A lengthy investigation by the British Financial Times has examined the rapid expansion of Emirati influence in the United States, including Abu Dhabi’s use of money, investment, political lobbying and normalisation with Israel to secure political and strategic gains, even as questions grow over the consequences for regional and American interests.
The investigation said mounting regional and international criticism of the UAE has increasingly focused on the nature of its growing influence inside the United States. Abu Dhabi is accused of using its financial wealth, investments and political relationships to reshape its image and secure extensive access to American decision-making circles.
According to the investigation, the UAE has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on lobby groups, think tanks and political institutions in Washington, while simultaneously directing major investment into technology and artificial intelligence. This has given it growing influence over sensitive issues involving US national security.
The report also linked that influence to the Emirati-Israeli alliance that followed the Abraham Accords, arguing that normalisation provided Abu Dhabi with a “back door” through which it could bypass much of the criticism it previously faced in the United States and strengthen its standing with successive American administrations.
It also reviewed allegations involving the UAE’s support for Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, its continued role as a hub for circumventing sanctions imposed on Iran, and its economic and technological ties with China despite American warnings about the transfer of sensitive technologies.
Critics in the US Congress, according to the investigation, believe Abu Dhabi has avoided accountability that another country might have faced under similar circumstances because of its lobbying operations and alliance with Israel.
The investigation concluded that the UAE has built a model based on using financial power, investment and political alliances to maximise its influence in Washington. That model, however, is increasingly prompting questions about its effect on the independence of American decision-making and about the political and security costs of such extensive overlap between economic interests and strategic relations.
How Did the UAE Win Washington’s Favour?
Twenty years ago, the UAE found itself at the centre of a major political storm.
An attempt by the oil-rich Gulf state to acquire management rights over six major American seaports through Dubai-owned logistics company DP World triggered widespread opposition among US lawmakers.
Two of the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks, carried out only five years earlier, were Emiratis. Some US lawmakers accused the UAE of having served as a hub for Al-Qaeda financing and described it as an “ongoing problem in the field of counterterrorism”, warning that allowing it to manage strategic American ports would represent a serious threat to US security.
The fact that the UAE had been the only Arab state to deploy forces in support of the US war in Afghanistan did not rescue the deal. Nor did the backing of President George W. Bush’s administration. A wave of political opposition eventually forced DP World to abandon the transaction.
The crisis also became a defining turning point in the UAE’s relationship with the United States.
In Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, then the powerful Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and widely known as MBZ, summoned his advisers to an emergency meeting. He told them the “crisis” had exposed a fundamental misunderstanding of the UAE among most Americans and that it was time to correct it.
That is precisely what they set out to do.
Two decades later, Mohammed bin Zayed is president of the UAE, and American politicians and military leaders have come to regard the Gulf state as one of Washington’s most capable allies in the Middle East. It has even acquired the admiring nickname “Little Sparta”.
On 28 July, the US military announced that it was working with the UAE to accelerate the development of “military artificial intelligence”.
The relationship has expanded far beyond defence.
Abu Dhabi has actively used the $1.7 trillion in assets managed through sovereign wealth funds and state-backed companies to make major investments in the United States, including investments connected to the family of President Donald Trump.
The Republican-controlled Congress no longer appears as concerned about Emirati investment in sectors linked to American national security.
Trump recently granted the UAE access to some of the most advanced US computing chips, only months after a member of the Emirati ruling family invested half a billion dollars in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture.
Trump said of Mohammed bin Zayed in June: “His Highness is a warrior”, adding that the UAE was “a great country”.
To both its friends and critics, the way the UAE, an absolute monarchy, managed to win favour in Washington has become a textbook example of how a state can run a public relations campaign in the American capital.
A Relationship That Was Not Always Smooth
The path was not always straightforward.
The United States angered Emirati leaders by implicitly supporting the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, which threatened the existing political order in the Middle East, and later by signing the Iran nuclear agreement in 2015.
More recently, Trump’s war with Iran tested the limits of Mohammed bin Zayed’s influence.
The UAE became the principal target of Iranian retaliation, while waves of Iranian missiles and drones raised questions about the country’s image as an oasis of stability and about the feasibility of its ambition to become a global technology hub.
Barbara Leaf, who served as US ambassador to Abu Dhabi from 2014 to 2018 and later became Washington’s most senior diplomat responsible for the Middle East, said the Emiratis understand that “they have reach, they have access, they have influence”.
“But ultimately, they had no voice in the decision to go to war on their doorstep, and yet they received the largest share of the attacks,” she said.
If anything, that experience appears to have reinforced Abu Dhabi’s belief that the relationship must be deepened.
The UAE has made a strategic bet on its partnership with the United States and on strengthening its ties with Israel. Officials say it has no intention of merely maintaining that trajectory and instead wants to expand those relationships further.
