Recently, I delivered a presentation at the Russian Academy of Sciences on the role of BRICS in addressing the conflict in the Middle East. The discussion raised a fundamental question about the group’s international relevance: to what extent can an increasingly influential association of emerging powers contribute to resolving a major geopolitical crisis when its members hold divergent positions and maintain competing regional interests?
The answer requires a realistic assessment of BRICS’ institutional character and the political considerations shaping its members’ foreign policies.
The expansion of BRICS has increased its economic weight and diplomatic reach. Nevertheless, the group remains primarily a platform for intergovernmental coordination rather than a formal international organization equipped with binding decision-making mechanisms and a unified foreign policy. Its members maintain regular consultations, pursue economic cooperation, and issue joint declarations, but these activities do not automatically translate into coordinated action during armed conflicts.
The Middle East illustrates this limitation particularly clearly. Iran and the United Arab Emirates belong to BRICS while occupying opposing positions in the current military confrontation. Tehran considers American military infrastructure in the region a central element of the threat it faces, while the UAE seeks to protect its territory and critical infrastructure from Iranian missiles and drones. The presence of American forces on Emirati soil places Abu Dhabi in a particularly sensitive position, regardless of whether Iran considers the country itself its principal adversary.
Other members face similarly complex calculations. Egypt maintains important relations with Israel, while India combines longstanding ties with Iran with a strategic partnership with Israel. Meanwhile, China’s rivalry with India remains an important feature of Asian geopolitics, despite diplomatic efforts to stabilize bilateral relations. These differences prevent BRICS from adopting a common strategic position on every major international crisis.
The frequently invoked objective of establishing a multipolar world order does little to eliminate these contradictions. Multipolarity itself carries different meanings across the group’s membership. Brazilian foreign policy discourse often associates it with multilateral institutions and international governance, including the United Nations. Russia, China, and Iran, however, place greater emphasis on redistributing global power and reducing the capacity of Western states to impose their strategic preferences on other countries.
Consequently, BRICS lacks a fully shared geopolitical doctrine. Its cohesion rests primarily on the combined economic and political weight of its members and their recognition that the international system cannot be transformed without their participation. This common interest provides a foundation for cooperation, although it remains insufficient to establish a unified approach to every regional conflict.
These structural limitations define what BRICS can realistically accomplish in the Middle East. The group cannot be expected to endorse Iran’s military position collectively, nor is it likely to become a unified negotiating intermediary. The interests of its Arab members, particularly the UAE, make such an arrangement politically implausible. Likewise, most BRICS countries do not support eliminating the State of Israel.
However, significant opportunities for coordinated diplomatic action remain. Members can oppose attacks against civilians, condemn violations of international humanitarian law, and demand accountability for the destruction affecting Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran. Such positions can establish common ground without requiring every member to adopt identical strategic objectives.
Joint declarations at BRICS summits have already provided a framework for expressing humanitarian concerns. The challenge is to translate diplomatic language into practical measures, including coordinated initiatives for humanitarian assistance, sustained international pressure against violations of international law, and diplomatic efforts to prevent further escalation.
Whether BRICS can pursue these objectives effectively depends on decisions about its institutional future. If its members want the group to exercise greater influence over international crises, they will need to develop clearer procedures, establish more concrete long-term priorities, and identify areas where collective action is possible despite strategic disagreements.
The Middle East conflict therefore presents BRICS with a significant test. Its capacity to influence the international order will depend not only on the combined power of its members, but also on their willingness to convert shared interests into sustained political action.
Russia’s response to the Iran war reflects a pragmatic strategy of influence without military entanglement: Moscow supports Tehran diplomatically to preserve their strategic partnership while maintaining economic ties with the Gulf states, safeguarding its own interests, and avoiding confrontation with the United States and Israel. The recent US-Iran war highlights a key feature of Moscow’s […]
The Gulf Cooperation Council, a bloc of oil-rich states long known for its appetite for imported cars, is becoming a growing market for Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) that are largely being blocked out of the West. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman are diversifying toward alternative energy, embracing environmental goals […]
The United Arab Emirates has reportedly agreed to resume funding selected forces in southern Yemen fighting the Yemeni Armed Forces, while Saudi Arabiahas agreed to provide air cover for those forces, according to sources in Yemen.
The reported arrangement signals a possible thaw in relations between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi after months of disagreement over the scope of each other’s political influence in Yemen.
The renewed coordination comes as the Yemeni Armed Forcescontinues to make gains and Saudi Arabia faces repeated drone and missile attacks targeting its territory, airports, and energy infrastructure.
Gulf rivals reconsider their positions
Southern forces, particularly the Giant Brigades, were previously trained and funded by the UAE and are considered among the more effective formations in the fragmented coalition opposing the YAF. Abu Dhabi withdrew its involvement in Yemen in January, cutting off financial support to forces it had backed, following pressure from Saudi Arabia.
The reported agreement suggests that advances by the YAFare prompting rival Gulf powers to reconsider their differences. However, neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE has responded to a recent demand by southern separatists for an independence referendumthat would restore the borders in place between 1967 and 1990, when Yemen was divided into two states.
The Southern Transitional Council (STC) has also yet to agree to deploy its forces beyond the boundaries of the former South Yemen. Saudi approval of a referendum could potentially remove that restriction, although no such agreement has been announced.
Attacks on Aden intensify pressure
The Aden government announced a counteroffensive last week aimed at retaking Sanaa. The campaign achieved limited gains around Majzar near Marib and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, but was met with a sizeable retaliation by Sanaa’s forces.
On Friday, two missiles struck Aden airport;Information Minister Moammar Al-Eryanisaid the missiles landed about 500 meters from the Yemenia Airways aircraft and roughly 100 meters from the runway’s midpoint. No casualties were reported.
The attack followed a strike on a presidential palace in Aden that killed at least five people and wounded 16, further underscoring the risks facing the Gulf-backed south.
Relations between the STC and Riyadh remain strained. STC leader Aidarous al-Zubaidi fled to Abu Dhabi in January after an unsuccessful attempt by the council to assert control across southern Yemen and announce a referendum on independence within two years.
Saudi Arabia subsequently bombed UAE arms shipmentsintended for STC forces. Abu Dhabi then announced its withdrawal from Yemen, while the Saudi-backed government said it would seek to prosecute Zubaidi for treason.
Egypt and UK face decisions over military support
Regional involvement is also expanding beyond the Gulf rivals. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisihas called for an emergency parliamentary session to authorize possible military action to “defend” Saudi Arabia if requested, while emphasizing that Egypt would not undertake offensive operations.
Sanaa’s Parliament Speaker Yahya Ali al-Ra’i warned Egypt against a potential involvement in the Saudi military aggression against Yemen, urging Cairo not to allow itself to be drawn into a confrontation that serves Riyadh’s policies.
In an urgent letter to Egyptian Parliament Speaker Hisham Badawi, al-Ra’i expressed serious concern that developments could lead to Egyptian military participation alongside Saudi Arabia, stressing that such a move would contradict Egypt’s historical role in defending Arab causes.
