Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan has reopened debate over the future of disagreements between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and the prospects for containing or managing tensions, saying that the Kingdom’s relations with the United Arab Emirates are “of critical importance to regional stability.”
Bin Farhan’s remarks, made Monday during a joint news conference with his Polish counterpart, Radoslaw Sikorski, in Poland, align with comments by Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos days earlier. Al-Jadaan expressed “confidence” in the possibility of forging political understandings between the two sides, with a clear delineation of the boundaries of disagreement and confinement of disputes to files related to Saudi national security—considered a sovereign matter not open to compromise—while signaling conditional openness to renegotiating other contentious tracks.
Yemen remains the most decisive arena shaping the imbalance in Saudi-Emirati alignment, amid diverging strategic approaches and priorities in managing the conflict.
Yemen: The Gateway to Dispute
The trajectory of Saudi-Emirati relations in recent years reflects an accumulation of divergences across several regional arenas, with the Yemen issue the most evident and consequential. The UAE has moved to build concentrated on-the-ground influence in southern Yemen and on the island of Socotra, alongside expanding its presence in the Horn of Africa to bolster control over Red Sea ports—highlighting a difference in priorities for managing influence compared with the Saudi approach.
Since the launch of military operations in Yemen in March 2015, the Saudi-Emirati alliance has not fully coalesced into a homogeneous framework. Saudi Arabia assumed leadership of the military and political track, while the UAE focused on entrenching its presence in strategically significant coastal areas and islands. In this context, it supported the establishment of the Southern Transitional Council in 2017 as a lever of influence in the southern governorates.
Recent developments and military confrontations this month between the Saudi-backed government and the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council in Hadramawt and Al-Mahra underscored the widening of these divergences and their transformation into a decisive factor settled militarily on the ground.
The Emirati academic and writer Abdulkhaleq Abdullah downplays the significance of the dispute between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, describing it as “a quarrel between allies,” adding that “the UAE, since the beginning of this quarrel, has adhered to de-escalation and refrained from escalation.”
Saudi writer Salman al-Shreida says such disputes “can be contained,” but notes at the same time that “the expansion of some of Abu Dhabi’s regional interventions and its support for local actors with secessionist tendencies in several arenas have contributed to deepening the divergence and creating points of friction that have become difficult for Riyadh to ignore and call for a recalibration of political behavior.”
The crisis in Yemen helped ignite tensions between the two Gulf states. In late December, Saudi Arabia launched an attack on what it described as a shipment of Emirati weapons and equipment bound for the Southern Transitional Council at the port of Mukalla, before backing an offensive that led to the council’s collapse and the UAE’s announcement of its withdrawal from Yemen after nearly a decade as a major on-the-ground force.
In recent weeks, Saudi and Emirati analysts have traded attacks on social media in an unusual display of public disagreement. Gulf states had previously sought to keep their disputes out of the spotlight in an effort to project a united front against their principal shared adversary, Iran.
The disagreements between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi extend across the region, with each backing different parties in conflicts ranging from Sudan to Somalia and Syria. The two also compete fiercely on the economic front, including in attracting foreign capital and visitors and in capturing a larger share of the global artificial intelligence boom.
Gaza and the Space for Political Convergence
A joint welcome by the foreign ministers of the UAE, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar of an invitation from U.S. President Donald Trump to join a “Peace Council” was a notable signal of diplomatic convergence driven by the repercussions of the war in Gaza and the need to contain regional instability. This has raised questions about whether participation in the Gaza Council statement represents a minimum return to political coordination between Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Abdulkhaleq Abdullah says that “cooperation and coordination between the UAE and Saudi Arabia exist across several regional files, and Gaza is one of them. Coordination between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi is important to end the Gaza war and prepare for the postwar phase, especially since they have become members of the Gaza Peace Council.”
By contrast, al-Shreida argues that this convergence should not be read as a return to direct political coordination or broad alignment in regional approaches, but rather as a limited intersection imposed by the sensitivity of the humanitarian file in Gaza and sustained pressure from international public opinion.
Al-Shreida points to a mutual effort to neutralize bilateral disputes and prevent them from spilling over into core regional issues, foremost among them humanitarian concerns and the requirements of shared regional security—without implying an overcoming of existing differences or the reconstitution of a fully formed strategic partnership.
Regarding the escalation in the tone of official discourse, al-Shreida notes that Saudi statements have come in a framework of clarity and frankness tied to the parameters of security and stability and to laying out facts as they are, while the Emirati discourse has been marked by inconsistency, beginning with denial and then shifting to silence. This, he argues, does not reflect genuine de-escalation so much as a temporary suspension of escalation without addressing the root of the dispute.
Al-Shreida adds that the prospects for de-escalation are governed not only by the political and media costs of escalation, but even more by the pressure of shared regional files that impose a minimum level of coordination and require a delicate balance between managing differences on the one hand and the demands of regional security and stability on the other.
If the current tension ends in what might be described as a “cold peace,” al-Shreida says, it would mean a shift toward managing differences in a calculated manner without rising to a full political partnership, alongside reduced levels of media and political escalation, even as divergences in approaches persist.
Abdulkhaleq Abdullah believes that “the current Saudi-Emirati dispute could see further escalation or could recede quickly, especially since more escalation is not in the interest of the two largest economies and strongest powers in the region,” as he put it.
Sakina Abdallah
A Saudi writer, researcher, and TV presenter
