The transformation of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates from erstwhile Gulf allies to open foes is ushering in the new year.
For some time, the two powers have been at odds on issues ranging from oil production to the Sudan war, but their divergences have seldom been public. According to analysts, that is set to change in 2o26.
Saudi Arabia bombed the southern Yemeni port of al-Mukalla on Tuesday, targeting what Riyadh said was a UAE-linked weapons shipment destined for the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC).
In an unprecedented public scolding, Saudi Arabia accused the UAE of “highly dangerous” behaviour that threatened its security.
The UAE hit back, accusing the Saudis of spreading “fundamental inaccuracies”.
Well-known commentators from both countries waded in too, launching rare ripostes at their respective neighbours.
Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a senior Emirati scholar, said the “blatant military assault” on southern Yemen was “no act of heroism”.
Speaking live on Al Jazeera, Abdulaziz Alghashian, a Saudi analyst, said that he, as a Saudi, did not normally comment on UAE actions so as not to “contribute to a very unhealthy discussion”.
“But now there is clearly no doubt that the situation is entering into a stage where things may not go back to normal,” he said.
Alghashian posited that cessationists and separatists across the region were attempting to change physical, border and political realities “that suit the UAE at the cost of Saudi Arabia”.
Even at the worst of Gulf tensions during the blockade of Qatar nearly a decade ago, Saudi Arabia never directly bombed forces aligned with its neighbour.
The Middle East in 2026 will be defined by how Abu Dhabi and Riyadh manage their growing, now-public rivalry.
Kristian Ulrichsen, a Gulf expert and fellow at the Baker Institute, told MEE that while diverging approaches had persisted for years, containment measures were no longer working.
“The UAE may be approaching a tipping point in its ability to balance its regional relationships with key partners such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt with its support for armed non-state actors,” he said, citing Yemen and Sudan as examples.
‘Riyadh focused on deterrence’
Middle East Eye revealed last month that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman intended to lobby US President Donald Trump over the UAE’s role in supporting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group in Sudan.
Some analysts now speculate that the lobbying, publicly confirmed by Trump, contributed to the deterioration of ties in Yemen.
While the Emiratis back the paramilitary, Saudi Arabia has thrown its weight behind Sudan’s army.
In Yemen, though both powers oppose the Houthis and back the internationally recognised government, the UAE has for years supported the STC.
The secessionist group seized swathes of southeastern Yemen earlier this month, prompting the Saudi attack this week.
Another arena of disagreement is Somalia. Saudi Arabia last week joined scores of countries in condemning Israel’s recognition of the breakaway region of Somaliland.
The UAE’s name was absent from a long list of Muslim and Arab countries opposing the recognition. Abu Dhabi is known to be working closely with Somaliland, including the construction of a military base there.
Experts say that the fault lines are becoming clear: the UAE is supporting paramilitary and secessionist groups across the region, while Saudi Arabia is building political coalitions to preserve the established borders of states in the Middle East and Horn of Africa.
“While the UAE can mobilise large proxy forces, Saudi Arabia’s advantage today lies elsewhere: international legitimacy, strategic depth, economic leverage, and lessons learned,” Hesham Alghannam, a Saudi defence analyst in Riyadh and scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, told MEE.
“Riyadh has moved away from large-scale expeditionary warfare toward a model focused on deterrence, selective pressure, and political outcomes.”
Alghannam said that Riyadh had learned from its last intervention in Yemen, where it led a coalition which failed to ultimately defeat the Houthis, that proxies and firepower are not enough.
Another growing line of division is how to deal with Israel, with whom Abu Dhabi normalised ties in 2020.
“The Emiratis have leaned into their accommodation with the Israelis since the Abraham Accords,” Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, told MEE.
“With the Saudis unable and unwilling to follow them in consideration of the Gaza war, they have increased coordination with the other non-Arab regional power, Turkey.”
It is a sign of an emerging new alignment, she added, though still far from settling into distinct camps.
‘More serious’ than rift with Qatar
The last time a major falling out occurred between Gulf powers, the UAE and Saudi Arabia were on the same side.
The two countries’ alignment was solidified when they accused Qatar of supporting political Islamists, whom Abu Dhabi and Riyadh feared would unsettle their monarchies.
The rift escalated in 2017, when a Saudi-led blockade was imposed on Doha.
“The UAE was able to almost unite the entirety of the GCC against Qatar,” Emadeddin Badi, a researcher and expert on armed groups in the region, told MEE.
That dynamic has since changed.
While the Saudis are building coalitions, the Emiratis, Badi said, have “antagonised other stakeholders”, including Egypt and Turkey.
“If this coalition against the UAE crystallises, then that’s an unprecedented geopolitical shift in how virtually most of the Middle East power dispensations are structured.”
Alghannam said that while the current crisis is different in nature from the 2017 rift, it is more serious.
“The Qatar episode was a diplomatic rupture managed through GCC and international mediation and ultimately reversed,” the Saudi analyst said.
Kuwait and Oman were among the mediators during the Gulf rift with Qatar. Finding intermediaries between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh may prove more difficult.
Blown out of proportion
This time, Alghannam said, the dispute is less about Gulf consensus politics and more about competing regional strategies, “which makes the tension sharper and harder to contain, even if it stops short of a full diplomatic break”.
Bader al-Saif, an assistant professor at Kuwait University and associate fellow at Chatham House, said public disagreements in the Gulf were not, in fact, rare.
In addition to the rift with Qatar, he cited public tensions between Oman and the UAE in 2011.
“These are normal countries, like any other countries, going at it,” al-Saif told MEE. “Let’s not particularise or exoticise the Gulf, this happens a lot.”
He added that he did not see the current tensions as a major rift, arguing that shared interests in trade, tourism and a host of other issues would eventually bring the sides back together.
“Within the GCC, there’s a high sense of ‘we’re in it together, we can’t afford further conflict’,” al-Saif said.
“The problem has been how to manage that conflict.”
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Source: MEE