In the UK, discussions continue over a Saudi request for additional military assistance. London has deployed an RAF Voyager aerial refueling aircraft, but some Arab officialsare pressing for further support.
The prospect of deeper British involvement raises legal concerns. In 2019, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that the government had acted unlawfully in granting arms export licenses during the previous Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen in 2015–2016. The Campaign Against Arms Trade argued that officials had failed to properly assess potential violations of international humanitarian law, prompting revisions to export licensing procedures.
Sanaa’s resistance against Saudi aggression followed a brutal, years-long siege that caused one of the worst famines in modern history. The Ansar Allah government has made clear that their fight against Saudi Arabia will not cease so long as Riyadh continues to escalate it even further.
The Yemeni Armed Forces forces have remained firm in their resistance under the banner of a military equation: blockade for blockade and escalation for escalation.
The two-week exchange of fire between the United States and Iran, triggered by Washington’s attempt to force open an illegal southern corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, represented the most consequential direct military confrontation between them since the 40-day war.
The Iranian response to the unprovoked and illegal American aggression was not a chaotic escalation but a methodical, layered military campaign that drew on years of doctrinal development, weapons investment, and operational planning.
The efforts of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces, spearheaded by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) aerospace and naval branches, executed a decisive and swift response.
What unfolded was a layered operation with nine distinct but interlocking lines of effort. Each line reinforced the others. Infrastructure degradation reduced American operational tempo; area denial forced repositioning that compounded the effects of that degradation; extended-range precision strikes demonstrated that repositioning offered no sanctuary; ISR attrition blinded American targeting systems; terrorist suppression closed the land flank, while strikes on utility infrastructure imposed costs on host nations and denied services to American bases.
One can employ the open-source reporting, satellite imagery, and the observable pattern of strikes to examine each dimension of Iran’s military response in detail, and construct a coherent operational picture. It is getting exceedingly clear that the ceasefire period has very likely translated to a window for reconstitution and preparation in Iranian strategic calculus.
The primacy of solid-fuel tactical ballistic missiles
Iran’s decision to anchor its retaliatory campaign in solid-fuel tactical ballistic missiles was not accidental. It reflected a decade-long investment in a specific capability designed precisely for this kind of confrontation. Solid-fuel ballistic missiles offer decisive operational advantages over their liquid-fuel predecessors. They require no fueling time at the launch site, dramatically compressing the window between a launch order and missile departure.
This matters enormously in a sensitive environment where adversary assets, particularly MQ-9 Reaper drones and maritime patrol aircraft, are actively hunting for launch preparations.
A liquid-fuel missile requires a visible, time-consuming fueling sequence that creates a detectable signature. A solid-fuel missile can be transported, erected, and fired in a fraction of that time, often before a targeting solution can be developed and a strike authorized.
These missiles are road-mobile, launched from transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) that can disperse across Iran’s mountainous terrain, making pre-emptive targeting extremely difficult.
Having destroyed much of the air defense systems belonging to the US and its Arab allies using the older, less sophisticated liquid fuel missiles in previous wars, Iran’s strikes this time primarily relied on its tactical solid-fuel ballistic missile inventory, meaning the various variants of the Fateh family.
Simply put, the choice of solid-fuel systems reflected a calculated assessment of the adversary’s weakened interception capacity, an assessment that proved accurate.
The air defense inventory crisis
Perhaps the single most consequential factor shaping the operational environment was the state of US and allied air defense missile inventories.
The United States entered this round of military aggression with critically depleted stocks of its most capable interceptors. The Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) and Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), which arm Aegis-equipped destroyers and cruisers and provide the American Navy’s primary ballistic missile defense capability at sea, have been drawn down through a combination of expenditure in the Red Sea campaign against Yemen, the costly defense of Israel during two previous wars, and the simple reality that production rates have never kept pace with consumption.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which provides upper-tier defense against medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, is similarly constrained.
The decision not to employ Aegis and THAAD at full capacity was therefore a forced one. The United States simply could not spend its remaining meager inventory of SM-3 and THAAD interceptors against Iranian tactical ballistic missiles, which, while accurate and damaging, are not the only threats to American interests.
Doing so would have left the United States strategically exposed against another serious contingency in East Asia or Europe. The calculus was that American military bases had to absorb more hits to preserve the interceptors.
Moreover, the Patriot system, which bore the brunt of terminal-phase defense in recent weeks across the region, was in no better condition. Years of expenditure across Ukraine, the occupied territories, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea mission have drawn PAC-3 and PAC-3 MSE stocks to extremely low levels.
The Pentagon’s response was telling. Rather than accelerating full-capability PAC-3 MSE production, it has chosen to pursue the cheaper, less capable PAC-3ACE Cost Reduction Initiative variant. More revealing still were the recent PAC-2 GEM-T orders, an older interceptor not procured by the US in decades, signaling just how severely stocks had been exhausted.
That the world’s most sophisticated air defense enterprise was compelled to resurrect a 1990s-era design to sustain basic readiness is the starkest indicator of the American munitions crisis that Iranian planners appear to have understood, measured, and exploited with precision.
The situation among Persian Gulf states was equally dire. Saudi Arabia and the UAE had expended substantial portions of their Patriot PAC-3 interceptor stocks during years of Yemeni military missile and drone attacks, and entered the 40-day imposed war with depleted inventories. The situation is even direr in Kuwait and Bahrain, with the Persian Gulf microstates effectively running out of Patriots, being forced to solely rely on American-operated systems.
PAC-3, the most capable variant of the Patriot system against ballistic missiles, has effectively been exhausted in several batteries. PAC-2, the older and less capable variant, is the only available option in certain areas against Iranian missiles, and even that missile is running low as well. The collective air defense architecture of the Persian Gulf states, which had appeared formidable on paper, has been effectively hollowed out.
Iranian operational planners were aware of these facts. The sequencing and volume of Iranian missile salvos during the exchange reflected a deliberate attempt to exploit the gap between what the defense could theoretically intercept and what it could actually intercept given real-world inventory constraints.
Iran’s multi-layered operational strategy
What distinguished Iran’s response from a simple missile barrage was its architectural coherence. Iranian planners did not merely fire missiles at American targets; they executed a phased, multi-domain retaliatory campaign with distinct operational objectives at each stage, each phase creating the conditions for the next.
The campaign can be understood as having five interlocking lines of effort: infrastructure degradation, area denial and operational displacement, precision strike at extended range, ISR and logistics attrition, and proxy terrorist force suppression.
Together, they constituted a campaign design far more sophisticated than most Western analysts had publicly credited Iran with possessing.
The overarching logic was one of progressive operational constriction. Rather than attempting to destroy US forces – an objective beyond Iran’s reach given American conventional superiority – the campaign aimed to degrade, displace, and exhaust them.
Each successful strike reduced American operational capacity; forced repositioning that consumed time and resources, and demonstrated to regional partners that proximity to American occupation forces carried real costs.
