by KL News Desk
Saudi Arabia and the UAE are locked in a cold war driven by competing leadership ambitions, diverging regional strategies, proxy conflicts, and rivalry over security, influence, and economic primacy.
For much of the past decade, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were widely seen as the twin pillars of a new Gulf order, assertive, interventionist, and closely aligned under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) and UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ). Today, that perception is rapidly eroding. A growing body of evidence suggests that the relationship between the Gulf’s two most powerful states has entered a prolonged phase of strategic rivalry, a cold war marked by competition rather than confrontation, and recalibration rather than rupture.
Analysts say the tensions did not emerge overnight. According to The New Arab, Saudi Arabia has historically viewed itself as the natural leader of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a position rooted in its size, population, religious authority, and geopolitical weight. Smaller but immensely wealthy Gulf monarchies, however, have periodically resisted what they perceive as Saudi hegemony, insisting on greater strategic autonomy.
Saudi analyst Ali Shihabi has argued that this structural imbalance has shaped intra-GCC relations since at least the 1960s, when Kuwait’s oil wealth enabled it to pursue an independent foreign policy. Qatar followed a similar trajectory in the late 1990s and 2000s, culminating in the GCC crises of 2014 and the 2017–21 blockade. In Shihabi’s view, the UAE is now exhibiting comparable behaviour, leveraging extraordinary wealth to project influence well beyond its demographic and geographic weight.
From Partnership to Rivalry
The Saudi-Emirati rivalry remained largely discreet until 2019, when cracks began to appear in their joint intervention in Yemen. While both countries initially aligned against the Iran-backed Houthis, Abu Dhabi gradually shifted its focus toward southern Yemen, backing the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC). Riyadh, by contrast, remained committed to preserving Yemen’s territorial unity under the internationally recognised government.
That divergence widened into open friction in late 2025. According to Financial Times and Reuters, UAE-backed STC forces swept through large parts of southern and eastern Yemen in early December, seizing territory that brought them close to the Saudi border. Riyadh viewed the advance as a direct national security threat. After weeks of unsuccessful diplomatic pressure, Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes against a weapons shipment it said was destined for the STC and publicly accused the UAE of crossing a strategic “red line”.
The episode marked a decisive shift. What had long been managed behind closed doors was now unfolding in public. Although the UAE denied directing the STC’s offensive and announced the withdrawal of its remaining troops from Yemen, Saudi-backed forces moved swiftly to reverse the gains. The STC was subsequently sidelined as a political force, and Saudi Arabia announced $500 million in development projects across southern Yemen, many in areas previously influenced by the UAE, according to Reuters.
Competing Visions of Regional Order
Yemen is only one theatre in a much wider competition. Analysts cited by The New Arab, GZERO Media, and Financial Times point to fundamental differences in how Riyadh and Abu Dhabi view regional power.
Saudi Arabia, driven by Vision 2030, seeks stability on its borders and primacy within the Gulf as it attempts to diversify its economy, attract investment, and position itself as a global actor. From Riyadh’s perspective, UAE-backed proxies and interventions in Yemen, Sudan, the Horn of Africa, and along the Red Sea undermine that goal.
Dr Mira al-Hussein of the University of Edinburgh told The New Arab that Saudi Arabia increasingly views the UAE’s foreign policy not as a disagreement but as a national security threat. She argued that Emirati projects intersecting with Israeli interests under the Abraham Accords have heightened Saudi fears of strategic encirclement, particularly amid unverified reports circulating on Israeli open-source intelligence platforms about possible Israeli military facilities near the Saudi-UAE border.
The UAE, meanwhile, has pursued an activist foreign policy aimed at controlling strategic maritime chokepoints, countering Islamist movements, and embedding itself as an indispensable economic and security partner for Western and regional powers. In Yemen, analysts told GZERO that Abu Dhabi’s focus on coastal areas near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait reflects its broader maritime strategy rather than an interest in Yemen’s internal political settlement.
Economic and Diplomatic Competition
Beyond the battlefield, rivalry has intensified in economic and diplomatic arenas. Saudi Arabia’s push to compel multinational corporations to relocate regional headquarters from Dubai to Riyadh was widely interpreted in Abu Dhabi as a direct challenge to the UAE’s role as the Gulf’s commercial hub, according to the Financial Times.
Differences have also emerged over Sudan, where Riyadh is closer to the Sudanese Armed Forces while the UAE is accused, by UN experts and US lawmakers, of backing the Rapid Support Forces, allegations Abu Dhabi denies. The issue reportedly spilt into US diplomacy, with Saudi concerns raised during MbS’s November meeting with then-President Donald Trump, an episode that Gulf sources told Reuters was misinterpreted in Abu Dhabi and helped trigger the Yemen escalation.
A Cold War, Not a Crisis
Despite the sharp rhetoric and visible friction, most analysts caution against predicting an imminent rupture. Dr Khalid Almezaini of Zayed University told The New Arab that the Yemen episode did not create a crisis but exposed an existing one. In his assessment, the relationship has entered a new phase of recalibration that will not return to the cooperative façade of previous years, even if symbolic gestures of unity resume.
Others, including Dr Bader al-Saif of Kuwait University and Dr Gregory Gause III of the Middle East Institute, argue that both sides have strong incentives to avoid escalation. Unlike the 2017 Qatar crisis, borders remain open, ambassadors have not been withdrawn, and economic ties continue.
“This is not a zero-sum confrontation,” al-Saif told The New Arab, noting that Gulf history is replete with cycles of divergence and accommodation among ruling families. The current tensions, he argued, reflect shifting regional realities: a weakened Iran, a more assertive Israel, and a fragmented international order.
A Rivalry Set to Endure
What distinguishes the current Saudi-UAE cold war is its breadth. Competition now spans Yemen, Sudan, Syria, the Horn of Africa, artificial intelligence investment, oil policy, and regional diplomacy. While cooperation persists where interests align, mistrust is deepening.
As Ali Shihabi observed in a widely shared post on X, smaller Gulf states periodically rebel against Saudi primacy as wealth fuels ambition and ego. Yet history, he argues, shows that the Gulf order ultimately remains anchored by Saudi Arabia’s size and strategic depth.
For now, neither Riyadh nor Abu Dhabi appears willing, or able, to decisively outmanoeuvre the other. Instead, the Gulf’s two heavyweights seem locked into a prolonged contest for influence, one that is likely to reshape regional politics quietly but profoundly in the years ahead.
