has supported secessionist forces there, Saudi Arabia has backed the military and established governments. The UAE says some of those governments, such as in Yemen and Sudan, are made up of "Islamists". "Our [Saudi] approach is based on supporting the nation state: preserving its unity, strengthening its institutions and sovereignty, and contributing to its reconstruction rather than its fragmentation,” Hesham Alghannam, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and director general of Naif Arab University for security sciences' strategic studies and national security programmes, told MEE. “Conversely, the other side's regional engagement has often been characterised by an obsessive, narrow strategic emphasis on combating Islamists or political rivals. This has weakened state institutions, empowered militias, and created parallel forces that challenge legitimate authority,” he added. 'Frantic lobbying:' Does Trump have a favourite in the UAE-Saudi rift Read More » “We clearly support combating extremism and terrorism, but through national institutions operating within the framework of the state and the rule of law. This should not be done through arming non-state actors or entrenching internal divisions,” he added. There was a time when the UAE and Saudi Arabia both saw it in their interests to work together in the post-Arab Spring conflicts. The Muslim Brotherhood’s victory in Egypt’s 2012 election jolted the royal families of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Likewise, in Yemen, they saw the rise of the Houthis, who belong to an offshoot of Shia Islam known as Zaidism, as a threat. The UAE and Saudi Arabia engineered a blockade of Qatar together because they felt it was too supportive of the political movements that could eventually threaten their monarchies. Experts say their coherence on these issues was helped by the fact that President Mohamed bin Zayed took the younger Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman under his wing in 2015, as he was coming to power. “You can absolutely see in those early days when MBS was coming to prominence, the close working relationship. It was basically MBZ that convinced MBS to boycott Qatar,” Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow and Gulf expert at Chatham House, told MEE. But Quilliam said the coherence was an aberration. In fact, just before the Arab world was shaken by popular protests, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh fell out over a project to unite the Gulf’s economies. In 2009, the UAE withdrew from the Gulf Cooperation Council monetary union project, dealing a blow to plans for a single Gulf currency. The UAE was angry that the council's headquarters would be in Riyadh rather than Abu Dhabi. “It would be like France and Germany having spat over the EU and one withdrawing,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute, told MEE. “Before the Arab Spring, it looked like the break was going to be between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, not Qatar. The Arab Spring temporarily brought them together, but if you take a long-term view, pre-2010 and post-2020, they were at loggerheads,” he said. The explanation goes back to how the UAE and Saudi Arabia view differences of opinion in their countries and within the wider Arab and Muslim world, experts say. Saudi Arabia was quicker to patch up ties with Qatar after the Gulf rift. Although Abu Dhabi was a signatory to the 2021 al-Ula agreement, which officially ended the blockade, it has continued to have a chilly and suspicious relationship with Doha. Left to right: Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim al-Thani, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and national security adviser of the UAE Tahnoun bin Zayed al-Nahyan (AFP) Israel and the US Perhaps the clearest example of the divergence is found in the approaches of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to Israel. When the UAE normalised relations with Israel in 2020, it broke ranks with a decades-old peace plan that Saudi Arabia crafted and had endorsed by the Arab League. The 2002 proposal says Arab states will not normalise ties with Israel until an independent Palestinian state is created along the lines of Israel’s pre-1967 borders. While Saudi Arabia mulled normalisation with the Biden administration, Israel’s war o n Gaza shut down the prospects of a deal. The United Nations and human rights experts have recognised Israel’s onslaught on the enclave as a genocide, where over 72,600 Palestinians have been killed. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman echoed that assessment in public. A poll by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy in late 2023 found that 96 percent of Saudi Arabians believe countries should cut ties with Israel. 'Empowered': UAE's exit from Opec appeases Trump, delivers blow to Saudi Arabia Read More » “Politics in Saudi Arabia is heading back towards the more consensual model that it was based on,” Quilliam, at Chatham House, told MEE. “There is a diversity of views on Israel in the UAE, but MBZ feels he doesn’t need to worry about that.” “MBS came to see some of MBZ’s adventurous positions as a liability and has developed a better understanding of the Arab street,” he added. The war on Iran has only galvanised the differences between the UAE and Saudi Arabia further, experts say. Both countries are tightly linked to the US. But they are forging competing blocs with some of Washington's other partners. The UAE is doubling down on its partnership with Israel, whereas Saudi Arabia is building a coalition spanning Turkey , Egypt and Pakistan . “Neither the UAE or Saudi Arabia can give up the US. But those new alliances are going to grow,” Theros said. Saudi-UAE Tensions News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0

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