The US-Israel war on Iran has entered a critical phase whereby securing a ceasefire by the countries concerned seems to have failed, while the brunt of Iranian direct attacks in the war is borne by the UAE because, as per the Iranian authorities, it harbours major US bases in the region, in addition to maintaining deep military, political, and intelligence ties with the US and Israel, alliances which Iran describes as a betrayal of the “world of Islam and Muslims.”
The sharpening hostility between Iran and the UAE has assumed an unprecedentedly belligerent tenor after senior Iranian military commanders and parliamentarians openly designated the Gulf nation as a “hostile base”, while warning that any renewed American or Israeli offensive launched from Emirati soil would invite devastating reprisals against the country’s ports, military infrastructure and strategic installations along the Strait of Hormuz.
The statement came amid mounting accusations from the IRGC that Abu Dhabi’s expanding defence cooperation with Israel and the US had transformed the Emirates into a principal node in the anti-Iran military architecture emerging across West Asia.
This rhetorical shift coincided with a series of devastating exchanges, where the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) explicitly warned Emirati leadership against transforming their sovereign territory into a “den of Zionists,” asserting that the UAE’s burgeoning defence apparatus, constitutes a direct threat to Iranian national security.
The geopolitical schism was exacerbated by the 2020 Abraham Accords, which initiated a seismic realignment in the Middle East, yet it is the current escalations that have transmuted political friction into a scorched-earth confrontation.
While the UAE maintains that its strategic partnerships remain a purely sovereign prerogative, Iranian state media has disseminated provocative evidence, including grainy footage of downed drones and unmarked Mirage fighter jets, to implicate Emirati forces in clandestine sorties against Iranian desalination plants and oil refineries.
In a calculated move to strangle the UAE’s economic juggernaut, the IRGC has declared maritime jurisdiction over the critical port of Fujairah, thereby asserting that any vessel traversing the Strait of Hormuz falls under Tehran’s iron-fisted scrutiny.
This naval brinkmanship is mirrored by the UAE’s domestic crackdown, which saw the summary termination of Iranian visas and the dismantling of long-standing trade networks—a severance that has sent food inflation in Iran skyrocketing as the US naval blockade forces Iran to seek arduous, overland supply routes through Iraq and Turkey.
Despite the shadow of a faltering ceasefire, the persistent thunder of missile fire across the Persian Gulf suggests that the transformation of the UAE from a commercial hub into a frontline combatant is now an irreversible and bloody reality.