Infrastructure degradation
The first phase of the Iranian retaliatory campaign targeted the physical infrastructure of American military power in the Persian Gulf region. This was not indiscriminate bombardment. Satellite imagery and post-strike assessments revealed a pattern of targeting that prioritized specific high-value nodes: radar installations, fuel and ammunition storage facilities, maintenance hangars, and communications infrastructure.
Radar systems were a particular priority. The ability to detect, track, and target Iranian missiles and UAVs depends on a layered network of radar systems. By striking radar installations at air bases, Iran degraded the situational awareness that underpins both offensive operations and defensive intercepts. A radar that is destroyed or forced offline creates a coverage gap that cascades through the entire air defense architecture.
Before-and-after imagery of an AN/FPS-117 early warning radar installation at Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base, Kuwait, showing structural damage
Logistics infrastructure was targeted with equal deliberateness. Fuel depots, ammunition storage sites, and maintenance facilities at American bases around the Persian Gulf were struck with sufficient accuracy to cause meaningful operational disruption.
An air force that cannot fuel its aircraft, rearm them, or repair battle damage cannot sustain sortie rates. The targeting of logistics was a direct attack on the tempo of American air operations to derail the American aggression against Iranian sites and reduce the pressure on Iranian forces.
The accuracy of these strikes, achieved at ranges of several hundred kilometers, validated the operational utility of Iran’s solid-fuel ballistic missile force and demonstrated that the IRGC aerospace force had developed the targeting data, launch procedures, and quality control necessary to achieve consistent results against fixed infrastructure.
The anti-access/area denial campaign
The most strategically significant dimension of the Iranian retaliatory campaign was its systematic execution of an Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy that progressively pushed American air operations out of the Persian Gulf and into increasingly distant and operationally constrained locations.
The logic of A2/AD in this context was straightforward. The closer American aircraft operate to Iran, the shorter their flight times, the larger their payloads, the less refueling they require, and the more sorties they can generate per day.
Conversely, every additional hundred kilometers of distance imposes compounding costs: greater tanker support, longer mission times, reduced payload, increased crew fatigue, and more complex coordination. By rendering the Persian Gulf operationally untenable for American air assets, Iran systematically degraded the offensive capacity of the aggressors.
The first displacement was from the Persian Gulf itself. Sustained missile and drone attacks against air bases made sustained operations from those locations unfeasible. The American response was to shift primary air operations to bases in Jordan – Al-Azraq and Muwaffaq Salti –which offered greater distance from Iranian missile systems.
Iran’s response was to extend its reach to Jordan. Multiple strikes against American bases, documented by US casualties and satellite imagery showing damaged hangars and destroyed aircraft, demonstrated that Iran had the capability to contest operations from that distance.
The retaliatory strikes destroyed American aircraft, damaged infrastructure, and forced the US war machine to reconsider the viability of Jordan as a primary operating location.
The second displacement was to the occupied territories. American air assets, including tanker aircraft critical to sustaining long-range strike operations, were pushed further west to Israeli military bases.
This displacement carried its own operational costs. The distance from Iranian targets increased further, and the concentration of American assets in the occupied territories created its own targeting opportunities for Iran, which has demonstrated both the willingness and capability to strike at extended ranges.
A particularly telling indicator of this displacement dynamic was the repositioning of the RQ-4 Global Hawk strategic reconnaissance aircraft, which had been operating from Al Dhafra in the UAE and from Jordanian facilities, to Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily.
The Global Hawk, with its long endurance and high-altitude sensors, is a critical ISR asset for tracking Iranian missile launches and providing targeting data. Its displacement to Sicily represented a dramatic reduction in persistent surveillance coverage over Iran and the Persian Gulf, with direct consequences for the effectiveness of American strike operations.
A qualitative leap in extended-range precision
One of the most significant revelations of the recent round of US aggression and Iran’s retaliation was the demonstrated accuracy of Iranian ballistic missiles at ranges exceeding 1,000 kilometers. Previous assessments of Iranian ballistic missile accuracy had generally been skeptical about the ability to achieve consistent precision at such distances. The strikes on Jordanian targets, located well over 1,000 kilometers from Iranian launch sites, completely shattered that skepticism.
The circular error probable (CEP) – the radius within which 50 percent of strikes fall – observed in the Jordanian strikes was dramatically smaller than what Iranian missiles had previously demonstrated at comparable ranges. Strikes that hit specific buildings, specific aircraft shelters, and specific sections of structures, rather than simply landing somewhere on a base, indicated a qualitative improvement in guidance accuracy that demands explanation.
Several hypotheses present themselves, and the evidence suggests that the answer likely involves a combination of all of them. First are technical improvements. Iran may have upgraded the terminal guidance systems on its Kheibarshekan, Haj Qasem, and Fattah variants, potentially incorporating improved inertial navigation, satnav receivers, or optical terminal seekers that allow the missile to better correct its trajectory in the final phase of flight.
Second are tactical improvements. Iranian launch crews may have refined their pre-launch survey procedures, improving the accuracy of the initial position fix that the missile’s inertial navigation system uses as its reference point. Third are software improvements, which mean updates to the missile’s flight control algorithms could improve trajectory optimization and reduce the accumulated errors that degrade accuracy over long distances.
The most likely explanation is a combination of all three – a systematic program of improvement across the technical, procedural, and software dimensions of missile accuracy that had been underway for years and was now being demonstrated operationally for the first time at this range, following the experiences of the 40-day war.
The MQ-9 hunt
The MQ-9 Reaper drone occupied a central and uniquely vulnerable position in American military offensives against Iran. The Reaper is not merely a strike platform but the primary persistent ISR asset used to locate and track mobile Iranian missile launchers, particularly after the heavy attrition of similar Israeli military systems.
Without the MQ-9’s ability to loiter for extended periods, the capacity to find and destroy TELs before they fire, or to conduct battle damage assessment after strikes, is dramatically reduced.
Iran understood this dependency and targeted it systematically during this campaign. The campaign against MQ-9 assets operated on multiple levels. Ground-based air defense systems, which had previously demonstrated the ability to engage high-altitude targets, were used to engage Reapers operating over Iranian territory and adjacent areas.
But Iran also struck the ground infrastructure that supports MQ-9 operations: the maintenance facilities, fuel systems, satellite communication ground stations, and launch-and-recovery equipment that allow the aircraft to operate.
Western media reporting confirmed the destruction of a number of MQ-9 aircraft on the ground at Jordanian bases and, in a particularly striking detail, the destruction of some aircraft while still in their transport canisters before assembly.
This achievement indicates that Iran has developed targeting intelligence on the logistics chain supporting drone operations, not merely the operational bases themselves. Destroying aircraft before they are assembled and made operational is a force multiplication achievement. It eliminates capability before it can be employed, at a point when the aircraft is most vulnerable and least defended.
The cumulative effect of the MQ-9 campaign was a significant degradation of American persistent ISR coverage over Iran. This directly reduced the effectiveness of the hunt for mobile missile launchers, allowing Iranian TELs greater freedom of movement and survivability.
Suppressing proxy terrorist forces in Iraq
From the first day of the exchange, Iran conducted daily retaliatory strikes against armed terrorist groups in Iraq that had the capability and potential motivation to conduct land attacks against Iranian territory or to serve as a forward platform for American-directed operations.
