The rift between the royal houses of Saudi and Al Nahyan

IT has become apparent, at least gleaned from a sequence of events, that the Royal Houses of Saud of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, on the one hand and Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on the other, have radically shifted apart. At first gradually, and then suddenly!

As it can be said that by and large, Mohammed bin Sanlam, popularly referred to as MBS, was mentored by Mohammed bin Zayed, these two Sunni powerhouses aligned themselves along their enmity against Iran, coordinated their joint attack on the Al Ansar Houthis in Yemen in 2015, and forged a strong alliance on various political and other strategic initiatives, including OPEC decisions.

In 2017, these inseparable political and religious twins jointly blockaded Qatar for what they vaunted as its cosying up to Iran as well as sponsoring terrorism in the region.

While the attending events tend to speak for themselves without controversy, nor for that matter, impugned by the disputation of interpretation, the reasons that motivated them remain in the realm of academic conjecture. Through the prism of chronology, however, a different picture slowly emerges.

Out of its slow-moving reels, the silhouette of the UAE enters the geopolitical picture frame with a calculated gambit, leveraging the first-mover advantage. And this was the signing of the Abraham Accords with Israel.

About those Donald J Trump and Netanyahu-inspired Abraham Accords, they ruptured a long-standing aphorism among the Arab League brethren that they would only be acceptable if they were a tantalising quid, whose pro quo is the creation of an independent and viable Palestinian state.

Appending on the Accords by the Emiratis notwithstanding, signalled a double-barrelled perfidy. First, it meant a wholesome betrayal of the altruistic Arab ambition to justly and finally resolve their relationship with Israel. Second, it represented a total and shocking betrayal of a decades-long Palestinian cause against Israel’s apartheid colonisation of the land of Palestine.

By 2020, somehow, the attitudes of the rulers in the Abu Dhabi corridors of power must have atrophied into a resolve to create a special relationship with the Israelis through the Abraham Accords. Or better still, the secret bonds of camaraderie which were nurturing clandestinely over the years, found perfect justification in the signing of the Accords, or in Donald Trump’s proselytising, as the case may be.

Whichever was the case, brother turned into an implacable foe and, somewhat uncharacteristically, every political manoeuvre of the UAE had a rhythm of synchronicity with the violent wiles of Zionism, to the chagrin of Riyadh.

Too late. The UAE was nimble on its Israeli feet. All its moves were strategically contrived to temper the influential reach of the Saudis in West Asia, and where possible, surround them along their borders. They would callously project their newly acquired Tel Aviv capabilities into Riyadh’s strategic discretion.

To the UAE’s gradual decoupling, especially by surreptitious stealth, they acquired the Berbera airfield in Somaliland through an agreement signed in 2017. Small wonder then that when Israel recognised Somaliland as an independent sovereign country on December 26, 2025, a great preponderance of Arab countries condemned Tel Aviv, except the UAE.

In fact, Israel reiterated its intention to leverage its critical relationship with the UAE for the purposes of establishing its military presence in the strategic Berbera airbase directly overlooking Northern Yemen. Riyadh was not amused.

It could just as well be on account of the political size of the UAE, or whatever other idiosyncratic consideration best known to Abu Dhabi, that the UAE resolved and accordingly, has turned out to be the major sponsor of violent rebel, non-state actors in the Horn, in Yemen and in Libya.

In the case of the latter, even in the internecine violence that has plagued it interminably, the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are on opposite sides of its political divide.

In the Sudan, Abu Dhabi is funding the Rapid Security Forces or RSF, a rebel group that now stands accused of genocide in that unending, senseless war. This brutal rebel group is fairly practised. They are formerly known as the Janjaweed, a brutal state-sponsored terrorist group that committed genocide in Darfur in Sudan.

Controlling this group, the UAE benefits from all the gold in that enclave, gets parcelled choice agricultural land and is given unhindered access to the Indian seaboard. So incensed are the Saudis that they had to register their disavowal with Donald Trump, asking him to dissuade the Emiratis from this genocide.

In a bid to secure a relevant vantage in a security cluster with like-minded interlocutors, much like that of the US, Japan, India and Australia, innocuously referred to as the Quad, the UAE/Israeli consortium has led to the formation of another contraption called the I2U2. This is Israel, India, the US and the UAE.

The talking heads in Riyadh had perceived these moves with trepidation and sought to counter them with decisiveness. First, they politely declined to be part of the Abraham Accords. Second, at the diplomatic behest of Beijing, Riyadh promoted a rapprochement with Iran, its long-time foe.

As part of their greater strategic countermeasures, the Saudis formed a Muslim Pact and therefore entered into a Mutual Defence Agreement with nuclear-armed Pakistan. Talks with Turkiye have been going on for some time, arguably to convince them to join the Muslim Pact.

When the BRICS Summit rolled around in Johannesburg in August of 2023, the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, among others, were formally invited into the BRICS fraternity. With the UAE included among the invitees, the Saudis demurred at the Israeli Trojan horse, and to date, have never accepted the invitation.

By the time the 30th of December 2025 was announced with its shocking events, it could not be said that the strategic decoupling was gradual, nor the events of that day, sudden. To be sure, the events of that day were gradual, and the consequences, sudden, and in between, the buildup to that moment was a complex chain of disconnected events held precariously by a troubled perception of a Kingdom that was fed up with the geo-strategic games of its estranged Sunni brother.

They had watched with consternation as the UAE funded and armed the STC faction in Southern Yemen, a group which sought to secede from greater Yemen and form an independent state. The STC was ruthlessly fighting against the internationally recognised government of Yemen that Riyadh supports.

In December 2025, the STC launched a massive military offensive across Southern Yemen. They seized control of the oil-rich Hadramat province, which abuts the Saudi border. They also took control of Almara province, which equally borders Saudi Arabia. Overall, the blitz gained them over eight governorates in total.

Riyadh saw red! To them, an Israeli-aligned organisation was encircling them along their northwestern border. By extension, that would also give UAE dominance over southern Yemen’s ports, oil resources and critical maritime routes, including the Bab al Mandeb strait.

On that fateful day of the 30th of December, the Saudi air strikes on the port of Mukala were targeted on Emirati military personnel, munitions caches and other logistics trucks they were delivering for their minions. In quick order, the Saudis issued an order expelling the UAE military forces and forced an immediate cessation of material and financial support for the STC. Humiliated and embarrassed, the UAE obliged and immediately withdrew.

The Israelis did not disobey the Saudis nor put up military defences against the eviction of their partners on behalf of the UAE. By all accounts, the Israelis’ non-reaction was less of a defeat than it was a deliberate act of strategic calculation.

Therefore, if Israel is the elephant in the room, it is only fair to observe that the figment of a “Middle East”, connotes a big room with many elephants, big and small. And while in the imagination of others there are two “middle east”s’ or Middle Eastern blocs, which are distinctive spheres of influence with Iran on one end and the Saudi-led Sunni club on the other, the UAE /Israel consortium inhabits the third “Middle East”.

If it can be said that in West Asia, the US has many elephants in many rooms, the question is:Which room is the UAE in?

* Amb. Bheki Gila esq. is a Barrister-at-Law.

** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.

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