Twenty years ago, the United Arab Emirates found itself at the centre of a political storm in Washington after the oil-rich Gulf state sought to acquire operations at six major US seaports through Dubai-owned logistics company DP World.
The proposed acquisition triggered intense opposition among American lawmakers.
Two of the hijackers involved in the 11 September attacks five years earlier were Emirati nationals. Some members of Congress alleged that the UAE had become a hub for financing al-Qaeda and represented a “persistent counterterrorism problem”, warning that allowing an Emirati company to manage strategic ports could pose a serious threat to US security.
It made little difference that the UAE had been the only Arab country to deploy troops in support of the US war in Afghanistan, or that the administration of President George W. Bush had already backed the ports deal. The political backlash ultimately forced DP World to withdraw.
At the same time, the episode became a decisive turning point for the UAE and its relationship with the United States.
In Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, then the influential Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and widely known as MBZ, called an emergency meeting with his advisers. He told them the “crisis” had exposed a deep and fundamental misunderstanding among most Americans about the UAE and that the time had come to correct it.
They did.
Two decades later, Mohammed bin Zayed is President of the UAE, while American politicians and military leaders increasingly regard the Gulf state as one of Washington’s strongest allies in the Middle East. The UAE has even acquired the nickname “Little Sparta”, reflecting admiration for its military capabilities.
On 28 July, the US military announced that it was working with the UAE to accelerate the development of “military artificial intelligence”.
From Military Partnership to Financial Influence
Beyond military relations, Abu Dhabi has actively sought to deploy the US$1.7 trillion managed through its sovereign wealth funds and state-backed companies into major investments in the United States, including ventures connected to President Donald Trump’s family.
The Republican-controlled Congress no longer appears to exhibit the same level of concern over Emirati investment in sectors sensitive to US national security.
Trump recently granted the UAE access to some of the most advanced American computer chips, only months after a member of the Emirati royal family invested US$500 million in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company.
Speaking about Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, who had made the decision to recalibrate the UAE’s strategy, Trump said in June: “His Highness is a warrior”, adding that the UAE was “a great country”.
Among both friends and rivals, the way the UAE, an absolute monarchy, succeeded in winning influence in Washington is increasingly viewed as a model of how a foreign government can conduct a sophisticated public relations campaign in the US capital.
The relationship has not always developed smoothly.
Washington angered Emirati leaders through what Abu Dhabi viewed as its implicit embrace of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, which threatened the existing political order in the Middle East, and later through the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran.
More recently, Trump’s war with Iran tested the limits of Mohammed bin Zayed’s influence after the UAE became a major target of Iranian retaliation.
Repeated Iranian missile and drone attacks raised questions about the country’s image as a stable regional hub and the viability of its ambitions to become a global technology centre.
Barbara Leaf, who served as US ambassador to Abu Dhabi from 2014 to 2018 and later became Washington’s top Middle East diplomat, said the Emiratis understood that they possessed considerable influence and access, but ultimately had no voice in a war that erupted on their doorstep and left them receiving the largest share of attacks.
Nevertheless, the experience reinforced Abu Dhabi’s longstanding conviction that its relationships needed to be strengthened further.
The UAE has made a strategic bet on its partnership with the United States and its increasingly close ties with Israel. Officials insist that Abu Dhabi intends not only to continue along that path, but to deepen it.
Yousef Al Otaiba and the Transformation of the UAE’s Image
When Trump held his 80th birthday celebration on the White House lawn this summer, only two ambassadors attended the “Ultimate Fighting” exhibition: Sir Christian Turner, the British ambassador, and Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador.
Al Otaiba, a former adviser to Mohammed bin Zayed who studied at Georgetown University, was sent to Washington in 2008 to present Americans with an image of the UAE very different from the one they believed they knew.
With the assistance of a small army of high-profile lobbyists, he succeeded.
Money became a central instrument of influence.
According to data from OpenSecrets, which tracks financial flows in US politics, the UAE has spent more than US$270 million in Washington over the past decade alone.
That places it, alongside Gulf neighbours Saudi Arabia, which spent US$422 million, and Qatar, with US$269 million, among the world’s 10 largest foreign spenders in Washington.
The UAE has also channelled substantial funding into some of the US capital’s most prominent think tanks, including the Atlantic Council, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the RAND Corporation, among others.
It has hosted dozens of conferences and international forums and established a bilateral US-UAE business council even before Al Otaiba arrived in Washington.
Officials, however, say Al Otaiba himself has been the most influential factor because of his ability to navigate Washington’s political establishment.
