The breakthrough between Israel and the United Arab Emirates reflects a shift in the modern Middle East’s foundational fault-line, as a Persian Gulf power for the first time agrees to make peace with the Jewish state. But it also shows how it’s been replaced with another, perhaps more dangerous rift over Iran.
Sitting just across the narrow Strait of Hormuz from the Islamic Republic, the UAE has been careful not to let tensions boil over into open conflict while President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy, which it backed, isolated and sanctioned Tehran, and then led to the killing of its most influential general.
But by cementing years of discreet relations with Iran’s biggest foe in a diplomatic breakthrough — a model other Persian Gulf states including heavyweight Saudi Arabia might follow — the sheikhdom is cautiously nailing its colors to the containment mast.
Officials in the U.S. and Israel lost no time in interpreting Thursday’s announcement as one that should make Iranian leaders nervous. Outgoing American envoy for Iran Brian Hook called it a “nightmare” for the country. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the UAE saw “the strength that we demonstrate here in the region, the fact that I don’t hesitate to confront Iran.”
Both statements need substantial caveats, regional analysts cautioned. And in his only public statement so far, UAE Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed emphasized Netanyahu’s pledge to suspend potentially explosive plans to annex West Bank land wanted by the Palestinians for a future state — rather than the anti-Iran element of the move.
City hall in Tel Aviv is lit up in the colours of the United Arab Emirates national flag on Aug. 13.
Photographer: Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
“I think the Emiratis were concerned about the tensions escalating and knew that they would play out in the region broadly especially in the Persian Gulf,” said Ariane Tabatabai, Middle East Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. “They saw Trump as unreliable and so the best way to handle stuff was to take it into their own hands.”
Dina Esfandiary, a fellow at The Century Foundation, said the perception that the U.S. is “leaving the region” was a driving factor. She didn’t see it substantially deepening the current level of isolation facing Iran.
The outline of the agreement enables the UAE to develop diplomatic, commercial and even defense ties with Israel while negating criticism by pointing to the concession over West Bank land. An embattled Netanyahu can claim a major success and put his unilateral annexation plan — which posed security and diplomatic risks for Israel — to one side for now. Meanwhile Trump can savor a foreign-policy success as he trails in the polls ahead of November’s election.
‘Wretched Agreement’
“Iran is a big part of this story but it’s not the only part,” said Sanam Vakil, deputy head and senior research fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House. Taking the lead on normalizing ties with Israel is also about “the UAE in general seeking to take a larger role as a regional actor in the Middle East,” Vakil said.
In Tehran, the reaction was predictably hostile. One government minister called the pact a “wretched agreement” for its betrayal of the Palestinians and its bolstering of an anti-Iran axis that Trump has cajoled. The UAE and its allies will be responsible for “any Israeli intervention in the Persian Gulf region,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on its official Telegram channel on Friday. Iran and its allies, including the Lebanese Hezbollah group, will be further empowered by the move, it added.
Source: Bloomberg