Only two ambassadors attended the “Ultimate Fighting” event hosted by Trump on the White House lawn during celebrations for his 80th birthday this summer: British ambassador Sir Christian Turner and UAE ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba.
Yousef Al Otaiba and the Remaking of the UAE’s Image
Al Otaiba, a former adviser to Mohammed bin Zayed, studied at Georgetown University in Washington and was sent to the American capital in 2008 to present Americans with a different image of the UAE from the one they thought they knew.
He succeeded, with the assistance of a small army of high-level lobbyists.
Money was one of the most important instruments of influence.
According to OpenSecrets, which tracks money in American politics, the UAE spent more than $270 million in Washington over the past decade alone, placing it among the world’s ten highest-spending foreign governments.
Its Gulf neighbours were also major spenders. Saudi Arabia spent $422 million and Qatar $269 million.
The UAE also channelled money into some of Washington’s most prominent think tanks, including the Atlantic Council, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and RAND, while hosting dozens of conferences and international forums.
Even before Al Otaiba’s arrival, it had established the US-UAE Business Council to strengthen bilateral economic ties.
Officials, however, say Al Otaiba himself was the most influential factor because of his ability to navigate Washington’s political establishment.
A former senior US State Department official said: “Al Otaiba was relentless in hosting dinners and bringing people together, and through that he built a network of supporters within both parties.”
The official added: “It is striking how many former officials and congressional staffers put their names on highly complimentary opinion pieces glorifying what was supposed to be the mutually beneficial US-UAE relationship.”
Mohammed bin Zayed has made only one official state visit to Washington, in 2024, to meet then president Joe Biden.
Yet officials say Al Otaiba led the strategic reshaping of the UAE’s image in the United States with a degree of sophistication that neighbouring Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, have sought to emulate.
Selling the UAE as a Modern Arab Model
Al Otaiba worked to promote an image of the UAE as a beacon of modernity and opportunity compared with Saudi Arabia.
It was presented as the home of moderate, business-friendly Dubai, an apparently liberal oasis in a conservative Muslim region.
At the same time, the killing of a prominent journalist by Saudi agents in 2018 left Riyadh diplomatically isolated for several years.
Al Otaiba encouraged American policymakers to visit the UAE and led embassy efforts to engage Congress, think tanks, universities, schools and media organisations. He also hosted parties and events for Washington’s elite.
He developed a particularly close relationship with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, during Trump’s first presidential campaign. Kushner later became one of Trump’s most influential advisers on Middle East affairs.
The Abraham Accords as a Political Breakthrough
The UAE’s greatest success, and Al Otaiba’s most important achievement to date, came in 2020, when the country became the first signatory to Trump’s Abraham Accords and normalised relations with Israel.
The move impressed the American political establishment and fundamentally transformed Washington’s perception of the UAE.
“They were able to read the signals and understand what mattered to the United States, and they realised that Israel was a way to get close to the Trump team,” the former State Department official said.
“Close relations with Israel were like a huge back door, wide open, for circumventing the criticism they were facing.”
For Mohammed bin Zayed, closer relations with the United States serve a range of strategic objectives, according to people close to the ruling family.
These include diversifying the economy away from dependence on oil revenues, transforming the UAE into a global artificial intelligence hub, and charting an independent path outside the shadow of the region’s larger power, Saudi Arabia.
Barbara Leaf said: “They have long looked at Israel and Singapore as models: small countries, with small populations, but with global influence, whether political, diplomatic, economic, military and so on.”
From Failed Port Deal to US Technology Power Broker
Two decades after the UAE failed to acquire major American seaports, it has gradually accumulated stakes in a sector of far greater value.
A senior Biden administration official who worked closely with the UAE said: “It is frightening how connected our artificial intelligence industry is to Emirati money.”
State-backed investment arms such as Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala and MGX, chaired by UAE National Security Adviser and presidential brother Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, have established broad partnerships with technology companies including OpenAI and xAI.
These entities have also acquired a controlling stake in chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries, along with significant minority holdings in chipmaker Cerebras Systems and data centre developer Aligned Data Centers.
According to an Emirati official, these investments helped transform the US-UAE relationship from one whose depth, in the post-September 11 era, was measured by the extent of security cooperation and joint combat into one in which the two countries also cooperate economically.
“In a post-Iran world, the relationship will be based on both,” the official said.
In the American defence industry, the official added, it is no longer simply about “what we buy, but what we build as well. And the data centres that we build. We are investing with Microsoft, Nvidia, BlackRock and OpenAI.”
Tariq Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador’s half-brother and a former Emirati official, compared the country’s strategic investment approach to a plan devised for “a small car entering a race where there are a lot of much bigger cars ahead of us”.
“In the early days, it was simply: we’re going to put a lot of money into things that look good,” he said.
But as Emiratis developed a deeper understanding of Silicon Valley, they became “sophisticated investors, and they know where the right deals are”, according to Al Otaiba.
