Netanyahu claims secret UAE trip amid Iran’s ‘betrayal of Islam’ charge against Emirates
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Amid Tehran’s allegations regarding the burgeoning ties between the UAE and Israel, which it portrays as a den of Zionists, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed he undertook a surreptitious visit to the Emirates aboard an Emirati flight at the height of the Iran war to hold talks with President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, despite the UAE’s strenuous denials of any such encounter.
The labyrinthine nature of this alliance is further illuminated by reports that David Barnea, the Mossad director, executed multiple furtive incursions into the UAE to synchronise military stratagems against Iran, while the veil of tactical ambiguity was further torn asunder by US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who revealed that Israeli Iron Dome batteries had been deployed to shield Emirati territory.
In a statement issued on Wednesday night, Netanyahu’s office asserted that the Israeli premier had travelled secretly to the Emirati oasis city of Al Ain on March 26, where he held hours-long discussions with the UAE president, a disclosure that Reuters said marked what Israel described as a “historic breakthrough”.
The purported visit, however, was repudiated by the UAE foreign ministry, which dismissed the reports as “baseless.
The Wall Street Journal additionally reported that the UAE itself had allegedly launched covert strikes on Iranian targets, including an attack on a refinery on Lavan Island in early April, purportedly in retaliation for Iranian strikes on Emirati oil infrastructure. Abu Dhabi has not publicly acknowledged any such operation.
This burgeoning axis, bolstered by the strategic patronage of the Trump administration, appears to represent a seismic departure from regional orthodoxy, yet both nations now find themselves ensnared in the tightening net of international jurisprudence.
As the International Criminal Court pursues arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant regarding the devastation in Gaza, the UAE simultaneously faces harrowing accusations of fuelling atrocities in Sudan via the Rapid Support Forces.
The disclosures underscore the consolidation of ties inaugurated under the 2020 Abraham Accords, through which the UAE became the first Arab Gulf state to normalise relations with Israel, although the burgeoning partnership continues to attract severe scrutiny amid accusations of war crimes levelled against both governments over Gaza and Sudan.