Diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are at risk of deteriorating due to the support of rival factions in the regional war.
During a recent visit to Washington, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or MBS reportedly asked US President Donald Trump to put pressure on Abu Dhabi over its alleged support of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan. When war broke out in Sudan in April 2023, Saudi Arabia supported the opposing Sudanese armed forces. Meanwhile, he has started mediating between the parties.
The conflict in Sudan has become the world’s largest humanitarian and displacement crisis. And the UAE has been accused of supporting and militarily equipping the Rapid Support Forces.
Rather than escalate the situation, UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, or MBZ, avoided commenting publicly on the Saudis asking Trump for help. Instead he reiterated that the UAE was not involved in the ongoing war in Sudan.
“What’s happening is a natural evolution of a very close partnership between two increasingly confident regional powers,” Christian Alexander, senior fellow at the Rabdan Security and Defense Institute, a think tank in Abu Dhabi, told DW.
In his view, both countries pursue ambitious national transformation agendas and exercise greater strategic autonomy.
“This sometimes creates glaring differences in policy,” Alexander said.
Historical relations between Saudi and UAE
When Mohammed bin Salman became Saudi Arabia’s defense minister in 2015 at the age of 29, the UAE was already under the de facto leadership of 54-year-old Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ).
“MBZ saw in MBS an opportunity to create a new, strategic alliance between Saudi Arabia and the UAE,” Cinzia Bianco, a Gulf research fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told DW.
He pointed out that MBZ did not share many common visions with former Saudi King Abdullah, who died in 2015.
“MBZ supported MBS on his way to becoming crown prince and de facto leader of Saudi Arabia in 2018,” he said, adding, “When you build such a strong and close relationship, it’s normal that even small differences can seem big.”
Since 2018, Bianco has seen several instances where differences reached extreme levels.
“But whenever the situation was about to deteriorate, both sides worked hard to keep it below the threshold of full crisis,” he said.
Yemen, opposing stance on oil production
For example, in 2018, when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was scrutinized globally following the murder of Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, the prince expected the UAE’s full support, Bianco recalls.
“But the Emiratis were hesitant to support MBS in that situation because they feared it would affect their reputation,” he said.
Another example of opposing Saudi and Emirati stances that prevented smooth cooperation was the political situation in Yemen. In 2015, a year after Iran-backed Houthis captured the then-capital Sanaa and ousted the government, Saudi Arabia intervened with a coalition of nine countries, including the United Arab Emirates, in an effort to restore Yemen’s former government.
Bianco said, “However, the Emiratis were not blindly following the Saudis, but pursuing their own agenda. Even if it meant that some of their actions would undermine the Saudi agenda.”
Most of all, the UAE began supporting Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council, which seeks to secede from the Houthi-controlled north and center of the country.
However, Saudi Arabia prefers to see Yemen united and has indicated that they are not completely opposed to the Houthis now ruling Yemen.
Another example came in 2021, when the UAE – eager to expand its own oil production – resisted pressure from Saudi Arabia to curb oil supplies within OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which includes both Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Christian Alexander recalls, “The disagreement was brief, managed through negotiations and ultimately resolved within the framework of continued joint market management.”
Since then, the two countries have repeatedly cooperated on significant production cuts to stabilize global oil markets, Alexander said, underscoring that cooperation still outweighs rivalry in energy policy.
National strategies as key drivers
Additionally, both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi introduced strategic agendas to prepare their countries for the future and diversify their income away from oil by investing in technology and becoming AI hubs. Saudi Arabia announced its economic and social overhaul agenda “Vision 2030” in April 2016, while the Emirates introduced “UAE 2031” in November 2022.
“While economic competition is intense, none of these tensions will push either country toward conflict because both know the region is too unstable for that to happen and they need to see things from the same perspective,” Michael Stephens, a senior Middle East security adviser at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, told DW.
ECFR’s Bianco agrees.
“From a geopolitical perspective, it makes no sense for them to turn their differences into a crisis because what they really need to do is unite and confront other actors like Iran and increasingly Israel,” he said.
While the UAE signed a US-brokered normalization deal with Israel in 2020, Saudi Arabia halted such talks following the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the ensuing two-year war in Gaza.
“The UAE does not want to get out of this [normalization] Consensually, they would like things to go back and quietly return to some kind of normality,” Stephens said.
Stephens said Riyadh also said that despite US pressure to normalize relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia is not expecting to return to the negotiating table until a path to a two-state solution is found between Israel and the Palestinians.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Israel, with Jerusalem as a shared capital.
It remains to be seen whether the question of relations with Israel will have an impact on Saudi-Emirati relations.
Edited by: Carla Bleiker