This campaign was methodical and comprehensive, targeting personnel concentrations, weapons storage facilities, and command infrastructure.
Iran’s western flank, which includes the border with Iraq, represents a potential vulnerability. Armed terrorist groups in Iraq, some with historical ties to American intelligence, could in theory conduct cross-border raids, provide intelligence for American strikes, or serve as a distraction that forced Iran to divert defensive resources.
By striking these groups preemptively and continuously, Iran sought to exhaust their operational capacity before it could be brought to bear.
The daily rhythm of these retaliatory strikes was itself a message. It demonstrated that Iran had persistent targeting intelligence on these groups’ locations, that it was willing to expend munitions on this secondary campaign even while conducting the primary campaign against American forces, and that it intended to maintain pressure regardless of any ceasefire negotiations that might be underway.
The logic of reciprocity
Iran’s retaliatory strikes on electrical and water infrastructure in Kuwait represented a deliberate response that operated on two distinct logics simultaneously.
The first was reciprocity: Iran’s own civilian infrastructure had been targeted, and the strikes on Kuwaiti infrastructure were a direct signal that such targeting would not be absorbed without response to the aggressor and its facilitators.
The second was military utility. American forces in the Persian Gulf region depend on host nations’ electrical grids and water supplies for base operations. Infrastructure that serves both civilian and military purposes is, under the laws of armed conflict, a legitimate military target when the military use is substantial and the strike is proportionate.
The targeting of Kuwait’s infrastructure was also a message to Persian Gulf states more broadly. Kuwait, like Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, hosts American military facilities and had provided varying degrees of support to American operations.
By demonstrating the ability and willingness to strike Kuwaiti infrastructure, Iran was communicating that the costs of hosting American forces were not abstract. They were concrete, immediate, and would be borne by the host nation as well as the American military.
The pillars of operational success
Iran’s two-week retaliatory campaign against American aggression and attempts to force open an illegal southern corridor through the Strait of Hormuz largely succeeded on every dimension that its operational planners had identified.
The exchange demonstrated that Iran had developed, over decades of institutional study and investment, a military capability genuinely capable of contesting American power projection in the Persian Gulf region, even after two high-intensity wars.
It demonstrated something relevant to the strategic environment of the region – that the costs of American military aggression in the Persian Gulf had increased substantially; that the infrastructure of American power projection was more vulnerable than pre-war assessments had suggested; and that Iran possessed both the capability and the operational sophistication to exploit those vulnerabilities in a systematic and disciplined manner.
Weapons supplied to Ukraine from US military stocks have been found in the possession of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a senior Russian diplomat has said, citing markings linking them to deliveries to Kiev.
Yulia Zhdanova, head of Russia’s delegation to the Vienna Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control, made the statement on Wednesday at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Forum for Security Co-operation.
Sudanese troops recovered MK19 automatic grenade launchers, M72 anti-tank weapons, and Swedish-made AT4 launchers during an operation near Bara, she said, according to TASS. “A preliminary examination of the markings revealed that these weapons were donated to the Ukrainian Armed Forces in December 2024 from US military stock,” Zhdanova said.
Sudan’s army and the RSF have been at war since April 2023, forcing millions from their homes and exposing civilians to bombardment, hunger, and widespread abuses. In June last year, Sudanese Foreign Ministry official Muhammad Al-Sirr told RT that Ukraine was supplying drones to the paramilitary forces at very low prices and helping its fighters use the technology to strike Sudanese infrastructure.
Sudan descended into chaos in April 2023 when fighting erupted between the national army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The conflict followed months of tension between their commanders, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, over a planned transition to civilian rule. What began in the capital, Khartoum, as a power struggle has devastated the country, killing tens of thousands, displacing millions, and pushing parts of Sudan into famine.
Regional and international peace efforts, including African Union mediation and Saudi-US talks in Jeddah, have repeatedly stalled. In September 2025, the Quad group – the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates – proposed a three-month humanitarian truce leading to a permanent ceasefire and a civilian-led political transition. Burhan rejected a subsequent US-led proposal that November, arguing it would dismantle state security institutions while leaving the RSF in place. The paramilitaries said they accepted the truce.
The UAE’s involvement has deepened mistrust of mediation. Sudan’s army-backed government severed diplomatic ties with Abu Dhabi in May 2025, accusing it of supporting the RSF. The UAE denies supplying weapons to the paramilitaries. Relations with Washington deteriorated further in September 2026 after the US questioned both factions’ legitimacy. Sudan rejected the remarks and called for peace efforts free from foreign dictates.
Meanwhile, rival administrations have entrenched Sudan’s divisions. Burhan’s government returned to Khartoum in January 2026 after the army recaptured the capital, having operated from Port Sudan during the fighting. In July 2025, the RSF-aligned TASIS coalition announced a rival government based in Nyala, Darfur, with Dagalo heading its governing council. The UN Security Council and African Union rejected the move.
Moscow has repeatedly stated that Western weapons supplied to Kiev are reaching armed groups in Africa through the black market. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova raised the alarm as early as 2022, warning that Stinger missiles, Javelin anti-tank systems, and grenade launchers could enter illicit trading networks worldwide.
In February, Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia addressed the issue at a Security Council meeting, where he also accused Kiev of directly supplying weapons, including drones, and training militants in the Sahel. Zhdanova previously blamed corruption in Ukraine and failures to track Western-supplied military equipment for weapons reaching terrorists and criminal groups in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso jointly appealed to the UN Security Council in August 2024, accusing Ukraine of supporting international terrorism following a deadly ambush on Malian forces near Tinzaouaten. Mali severed diplomatic ties with Kiev after Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andrey Yusov said rebels received information enabling the ambush.
Addressing the UN General Assembly last month, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop renewed the accusations, saying Ukraine was backing armed groups undermining his country’s territorial integrity. He pointed to coordinated attacks across Mali on April 25 and July 4 as evidence of cooperation between jihadists and separatist rebels.
Last week, AFP reported that sources within the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a Tuareg-led separatist rebel coalition fighting Mali’s government, acknowledged receiving Ukrainian training, including instruction in operating drones.
Following the attack on the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the usual suspects emerged from the social media muck to condemn Ansarallah. “These reprehensible attacks demonstrate a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life. They must stop now,” demanded Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
Bibi Netanyahu, “on behalf of the people of Israel,” condemned the attack and declared the Zionist state “looks forward to a strong Middle East—one that stands united against threats, protects its people, and builds a future of security, cooperation, and prosperity for all the peoples of our region,” never mind the 200,000-680,000 people of the region he butchered over the last three years.
Kaja Kallas, the former president of Estonia and current High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, denounced the airport attack. “The Houthi attack on Riyadh’s international airport is an appalling act of terror. There can be no justification for indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure,” she said.
Kallas, like most European leaders, insists Israel has a “right to defend itself” against Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, and yet “self-defense” is not a legitimate response for the people of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, all victims of Israeli and US aggression.