Jacob Helberg, the Trump administration’s senior official responsible for economic diplomacy, said this year that Emirati investments in American chip manufacturers had made the UAE an exceptionally important financier of the technology sector.
Advanced Chips and Corruption Allegations
Abu Dhabi reached a new level of access when the US Department of Commerce approved sales of advanced chips to the UAE and removed related export controls.
Ambassador Al Otaiba described the chip agreement as a “milestone” resulting from “sustained engagement”.
Democrats saw the matter differently.
Arizona congresswoman Yassamin Ansari described the agreement as “possibly one of the largest and most blatant corruption schemes in US history”.
The anger stemmed from the purchase by Sheikh Tahnoun’s MGX of a 49 per cent stake in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, shortly before Trump’s inauguration last year.
MGX later bought $2 billion worth of World Liberty’s stablecoin for use in an investment in a cryptocurrency exchange.
Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen said the “deal effectively gave World Liberty $2 billion in cash”.
A UAE-based fund calling itself Aqua 1 Foundation also purchased $100 million worth of digital tokens issued by World Liberty.
Emirati officials say these were private commercial decisions unrelated to UAE political ambitions or to the chip agreement later reached between Washington and Abu Dhabi.
A World Liberty spokesperson said its stablecoin was merely the payment vehicle for MGX’s investment and that describing the transaction as a cash grant would be “completely inaccurate”.
US Concerns Over China
American national security officials and lawmakers had warned for years that allowing the UAE access to advanced chips could expose some of the most sensitive American technologies to the United States’ principal global rival, China.
The UAE maintains close commercial and technological relations with Beijing.
The Trump administration and the UAE say measures have been introduced to safeguard the technology, but some former officials and lawmakers remain sceptical.
A former State Department official said: “The UAE has crafted a relationship with the United States that overwhelmingly benefits the UAE, but does significant damage to American foreign policy and our national interests.”
“If you actually dig into it, all the talk about the benefits of the US relationship with the UAE is something vague and intangible, almost like vapour,” the official added.
Avoiding Consequences Over Sudan, China and Iran
The UAE’s diplomacy and investments have also delivered benefits in less visible ways.
For years, Abu Dhabi has avoided the consequences of conduct that American politicians tend to view less tolerantly when undertaken by other governments.
This has included holding joint military exercises with China and allegations that the UAE supplied weapons to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary organisation accused of war crimes.
Democratic congresswoman Sara Jacobs said those weapons were “literally enabling genocide”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last year that the UAE was “openly supporting an entity that is committing genocide” in Sudan.
The UAE denies the allegations.
Yet lawmakers have repeatedly voted against congressional attempts to block arms sales to the UAE on the grounds that it remains a strategic ally.
The UAE has also avoided serious rebuke over its role as a hub for illicit Iranian finance.
That role was so important to the survival of the Iranian government before the war that Trump said this year that the UAE had been “like the bank for Iran”.
A Financial Times analysis of Iran-related sanctions imposed by the US Treasury found that the UAE was the second most frequently represented country after China, despite Abu Dhabi’s traditionally hardline posture towards Tehran.
Of 1,573 sanctioned entities and individuals with links to countries outside Iran, 22 per cent had Emirati citizenship, addresses or corporate registrations.
“The UAE has enormous influence here in Washington, more influence than it should,” Van Hollen said.
“And because of that, it has been able to get away with things that other countries could not.”
War With Iran Tests the Limits of UAE Influence
Despite the UAE’s extensive influence, it was unable to prevent the United States and Israel from launching war against Iran this year.
The Gulf state nevertheless made the significant decision to deepen its ties with Washington and Jerusalem after the war began, and carried out dozens of its own airstrikes against Iran.
Emirati officials say the continuous and reliable flow of American weapons and support throughout the war, despite supply-chain bottlenecks, demonstrates the UAE’s growing importance in the relationship.
“I think our performance in the war, and our cooperation and coordination with the United States, really elevated our standing or made us stand out from others,” an Emirati official said.
“It proved that we are capable, that we know what we are doing.”
The UAE’s relationship with Israel also became closer.
In May, it withdrew from the Saudi-led OPEC organisation, further aligning itself with Trump, who has long expressed frustration with OPEC’s influence over oil prices.
Risks of Strategic Dependence
Some experts believe the UAE’s focus on ties with the United States and Israel, at the expense of regional Arab alliances, could ultimately backfire.
Andrew Leber, a Middle East specialist at Tulane University, said that through its behaviour the UAE “risks surrendering its strategic autonomy to these two countries”.
Some Democrats also believe a period of greater scrutiny may be approaching if the party regains control of Congress in the November midterm elections, potentially opening the door to congressional investigations.
Sara Jacobs said the United States should “be seen as holding our partners and allies to the same standards that we hold everyone else”.
The UAE, she added, is “an important partner for the United States in the region”.
“But we still have to be honest about the ways in which its actions directly undermine US priorities and cause harm.”