A former senior US State Department official said Al Otaiba had relentlessly organised dinners and entertainment to cultivate loyal supporters across both parties.
The official said it was remarkable how many former officials and congressional staff members had attached their names to enthusiastic opinion pieces praising what they presented as a mutually beneficial US-UAE relationship.
Mohammed bin Zayed has made only one official visit to Washington, in 2024, when he met then-president Joe Biden.
Yet officials say Al Otaiba managed the strategic reshaping of the UAE’s image in the United States with a level of skill that Gulf neighbours, including Saudi Arabia, have sought to emulate.
While the brutal killing of a prominent journalist by Saudi agents in 2018 damaged Riyadh’s diplomatic standing for several years, Al Otaiba was promoting a contrasting image of the UAE as a relative beacon of modernity and optimism.
The country was presented as home to business-friendly, socially open Dubai and as an apparently liberal oasis in a conservative part of the Muslim world.
Al Otaiba encouraged American policymakers to visit the UAE and led embassy outreach to Congress, think tanks, universities, schools and the media, while regularly hosting gatherings for Washington’s political and policy elite.
Israel as a Gateway to Washington
During Trump’s first presidential campaign, Al Otaiba also developed a relationship with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, who later became one of Trump’s most influential advisers on Middle East affairs.
The UAE and Al Otaiba’s most significant achievement, however, came in 2020, when the Emirates became the leading Arab state to sign the Trump-sponsored Abraham Accords and normalise relations with Israel.
The move impressed the American political establishment and fundamentally altered perceptions of the UAE in Washington.
The former senior State Department official said the Emiratis had successfully read Washington’s signals and anticipated what mattered most to the United States.
They recognised, the official argued, that Israel was the route towards closer access to Trump’s team.
Building ties with Israel became, in this view, a wide “back door” through which the UAE could bypass criticism it was facing.
People close to the ruling family say stronger ties with Washington serve several of Mohammed bin Zayed’s strategic objectives: diversifying the economy beyond petrodollars, transforming the UAE into a global artificial intelligence hub, and carving out an independent regional path outside the shadow of Saudi Arabia.
Leaf said Emirati leaders had long viewed Israel and Singapore as two primary models: small states in both territory and population that nevertheless exercise global influence politically, diplomatically, economically and militarily.
From Failed Ports Deal to the Heart of US Technology
Twenty years after failing to acquire major US seaports, the UAE has gradually secured stakes in a sector of far greater strategic value.
A senior Biden administration official who worked closely with the UAE said it was “frightening” how deeply the American artificial intelligence industry had become connected to Emirati money.
State-backed investment arms such as Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala and MGX, chaired by UAE National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president’s brother, have established extensive partnerships with technology companies including OpenAI and xAI.
They have also acquired a controlling stake in semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries and made major minority investments in chipmaker Cerebras Systems and data-centre developer Aligned Data Centers.
Last September, MGX reached an agreement with the US government to obtain a 15 per cent stake in TikTok’s US assets.
One Emirati official said these investments helped transform the US-UAE relationship from one defined in the post-11 September era by cooperation in “fighting bad guys together” into one increasingly built around economic cooperation.
“In the post-Iran world, it will be a combination of both,” the official said, describing the relationship as “hybrid”.
The official said the defence relationship was no longer simply about “what we buy”, but also “what we build”, including data centres and investments alongside Microsoft, Nvidia, BlackRock and OpenAI.
Tariq Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador’s half-brother and a former Emirati official, compared the country’s investment strategy to “a small car joining a race with a lot of larger cars that are more advanced”.
Initially, he said, the strategy was simply to pour large amounts of money into projects that appeared promising.
As Emirati understanding of Silicon Valley developed, however, they became “sophisticated investors” who understood where the right deals and promising technologies could be found.
Jacob Helberg, a senior economic diplomacy official in the Trump administration, told members of Congress this year that Emirati investments in American chipmakers had made the UAE a vital supporter and financier of the US technology sector.
“They invested in GlobalFoundries, brought Cerebras back to life when it was on the verge of collapse, and today Cerebras is a jewel of American technology,” he said.
Advanced Chips and Allegations of Corruption
Abu Dhabi secured another major achievement when the US Department of Commerce approved the sale of advanced chips to the UAE and removed related export restrictions.
Ambassador Al Otaiba praised the chip agreement as a “landmark moment” built on “sustained cooperation”.
Democrats viewed the arrangement differently.