António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, is “deeply shocked” by the Yemeni retaliation, and criticized the attack on the Saudi airport as a violation of international law.
If Guterres is concerned about international law and the bombing of civilian infrastructure, why hasn’t the UN invoked Chapter VII of the UN Charter in regard to Gaza? “The UN’s member states collectively have a bad track record when it comes to preventing genocide,” writes Sean Matthews. “In the case of genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, the UN only declared officially that genocides took place after the fact.”
G7 foreign ministers also weighed in on the attack, declaring the response to Saudi attacks poses an “unacceptable threat to regional stability and security, to global energy security,” as well as to security in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
In June, during a globalist conclave in Évian, the G7 issued a dilatory statement calling for an acceleration of “humanitarian and reconstruction efforts and the swift implementation of relevant political and security measures” in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, while knowing full well Zionist Israel will ignore international law and continue to murder and starve Palestinians while ethnically cleansing the Shi’a in southern Lebanon.
The official censure by the United States, the EU, UN, and G7, as well as the skewed reportage of the corporate media, overlooks the reason why Ansarallah is bombing Saudi airports and oil infrastructure.
Forgotten, or ignored, are the crimes of the Saudi coalition during and after the Yemen War of 2015. The coalition included the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan.
The Sunni coalition attacked after President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi fled house arrest into exile in Saudi Arabia. Hadi, who died earlier this year, stood accused of secretly working with al-Islah, described as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Yemeni branch. The former president was also accused of being a Saudi puppet. Saudi Arabia views Ansarallah—followers of the Shi’a branch of Zaydism—as a threat to its national security.
A detailed United Nations report estimated approximately 377,000 deaths by the end of 2021 from the Saudi-led campaign. This total includes direct losses from combat and indirect deaths linked to malnutrition, disease, and the decline of health care and essential services.
The United States was involved in the Yemen humanitarian crisis. US personnel provided logistical support, information, training, and advisers after the Saudi-led intervention. US tankers refueled coalition aircraft, increasing their range over Yemen. Saudi forces relied heavily on US-supplied aircraft, munitions, spare parts, maintenance, and technical support.
Jeff Bachman, a professor and genocide scholar at the School of Information Services, said during an interview with the American University in Washington that the Saudi-led coalition has been able to engage violence against Yemenis thanks to the complicit material and political support of the United States.
UN Security Council Resolution 2216 established a UN arms embargo. The restrictions implemented delayed or curtailed commercial imports and humanitarian shipments of food, fuel, medicines, and medical supplies. Because Yemen is dependent on imports, disruptions to port and airport operations rapidly worsened hunger, health-system strain, water and sanitation breakdowns, and prices, according to Human Rights Watch.
“The Saudi-led coalition’s military strategy in Yemen has been increasingly built around preventing desperately needed aid and essential goods from reaching civilians, risking millions of lives,” said James Ross, legal and policy director at Human Rights Watch. “The Security Council should urgently sanction Saudi and other coalition leaders responsible for blocking food, fuel, and medicine, causing hunger, sickness, and death.”
During a full closure in November 2017, UN agencies noted that aircraft and ships delivering aid could not secure clearance, while commercial cargo encountered major hurdles. Human Rights Watch stated that the coalition had maintained a naval and air blockade since March 2015, with restrictions producing a disproportionate impact on civilians in direct violation of international law.
Yemen remains one of the world’s most serious humanitarian emergencies. As of 2026, more than 22 million people need assistance or protection and 18.3 million people are acutely food insecure. Malnutrition levels remain critically high, with over 2.2 million children under five acutely malnourished, including 516,157 suffering from malnutrition, according to the United Nations. “Even before the latest escalation, an estimated 12.2 million children in Yemen needed humanitarian assistance,” UNICEF reported in September.
Article 51 of the UN Charter is a determining provision that addresses the right of self-defense for member states. It represents an exception to the general prohibition on the use of force outlined in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which mandates that all member states refrain from using force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, as the Saudis did in 2015 in Yemen.
On October 10, following the Ansarallah attacks, Trump announced the US may rejoin the latest Saudi onslaught on Yemen. “We’re going to look at it,” he told reporters. “We just found out about the recent attack. We will make a decision. We move very quickly.”
Prior to Trump’s announcement, Democrat Ro Khanna, who was detained during a visit to Israel in July, introduced a joint Yemen War Powers Resolution along with Republican Representative Thomas Massie on October 9. The resolution directs “the President pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Houthis in Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.”
Congress is unable to decide whether to rejoin the Saudi effort to destroy Ansarallah and maintain the illegal war on the people of Yemen. In addition to debate on the constitutional legality of the Trump administration’s military assistance to the Saudis without a congressional consultation, members of Congress are concerned about the continued slaughter of civilians and the ongoing humanitarian crisis, considered one of the worst in the world, with around 24 million people, or nearly 80% of the population, needing assistance and protection.
Oct 10 (Reuters) – The United Arab Emirates National Guard said on Saturday it had rescued 22 Asian crew members after a fire broke out aboard an oil tanker in Gulf waters....
A vessel was struck by an unknown projectile 13 nautical miles west of Al Jazeera in the United Arab Emirates on Friday, causing a fire that has since been extinguished, British navy affiliated agency UKMTO said, citing multiple sources.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei says the United States and the Israeli regime have a history of manufacturing false-flag incidents only to clean up their messes around the world.
In a Wednesday post on his X account, the Iranian official said such scenarios would not save them from the quagmire of the aggression against Iran.
Baghaei said telling lies about Iran and accusing it of having a role in security incidents would fail to justify the US-Israeli aggression against the Islamic Republic.
“In a world where the American and international public is weary of an unlawful war of aggression against Iran, and where the aggressors have no honest way to justify a war of choice, even a raft made of lies can look like salvation to those who are drowning,” he said in the post.
The post also included a video elucidating previous US and Israeli false-flag operations, including massive US media campaigns denoting the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which led to the invasion of the country in 2003, and Israel’s involvement in a case in Egypt in 1954, known as the Lavon Affair.
“False flags are an old craft: manufacture the incident, assign the blame, and harvest the consequences,” said Baghaei.
The post came after officials in the US and allied countries suggested that Iran may have had a role in recent security incidents, including on a Flydubai flight from the United Arab Emirates to the Israeli-occupied territories and in a suspected plot against an American base in Britain.
Iran has roundly rejected the accusations, calling them a pretext for launching renewed aggression against the country, months after the US and the Israeli regime were forced to end a previous offensive under a ceasefire reached in mid-April.
Gulf oil exporters topped pre-war levels for about half of September, shipping data showed on Monday, though attacks on tankers and logistical constraints cloud the outlook for sustained higher flows.
The Flydubai plane incident appears to have been part of a scenario concocted by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Its aim, observer say, is to divert attention from the growing scandal over Netanyahu’s handling of the October 7 Hamas operation, shore up his position ahead of Israel’s October 27 election and create a pretext for a new confrontation with Iran.
The scenario unfolded days after Netanyahu’s reported secret visit to Abu Dhabi, where he met bin Zayed amid mounting political pressure over allegations that the UAE leader had warned him in advance of an impending Hamas operation.
