Israel-UAE defense ties survive their first war
Israel and the Emirates have built a new kind of Middle Eastern alliance, one that will endure whether or not the Iranian regime survives.
In a nutshell
- Israel has deployed missile defenses to the UAE to counter Iran
- Emirati forces struck Iranian targets alongside Israel, drawing U.S. objections
- Iranian regime’s survival or collapse would push Israel and UAE closer
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This article is the second in a two-part GIS series, “The UAE in focus.” Part one, by Giorgio Cafiero, explored the Emirati-Saudi rivalry.
Israel’s deployment of air defenses to the United Arab Emirates during the Iran war was a rare Middle Eastern security arrangement built without American brokerage. While the fate of the Iranian regime and Tehran’s nuclear ambitions remain unresolved in the war that began on February 28, defense collaboration between Israel and the UAE represents a turning point in regional geopolitics.
The Abraham Accords are tested by fire
When the Abraham Accords were signed during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, critics labeled them destined to fail for their inattention to the Palestinian cause, or portrayed them as merely a publicity win for the first Trump administration. European onlookers relatively ignored the Accords’ significance as a regional breakthrough. The framework has widened steadily since: The UAE and Bahrain signed in September 2020; Sudan and Morocco followed within months, and Kazakhstan joined in November 2025. Last year, even Syria expressed interest in normalizing ties with Israel.
The ultimate scope and reach of the Accords remain speculative; however, how Israel and the UAE cooperated militarily under fire during the Iran war shows that the Accords are anything but aspirational. Instead, the defense ties between Israel and the Emirates represent a new indigenization of Middle East security based upon the capabilities of small, technologically advanced powers.
When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, the Accords not only held, but deepened, even as the war broadened throughout the Middle East and into Lebanon, Yemen and Iran. The conflict’s dynamics were inverted from the wars Israel has fought since its creation in 1948. Whereas Arab states routinely worked to destroy Israel in the past, some are now helping their Jewish neighbor defend against Iran. Jordan opened its airspace to Israeli jets and used its own air force to neutralize Iranian drones and missiles targeting Israel. Saudi Arabia reportedly shot down a missile fired at Israel from Yemen. Beyond this muted cooperation in the air war, the Gulf requested and received support from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
After Iran fired roughly 550 ballistic and cruise missiles and more than 2,200 drones at the Emirates, and following a call between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Emirati President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Israel deployed an Iron Dome battery and troops to the UAE. The active deployment of one of Israel’s most advanced defense systems under the command of Israeli troops in an allied Arab country is a significant development that shows the manifestation of a real alliance under wartime conditions. Additionally, that the deployment occurred through bilateral communication between Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem points to a commitment between the two countries that is not reliant upon American pressure.
Israeli-UAE ties foreshadow a post-Western Middle East
The United States remains the premier coordinating partner between Israel and the Gulf within the region as a whole. Indeed, the Pentagon moved Israel from European Command to Central Command in January 2021, making CENTCOM Israel’s point of defense cooperation with Washington. However, the bilateral move to shift Israeli troops to the Emirates signals not only an indigenization of Middle East security, but also a development that is not hostile to the West.
Israel and the UAE are both small Middle Eastern states with traditionalist social fabrics and polities that have nonetheless fully engaged in high-tech development, global market integration and relative levels of liberalism. Since 2020, bilateral investment between the two countries has centered on agricultural technology, artificial intelligence, water and high-tech weapons systems involving drones and electronic warfare. The two countries are even developing joint ventures in Africa.
Following the call between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Nahyan, Israel not only sent the Iron Dome to defend its Gulf partner, but also reportedly the Iron Beam. Only battlefield-ready in late 2025, the laser-based system offers cheap interception against short-range rockets and drones. Israel is also reported to have sent its Spectro electro-optical system to detect Iranian drones. While the U.S. has laser weapons of its own in development, only Israel placed such weapons in the UAE to help guard the Gulf.
Facts & figures
UAE-Israeli cooperation in the Iran war
For the UAE, support from Israel has not been inconsequential. The Emirates struck Iran in retaliation for Tehran’s attacks on Gulf countries, hitting key Iranian islands and an Iranian oil refinery on Lavan Island. The Emiratis even struck an Iranian petrochemical plant in Asaluyeh alongside Israel. The joint strike by Abu Dhabi drew condemnation from multiple countries, including in the form of a request by the Trump administration to cease striking Iranian energy facilities. That such condemnation came from the Americans, who were concurrently fighting Iran, points to the emergence of an organic bilateral defense relationship and a shift in Middle East politics.
Despite the closeness between the UAE and Israel, Saudi Arabia remains reluctant to establish full relations with Israel. This reluctance, however, obscures the broader geopolitical forces pushing Riyadh and Jerusalem toward normalization. Saudi Arabia and the Jewish state are both involved in the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (the Saudis as signatories and Israel as a participating transit country), and both joined the Board of Peace as founding members. Potential joint energy projects offer further arenas of mutual cooperation that can pave the way for diplomatic and business relations. While Riyadh may be currently hesitant to establish ties, the geopolitical dynamics are paving the way for them.
Iran makes cooperation inevitable
It is no secret that Israel and the UAE have grown closer in correlation with the development of Iran’s nuclear program. Years prior to the Abraham Accords, a Zurich-registered firm founded by an Israeli businessman sold Abu Dhabi surveillance and border-security systems reportedly worth roughly $800 million. The Obama-era Iran deal that sought to delay the development of Tehran’s nuclear program brought the Gulf states closer to Israel. Then, on April 28, two months into the war, the UAE announced it would withdraw from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and OPEC+. Abu Dhabi’s withdrawal from OPEC signaled regional independence not only from a bloc dominated by Saudi Arabia, but from one shared with Iran.