Arizona congresswoman Yassamin Ansari described it as “perhaps one of the largest and most blatant corruption schemes in the history of the United States”.
The criticism centred on MGX, owned by Sheikh Tahnoon, acquiring a 49 per cent stake in the Trump family cryptocurrency company World Liberty Financial shortly before Trump’s inauguration last year.
MGX later purchased US$2 billion worth of World Liberty’s stablecoin to facilitate an investment in cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, who repeatedly questioned administration officials about the deal, said the transaction had effectively handed World Liberty “US$2 billion in cash”.
An Emirati fund calling itself Aqua 1 Foundation also purchased US$100 million worth of digital assets issued by World Liberty.
Emirati officials say these were private commercial investments with no connection to the UAE’s political ambitions or the subsequent US-UAE chip agreement.
A World Liberty spokesperson said its stablecoin had merely been used as a means of payment for MGX’s investment and that describing the transaction as a cash grant was “completely false”.
Concerns Over China and US National Security
For years, US national security officials and lawmakers have warned that allowing the UAE access to advanced chips could expose some of America’s most sensitive technologies to China, its largest global competitor.
The UAE maintains close commercial and technological ties with Beijing.
The Trump administration and the UAE say safeguards have been implemented to protect the technology, although some former officials and lawmakers remain unconvinced.
The former senior State Department official argued that the UAE had constructed a relationship with Washington that was highly beneficial to Abu Dhabi but deeply damaging to US foreign policy and national interests.
“If you dig into it,” the official said, “you find that everything said about the benefits of the relationship with the UAE for the United States is vague talk and fantasy.”
Influence Without Consequences
The UAE’s diplomacy and investment strategy have also produced indirect benefits.
For years, Abu Dhabi has largely avoided serious consequences for actions that American politicians have condemned when undertaken by other countries.
These include holding joint military exercises with China and allegedly supplying weapons to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, a militia accused of war crimes.
Democratic congresswoman Sara Jacobs said such weapons were “literally enabling genocide”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last year that the UAE was “openly supporting an entity committing genocide” in Sudan, an allegation denied by Abu Dhabi.
Yet lawmakers have repeatedly rejected congressional efforts to block arms sales to the UAE, citing its status as a strategic ally.
The UAE has also avoided serious penalties over its role as a hub for illicit Iranian financing, which was crucial to the Iranian system before the outbreak of war.
Trump himself said this year that the Emirates had been “like a bank for Iran”.
A Financial Times analysis of US Treasury sanctions linked to Iran found that the UAE was the second most frequently mentioned foreign jurisdiction after China, despite Abu Dhabi’s traditionally hardline position towards Tehran.
Of 1,573 sanctioned individuals and entities with ties to countries outside Iran, 22 per cent had Emirati citizenship, addresses or corporate registrations.
Van Hollen said the UAE possessed considerable influence in Washington, “indeed excessive influence”, allowing it to escape consequences for actions that other states could not.
The Limits of Emirati Influence
Despite all that influence, the UAE was unable to prevent the United States and Israel from launching war against Iran this year.
Since the conflict began, however, the Gulf state has made a decisive choice to intensify its relationships with Washington and Israel.
It has also carried out dozens of its own air strikes against Iran.
Emirati officials say the dependable flow of US weapons and support throughout the war, despite supply-chain bottlenecks, demonstrates the country’s growing value within the partnership.
“I think our performance in the war, and our cooperation and coordination with the United States, elevated our standing or distinguished us,” one Emirati official said. “It showed that we are competent and that we know what we are doing.”
The UAE has also moved closer to Israel and withdrew in May from the Saudi-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
That decision brought it further into alignment with Trump, who has long criticised OPEC’s influence over oil prices.
The official added that Saudi Arabia was no longer “the biggest player” in the region in the way it had been when Trump visited the Gulf last year.
Could the Strategy Backfire?
Some experts believe the UAE’s increasing reliance on its relationships with the United States and Israel, at the expense of regional Arab alliances, could ultimately prove counterproductive.
Andrew Leber, a Middle East specialist at Tulane University, said the UAE “risks surrendering its strategic autonomy to those countries”.
Some Democrats also believe Abu Dhabi could face greater scrutiny if their party regains control of Congress in the November midterm elections, potentially opening the way for congressional investigations.
Jacobs said the United States should “show that we hold our partners and allies to the same standards that we apply to others”.
“The UAE is an important partner for the United States in the region,” she said. “But we have to be honest about the ways in which their actions directly undermine US priorities and cause harm.”