According to the account, the purpose of the arrangement was to manufacture a dramatic security incident involving an Israeli-heavy Flydubai flight, portray it as a terrorist attack, introduce an Iranian connection into the narrative and use the resulting alarm to reinforce Netanyahu’s security credentials and build support for renewed military action against Tehran.
The Flydubai Boeing 737, carrying 174 passengers, most of them Israeli settlers, made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday following what was described as a violent confrontation between the pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit.
Netanyahu and his war minister, Israel Katz, immediately characterized the incident as a “terrorist” attack. Netanyahu subsequently compared it to the September 11 attacks, claimed the Omani co-pilot had undergone “radical indoctrination” and suggested that Iran could have been involved.
Yet no public evidence has established an ideologically-motivated attack or an Iranian connection.
Indeed, early Israeli media reports offered entirely different explanations, including a personal dispute or an attempted suicide by the co-pilot. Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Thursday that the Saudi investigation had found no indication of terrorism at that stage.
The timing, however, gave the episode a clear political value for Netanyahu.
Israeli media have reported that Netanyahu is under pressure ahead of the October 27 election, while the controversy surrounding the October 7 Hamas operation continues to raise questions about his regime’s warnings and preparedness.
Haaretz reported on September 9 that bin Zayed had spoken to Netanyahu roughly 10 days before the October 7 operation and warned him of a threat from then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was reportedly preparing a “huge surprise.”
Bin Zayed had also previously alerted Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency, according to the report.
Netanyahu’s reported secret visit to Abu Dhabi therefore assumed particular significance. Israeli media reports said the purpose of the visit was to ask bin Zayed to deny reports that he had warned Netanyahu about the looming Hamas threat.
Against this backdrop, the alleged Flydubai scenario provided Netanyahu with an opportunity to shift the political narrative from questions over the October 7 failures to a new story about “terrorism”, Iranian threats and the need for renewed confrontation.
Netanyahu repeatedly raised the possibility of an Iranian connection despite acknowledging that Israel had received no specific intelligence warning about the flight and that investigators had found no evidence linking Tehran to the incident.
He told CNN that he had spoken with US President Donald Trump about the incident and its wider implications for global aviation. Trump separately confirmed that the two had discussed the matter at length.
The objective, according to the account, was not simply to generate domestic political headlines. By bringing Iran into the story, Netanyahu could potentially create a new security crisis capable of drawing Washington into another confrontation with Tehran.
Analysts have nevertheless warned against making such a connection.
Dani Citrinowicz, an Iran affairs researcher at Israel’s so-called Institute for Security Studies, warned against linking the incident to Iran.
According to Maariv, he said there was a difference between preparing for possible scenarios and creating the impression that another war was imminent.
He warned that if Tehran concluded Israel was preparing an attack, it could take pre-emptive action, which Israel might then interpret as confirmation of its original assessment, producing a cycle of escalation.
Citrinowicz described the situation as “playing with fire” and warned that statements by Israeli officials could become a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Other analysts have reportedly described the attempt to connect the incident to Iran as sounding like “a Hollywood screenplay.”
Flydubai itself has urged against premature speculation until the investigation is completed and suspended flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv while the investigation continued.
The Netanyahu-bin Zayed arrangement therefore presents the incident not as an isolated aviation crisis, but as a politically constructed scenario with three interconnected objectives: diverting attention from the October 7 scandal, strengthening Netanyahu’s position ahead of the election and creating a new pretext for confrontation with Iran.
Netanyahu has said Israel will determine within days whether the co-pilot had links to Iran, adding, “We will get to the bottom of it.”
The central question surrounding the episode, therefore, is not what happened inside the cockpit, but the deliberate construction of a security narrative around the flight designed in advance to transform an unexplained aviation incident into a potential pretext for a new war with Iran.
Persian Gulf oil producers are shifting critical cargo transfer operations even farther out of the war-hit region as waters just outside the Strait of Hormuz become congested with tankers.
Crude oil flows from the Middle East are returning toward pre-war levels despite continued risks to shipping, according to separate estimates from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
The persistence of current geopolitical alignments, the attention of Eastern actors to the region, the strengthening of Sanaa’s position in the Red Sea, and the expansion of regional opposition to the UAE’s role will diminish Abu Dhabi’s role in the region.
For the past ten years, the Southern Red Sea has been a pivotal factor in the UAE’s foreign policy. Over the past decade, the UAE has built a layered maritime, air, and commercial infrastructure network, including military bases, in the Red Sea or near Yemen, Somaliland, Somalia and Sudan, starting from 2015.
According to some estimates, the value of UAE investments along Africa’s coastal regions and the Arabian Peninsula amounts to $60 billion.
In September 2015, the UAE established its first military base in Africa, in Eritrea. These bases possessed strategic advantages: the ‘protection of interests’ and control over the security and economic architecture of international maritime routes.
With the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, cooperation between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi in the Red Sea intensified.
The UAE’s approach—channeled through companies such as DP World and Abu Dhabi Ports—is centered on controlling ports, strategic waterways, military bases, and key trade and energy routes in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, in coordination with the United States and its allies. Abu Dhabi’s approach also included engagement with non-state armed actors and separatist movements in Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia.
Factors Behind the UAE’s Diminishing Role
Over the past decade, the UAE emerged as a party to the conflicts in the southern Red Sea. However, geopolitical developments over the past year signal a gradual decline in the UAE’s role in the southern Red Sea.
Several factors are also significant, stemming from US and Israeli military strikes against Iran, the war between Sanaa and Saudi Arabia, Saudi-Emirati rivalry in the region, and disputes among African states.
Sudan’s value lies in its geopolitics. With 853 kilometres of coastline and several key ports, Sudan constitutes a vital link in the Red Sea.
The Sudan war since April 2023 has created conditions for the expansion of the UAE’s role. The UAE faces accusations of providing training and logistical support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Human rights and political demands against the UAE has increased.
The UAE also maintains bases inside Sudanese territory. However, the ongoing war in Sudan and the support of allies for the Sudanese government have led to increased pressure on the UAE.
Riyadh regards the Red Sea as part of its strategic interests and its exclusive backyard. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh each view the other as a direct threat to their position and interests in parts of the southern Red Sea. Thus, the reduction of the UAE’s footprint in the southern Red Sea constitutes a strategic gain for Riyadh. Riyadh has effectively sought to weaken Abu Dhabi’s role.
In late 2025, Saudi Arabia’s support for Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) resulted in pressure being brought to bear on UAE-backed forces.
In July 2026, Saudi Arabia hosted talks among 14 countries—including Egypt, Djibouti, Sudan, and Somalia—which established a multinational maritime defence alliance. The UAE and Ethiopia were excluded from the list.
The formation of a Riyadh-led Red Sea maritime task force—with the participation of Turkey, Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, and Eritrea—without coordination with the UAE amounts to a further constriction of the UAE’s role in the region.