Iran’s nuclear program brought the UAE and Israel together; however, this war’s outcome will make the relationship permanent. It remains to be seen whether Tehran’s theocratic government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will survive the Trump administration’s attempt to eliminate the nuclear program.
Beyond the nuclear program, Iran’s restive population has become increasingly aggressive in calling for toppling the government. The Iranian regime has acknowledged 3,117 deaths in the crackdown on protests between late December and January, but estimates from human rights organizations have run much higher: The Human Rights Activists News Agency put its confirmed count above 7,000, and the International Centre for Human Rights cited over 43,000 deaths. The true death toll is unknown, but it is high enough to indicate serious upheaval. Iranian Kurds have expressed interest in fighting the regime, while Iran’s Arab population in Khuzestan remains unsettled. With or without American support, a rump theocratic Iranian regime that survives confrontation with the U.S. will face ongoing subversion from Israel and the UAE.
Outside of the current war and the joint operations between the U.S. and Israel, Israel’s overall strategy, formulated in part by recently departed Mossad director David Barnea during the tenure of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett (2021-2022), focuses on using ongoing Cold War-style efforts to weaken Iran’s regime. Asymmetric options to remove Iran’s theocrats from power remain the most natural pathway for small, advanced states like Israel and the Emirates to counter a hostile Tehran.
Iran’s nuclear program brought the UAE and Israel together; however, this war’s outcome will make the relationship permanent.
Iran’s theocratic government could also suddenly collapse regardless of outside military action. Key defections, assassinations or a mass uprising in Iran could tip into a Libya-style revolution, with Tehran’s remaining government elites ultimately being overpowered by mobs of angry citizens. This could happen even if the U.S. and Israel did not necessarily intend it. Alternatively, a figure could emerge within the Iranian government to oversee a peaceful transition of power, much like Boris Yeltsin during the Soviet Union’s collapse or F.W. de Klerk during the end of apartheid in South Africa. Under a third possibility, the Revolutionary Guards could consolidate what remains of the regime into a securitized nationalist government, one with no particular warmth toward Jerusalem or Abu Dhabi.
In any case, a government that replaces the theocracy would have reasons to seek closer ties with the UAE and Israel. One survey conducted by the Gamaan Institute in the Netherlands in 2022 found that 81 percent of Iranians inside the country opposed the Islamic Republic. Among those, support varied for presidential systems of government, parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. Responding to such surveys could prove risky for respondents opposed to the regime, which suggests the figure is more a floor than a ceiling.
For the war itself, Iranians blamed the regime instead of Israel by a margin of two to one. The Emirates have long been a prime location for Iranian expatriates and business; some 400,000 Iranian expatriates were estimated to live in the UAE in 2019. Roughly 200,000 Israelis have cultural roots in Iran. A post-theocratic Tehran would have reason to look to the UAE and Israel for economic ties. A reconstructing and democratizing Iran will reduce the salience of the Palestinian cause to the region’s politics, and would make American security guarantees for allies in the region less critical. Joint Israeli-Emirati cooperation would also deepen as companies from both countries look at Iran as an emerging regional market.
Scenarios
Most likely: Israeli-UAE ties deepen
Two things explain why Emirati-Israeli cooperation will strengthen. The first is that it now runs on its own initiative. The Abraham Accords have not only survived a major regional war so far, but have deepened despite it. The movement of IDF units to the UAE along with advanced Israeli air defense systems occurred bilaterally and without American coordination. Israel could have kept the Iron Dome battery it sent to the Gulf at home; yet at a moment when it was under heavy fire, it sent the system to its Gulf partner. Additionally, the fact that both countries jointly attacked Iranian energy infrastructure until American objections stopped them further demonstrates the organic and independent development of the relationship.
The second reason closer Emirati-Israeli relations will deepen is Iran. If Iran’s regime survives the current war, both the Gulf states and Israel will be forced to continue joint intelligence gathering, covert operations and air defense cooperation – particularly in the event that Iran cheats on the terms that end the war or resumes launching conventional assaults on either of them. Alternatively, should Iran’s regime collapse, both Israel and the UAE have structural, economic and cultural reasons to expand cooperation to include a post-theocratic Iran through investment and trade. A benign or pro-Western Iran would reduce the case for Western military presence while opening a large regional market to Israeli and Emirati capital. A weakened but still hostile Iran – the more likely near-term condition – has the opposite effect.
Less likely: Israel-UAE ties weaken or collapse
An unlikely but credible possibility is that the Abraham Accords that enabled Israeli-Emirati cooperation disintegrate.
The Arab Spring proved that many seemingly stable regimes in the Middle East can rapidly collapse. Yet none of the Arab monarchies fell in the face of popular pressure. The UAE’s population is overwhelmingly international and composed of global expatriates. This makes the Emirates potentially more exposed to market shocks, but less prone to popular uprising and more insulated from any pressures resulting from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel could turn hostile toward the Emirates; however, this is unlikely. Hamas, as the most potent Palestinian faction that can challenge Jerusalem, has been weakened by the war in Gaza through direct conflict with the IDF and a lack of support from Iran, and has little ability to sabotage Israel’s ties with the UAE.
External pressures could theoretically drive a wedge into the Abraham Accords. An anti-Israel American administration could take power in the U.S. and eliminate aid for Jerusalem; this would paradoxically reinforce the bilateral relationship with the UAE that is already in place. Similarly, Turkiye, seeking its own interests, could work to subvert ties between the Gulf and the Jewish state through covert means or by supporting Iran. However, Turkiye’s immediate interests in Syria and Africa make this less likely to occur.
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