Despite ongoing Egyptian–Emirati consultations on guaranteeing maritime navigation security in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab, Egypt’s foreign policy is not aligned with the UAE’s interests in Sudan and the Red Sea. Additionally, the alignment and coordination among Israel, India, the UAE, and Ethiopia are not particularly consonant with Egypt’s interests in Ethiopia and the Red Sea.
Until last September, the UAE played a significant role in the southern Yemeni islands of the Red Sea and in southwestern Yemen. However, Sanaa’s advance in the eastern Red Sea—the port of Mokha, Mayun Island, and other archipelagos north of the Bab al-Mandab Strait—in September 2026 inflicted negative and fundamental consequences on the UAE’s regional role.
Sanaa’s advance amounts to the nullification of the presence of Emirati actors in Yemen’s future political sphere. Sanaa is seeking to consolidate itself as a strategic “node” within the Iran-led Axis of Resistance.
Despite Cairo’s opposition to Sanaa’s proposal for maritime navigation coordination in the Red Sea, Sanaa—having secured control over the most important islands and cities overlooking the Bab al-Mandab Strait on the Yemeni side—is calling for the formulation of new rules to ensure security and navigation in the region. Ansar Allah’s control over Bab al-Mandab could put the UAE under pressure. Any expansion of Sanaa’s role in Sudan could likewise prove detrimental to the UAE.
Amid tensions between the United States and Iran, Abu Dhabi finds itself facing a more constrained strategic space.
The UAE’s alignment with the United States is, in a sense, also an intensification of Abu Dhabi’s tensions with Iran in areas such as the Red Sea. Unlike the UAE, Iran is seeking better relations with the Sudanese government. Many in Iran believe that Israel and the UAE are devising an economic and geopolitical plan to control the vital routes of the Red Sea and Yemen’s ports.
With Israel’s formal recognition of Somaliland in December 2025, many in the countries of the southern Red Sea have linked it to the UAE.
After years, Eritrea revoked the UAE’s access to its military infrastructure. Eritrean officials have recently made sharp statements about the UAE and Israel—particularly regarding Tel Aviv’s recognition of Somaliland.
Eritrea is providing frontline support to the Sudanese Armed Forces. Any deeper alliance between Eritrea and Sudan, Iran, Russia, China, and Sanaa could diminish the UAE’s regional role in the Red Sea. Additionally, some countries and actors near the Red Sea also hold a negative view of the UAE’s regional role.
The Somali government’s decision in January 2026 to sever relations with the UAE is, in a sense, a counter to the UAE’s role in the Somaliland and Puntland regions. Somalia has revoked all agreements with the UAE, including cooperation as well as security and defence arrangements. This move has negative implications for the UAE’s role in the southern Red Sea.
Moreover, the southern Red Sea plays a pivotal role in the regional strategy of Russia and Beijing. For example, apart from China’s role in Djibouti, Beijing is Eritrea’s principal creditor and has expanded its influence in Sudan.
The developments of the past year have also contributed to a decline in the standing of the UAE’s allies in the region.
Outlook
The US presence in the Red Sea’s African states is rooted in counter-terrorism and anti-piracy operations.
The European Union’s presence in the region, via Operation ASPIDES, is limited to commercial shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Despite the UAE’s formal withdrawal from some bases, its economic and security influence, as well as its soft-power instruments, remain strong.
A decrease in UAE military deployments in the region could negatively impact its support for allies in Yemen, Libya, and Sudan.
The UAE continues to have significant economic potential, secure partnerships, and influence in the southern Red Sea. In a way, this is considered a threat and a risk to certain African nations in the Red Sea region.
Certainly, a more extensive Sanaa presence over Bab al-Mandab, strategic coasts, and islands could confront Abu Dhabi’s maneuver and role in the southern Red Sea with a structural challenge.
The UAE’s approach in ports, logistics, energy, and other strategic infrastructure—along with deeper defense and security coordination with the West in the southern Red Sea—is likely to continue. However, the expansion of the UAE’s role also requires an extensive US presence in the Red Sea.
Moreover, the persistence of current geopolitical alignments, the attention of Eastern actors to the region, the strengthening of Sanaa’s position in the Red Sea, and the expansion of regional opposition to the UAE’s role will diminish Abu Dhabi’s role in the region.
Samyar Rostami is а political observer and senior researcher in international relations.
The persistence of current geopolitical alignments, the attention of Eastern actors to the region, the strengthening of Sanaa’s position in the Red Sea, and the expansion of regional opposition to the UAE’s role will diminish Abu Dhabi’s role in the region. UAE approach For the past ten years, the Southern Red Sea has been a […]
For Iran, BRICS has become a platform for geopolitical dialogue and de-escalation, for broadening scientific and cultural ties, and for economic diplomacy. Tehran is pushing for de-dollarization, the New Development Bank, and reform of international institutions, aiming to carve out a greater geoeconomic role for itself. On September 12–13, the XVIII BRICS Summit was held […]
On September 10, 2026, Algeria announced the severance of diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates. The Rupture That Was 50 Years in the Making The UAE ambassador was given 48 hours to leave the country, and as of September 11, Algerian airspace was closed to all Emirati aircraft. The official reason was “provocative and […]
Announcing the severing of diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Thursday, September 10, Algeria summoned the Emirati envoy and gave him 48 hours to leave the country.
“Algeria has exercised a great deal of restraint and a high sense of responsibility,” despite the increasingly “provocative or hostile actions emanating from” the Gulf power, the North African country’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“Despite these numerous warnings, the United Arab Emirates continued to persist in these actions, which have reached limits where they can no longer be considered acceptable or tolerable within the framework of relations between two sovereign states, nor remain without a response.”
Later that day, its defense ministry announced that the UAE’s military and civilian aircraft are banned from using Algerian airspace from Friday. The only exemption is for commercial civilian planes, which can continue to fly over Algeria until the existing contract expires at the end of the year.
Algeria had already initiated the termination of the air services agreement with the UAE in February, when President Abdelmadjid Tebboune alleged attempted Emirati interference in its elections.
Multiple Algerian media outlets aligned with the state have reported that the UAE has been supporting the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK), a separatist group Algeria designated as a terrorist organization in 2021.
Algeria and the UAE also find themselves on opposing sides on several fronts of international relations.
Algeria aids Western Sahara’s liberation struggle; UAE backs Moroccan occupation
The support for the national liberation struggle of Western Sahara, occupied by Morocco immediately after it won independence from Spanish colonialism, has been a central plank of Algeria’s foreign policy.
In 2021, Algeria severed diplomatic relations with Morocco, accusing it of supporting the MAK in retaliation for Algerian support to the Polisario Front (PF), which is fighting for Western Sahara’s national liberation. But there is no equivalence between the PF and the MAK.
The MAK, which has long had close links to Israel, largely operates from Europe and is based in France, Algeria’s former colonizer. The PF, on the other hand, is fighting for Western Sahara’s liberation, with its military operating in its liberated territory adjoining Algeria. The UN recognizes the PF as the sole representative of the people of Western Sahara, a country it lists among the last few pending decolonization.
Despite funding and arming the Moroccan occupation, the US had not officially recognized Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara until December 2020, when Morocco signed the Abraham Accords to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel.
The first Trump administration, in turn, proclaimed that the US “recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the entire Western Sahara territory” and went on to open a consulate in Dakhla, a major city in the occupied region.
The UAE was a step ahead, setting a precedent before the American move by opening its consulate on the occupied land in November 2020, a month before Morocco normalized relations with Israel. The UAE had already normalized relations with Israel that September.
In contrast, Algeria refuses to normalize relations with Israel until the Palestinians have secured their statehood. Algerian media often refers to the UAE as an “Israeli vassal”.
“Wherever they set foot, blood flows”
Algeria’s diplomatic break was foreseeable since at least July, when President Tebboune said in a thinly veiled reference to the UAE in a televised interview, “Wherever they set foot, blood flows… We want them to stay away, so that blood does not flow in our country.” He gave the example of Mali, Libya and Sudan.
A month later, in August, the UN confirmed that the USD 50 million transferred to the Al Qaeda-affiliated JNIM in the form of ransom helped fuel its attack across Mali. A Reuters investigation identified the UAE as the source of this payment to JNIM. The group has also attacked its neighbors, Burkina Faso and Niger, both of which have followed in Mali’s footsteps by expelling French troops.
The UAE’s supply of arms and mercenaries to the Libyan warlord General Khalifa Haftar, who has been fighting Libya’s UN-recognized government, is also well-documented in multiple UN reports since 2017.
Tebboune’s reference to “blood” flowing from Emirati interference is best demonstrated in war-torn Sudan, where the UAE is funding and arming the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whose depopulation campaign in El Fasher had all the “hallmarks of genocide”, according to the UN.
He added in the July interview that a “diplomatic break” with the UAE “would have happened long ago.” Algeria, he explained, had refrained only to avoid adding to the already existing divisions in the Arabic-speaking world.
When the break finally came on Thursday, the UAE’s foreign ministry said it hoped that it “will be temporary, in a manner that preserves the fraternal ties between the two brotherly peoples.”
In an apparent reference to the absence of explicitly stated reasons in Algeria’s statement, Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic advisor to the UAE’s president, Mohamed bin Zayed, said, “Diplomatic relations are managed through reason, communication, and clarity of interests, not through puzzles and signals that require decoding.”
He went on to preach that “successful diplomacy is built on clarity of positions, sound management of interests and differences.”
Gargash’s statement “is revealing above all for what it carefully conceals. Not a word about the actions of this arsonist, predatory state, which thrives on chaos wherever it sticks its nose in Yemen, Sudan, the DRC, Somaliland, and elsewhere,” retorted former Algerian diplomat, Amar Belani.
Describing the UAE as a “state that has made other nations’ instability its economic model,” Belani concluded his response, saying: “As for the lesson on ‘reason and clarity of interests’, Abu Dhabi would do better to reserve it for its partners in the Abraham Accords, with whom it shares complicity in the face of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide committed against the Palestinian people.”
This sentiment against the UAE is not limited to the government or the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN), which led Algeria’s liberation struggle against French colonialism and has ruled since, except for a few years in the 1990s.
Mass protests erupted in 2019 against corruption and increasing economic capture by the military elite, strangling an economy already suffering under neoliberal austerity. This movement, known as the Hirak, forced the then president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, a veteran of the FLN, to resign.
But even in these protests against the government and the ruling FLN, “Down with the UAE” and “No to the UAE in the country of martyrs”, were among the popular placards and slogans.
A major new investment commitment announced during President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s (pictured) state visit to Berlin signals a deeper economic relationship between two countries looking for reliable partners in an increasingly uncertain world.
The United Arab Emirates has announcedplans to invest an additional €40 billion in Germany, one of the most substantial signals yet that the economic relationship between Europe’s largest industrial economy and the Gulf state is entering a new phase.
The commitment, announced during President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s state visit to Germany, will target sectors including industry, advanced technology, artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure and energy. Of the total, €10 billion is set to be invested in the German state of Bavaria.
The headline figure is striking. But its significance goes well beyond the amount involved.
The UAE has already invested around €34 billion in Germany. The new commitment therefore represents not simply another large capital allocation, but an attempt to deepen a relationship increasingly built around the industries and technologies that both countries see as central to their future competitiveness.
As Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and Envoy of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to Germany,put it:“The UAE invests for the long term and builds partnerships that endure.”
For Germany, the fresh injection of long-term capital arrives at an important moment.
The country has formidable strengths in engineering, manufacturing, chemicals, industrial technology and applied research. Yet maintaining that industrial position is becoming ever-more expensive. Artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, energy systems and industrial decarbonisation all require substantial investment at a time when German companies are also confronting higher costs, geopolitical uncertainty and growing international competition.
The UAE brings a different set of strengths: investment capacity, energy expertise, digital infrastructure and commercial connections across the Gulf, Asia and Africa. The logic of the partnership is therefore not simply that one country has money while the other needs investment. It is that their economic capabilities are increasingly complementary.
This synergy is reflected in the sectors identified for the new commitment. Rather than focusing narrowly on established assets, the investment is intended to support areas expected to shape industrial competitiveness over the coming decades.
Al Jaber said the intention was to support “the industries, technologies and skilled jobs that will drive future growth and competitiveness”, while strengthening energy security and supply chains and helping German companies continue to grow internationally.
That last point matters because the relationship works in both directions.
Germany gives Emirati investors access to one of the world’s deepest industrial and technological ecosystems. German companies, meanwhile, increasingly see the UAE not simply as a domestic market but as a platform from which to reach faster-growing economies across the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The two countries’ economic relationship has already strengthened significantly in recent years, with a number of notable examples of cooperation. Emirati investment has reached sectors including chemicals and offshore wind, while leading German companies have become increasingly embedded in the UAE economy, with bilateral trade worth more than €13 billion last year, an increase of 15% compared to the previous year.
The new €40 billion investment marks a significant new phase of this deepening relationship, and the timing of the announcement also gives it a wider geopolitical significance.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeiercapturedthe mood during the state visit when he observed that “the world has become a more turbulent place; old certainties are crumbling.” Against that backdrop, he argued that reliable and rational partners mattered more than ever, telling Sheikh Mohamed: “Germany is that kind of partner for you; you are that kind of partner for us.”
Those comments go to the heart of why Germany and the UAE’s economic relationship now matters far beyond the balance sheet.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the risks created by concentrated energy dependencies for Germany and countless other countries in Europe and around the world. Conflict in the Middle East has again demonstrated the vulnerability of trade routes, energy markets and supply chains. Global competition over AI and other critical technologies has made industrial capacity a highly strategic question as well as an economic one.
Both Germany and the UAE have reasons to diversify their partnerships in response.
Germany needs capital, energy relationships, technology partnerships and access to growing markets. The UAE is seeking to diversify an economy historically built around hydrocarbons while deepening its position in advanced technology, industry and global investment.
The €40 billion investment is a powerful statement of intent and a reaffirmation of a long-standing partnership between the two countries that could transform their industrial and technological strategies for years to come.
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