Years of simmering tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates exploded into the open on Dec. 30, 2025.
That’s when Saudi officers accused the UAE of backing separatist teams in Yemen and performed an airstrike within the southern Yemeni town of Mukalla focused on an alleged cargo of guns from the UAE to the Southern Transitional Council, one such separatist staff.
Amid a hastily emerging confrontation, Saudi-backed forces in Yemen recaptured two provinces that the STC had up to now taken. Persisted Saudi force resulted within the expulsion of the STC chief, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, from the Presidential Management Council – an eight-strong government frame that represents Yemen’s the world over identified executive. On Jan. 7, 2026, al-Zubaidi fled Yemen. That, plus the reported disbanding of the STC, brings a dramatic finish to years of UAE affect within the south and dramatically fractures the coalition towards the Houthis, a rebellion staff that these days controls maximum of northern and central Yemen.
For observers of Yemen it will have to come as little marvel that the rustic is now splitting aside alongside the two-country axis that has outlined such a lot of the geopolitics of the Center East for the reason that 2011 Arab uprisings. It continues a long-term pattern clear of preliminary alignment between Saudi Arabia and the UAE over Yemen that dangers now not simplest reigniting warfare there however exposing a deeper continual fight that might fracture all the area.
An uneasy alignment
The Saudis and Emiratis entered the Yemen warfare in alignment, forming an Arab coalition in March 2015 to thrust back the development of Houthi rebels and forces unswerving to the federal government of ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Virtually from the beginning, even though, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi pursued other targets and targets at the floor.
The Saudis seen the warfare as an instantaneous cross-border risk from the Houthis – a rebellion drive sponsored, of their view, by means of Iran. For the Emiratis, in the meantime, the concern was once appearing assertively towards Islamist teams in southern Yemen.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan stroll aspect by means of aspect in 2021, when their international locations had hotter members of the family.
Hamad Al Kaabi/Emirati Ministry of Presidential Affairs by means of AP
First of all, decision-making on the very best degree of the intervening coalition in Yemen mirrored an in depth alignment between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh and then-Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi.
The 2 had been observed as appearing in lockstep within the mid-2010s around the area, together with the blockade of Qatar in 2017 over the smaller Gulf state’s alleged hyperlinks to terrorist teams.
From 2015 to 2018, UAE’s Mohammed bin Zayed performed a key position in facilitating Mohammed bin Salman’s fast upward push to authority in Saudi Arabia.
A mentor-mentee dating was once observed by means of many analysts of Gulf affairs to have evolved between the 2 as Mohammed bin Zayed, 24 years the senior, turned into virtually a father determine to the hitherto little-known Mohammed bin Salman whilst making a song his praises in Western capitals, together with Washington, D.C.
The coalition frays
However the comfortable dating between Saudi Arabia and the UAE didn’t closing.
A spread of things contributed to the cooling between the 2 states. Those incorporated the abrupt Emirati resolution in July 2019 to withdraw its troops from the entrance line within the anti-Houthi fight and refocus UAE toughen for native teams in southern Yemen, together with the STC, which have been established in 2017 with visual Emirati backing.
Saudi officers expressed marvel on the UAE resolution. From the Saudi point of view, UAE targets in Yemen have been fulfilled after the recapture of important southern towns, together with Aden and Mukalla in 2015 and 2016.
Of their studying, it was once the Saudis, now not the Emiratis, who had been slowed down in an unwinnable marketing campaign towards the Houthis. The following fraying of a power-sharing settlement between the STC and Saudi-backed executive forces brought about further friction between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.
In different places, indicators emerged that the Emirati management didn’t percentage the Saudi openness to therapeutic the rift with Qatar – at the same time as U.S. officers signaled frustration at a stalemate that broken U.S. partnerships within the area and gave succor to adversaries equivalent to Iran.
Since civil struggle took cling in 2014, greater than 150,000 other people had been killed within the preventing.
Ahmad al-Basha/AFP by means of Getty Pictures
Clashing visions
Because the efficiency of the turbulent post-Arab Spring decade ebbed, the glue that had introduced Riyadh and Abu Dhabi nearer in combination of their want to reassert keep watch over over the post-2011 regional order weakened.
On two events, in November 2020 and July 2021, Emirati and Saudi officers sparred at OPEC+ conferences over most popular oil value and output ranges, and in the summertime of 2021 the Saudis tightened regulations on what handed for tariff-free standing in a transfer that gave the impression to goal items that handed during the many financial loose zones within the UAE.
Additionally that yr, Saudi officers decreed that businesses wishing to do industry with executive companies within the kingdom must find their regional headquarters within the kingdom by means of 2024 – a transfer apparently aimed toward Dubai’s long-standing management in regional industry circles. The release of a brand new Saudi airline, Riyadh Air, and the emphasis positioned in Riyadh on growing shuttle, tourism, leisure and hospitality as a part of its Imaginative and prescient 2030 plan additionally took purpose at sectors wherein the UAE has lengthy loved first-mover merit.
Alternatively, the true importance of the Yemen bust-up is that it demonstrates the stage of divergence in Saudi and Emirati visions of regional order. The Saudi choice is for “de-risking” – this is, making the area seem secure and solid for would-be out of doors traders.
This suits the Saudi’s resolute focal point on financial building and handing over Imaginative and prescient 2030.
But it surely clashes immediately with the perceived Emirati tolerance for risk-taking in regional affairs. Abu Dhabi is broadly believed to have sponsored armed nonstate teams in Libya and helps Sudan’s rebellion Fast Enhance Forces, along with its recognized hyperlinks with the STC in Yemen.
Libya and Sudan had been much less central to Saudi safety issues, however the STC’s seize of the southeastern Yemeni provinces of Hadramout and Mahra in early December crossed Saudi crimson strains.
The truth that the STC advance started on Dec. 3, the day Gulf Cooperation Council leaders met for his or her annual summit, was once additionally observed by means of Saudi policymakers as a significant provocation. They assumed that the offensive will have to have won a inexperienced gentle from Abu Dhabi.
An off-ramp to tensions?
Whilst ties are not going to rupture between Saudis and Emiratis in the similar method they each did with Qatar in 2017, the present trajectory between those two key U.S. allies within the Center East isn’t just right.
There is not any want throughout the Gulf Cooperation Council for any other such rift, and the Emirati resolution to withdraw its last forces from Yemen and go away the STC to its personal destiny suggests there are nonetheless off-ramps to defuse tensions.
But the headstrong leaders in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are all however sure to proceed on a divergent pathway, I consider. And this is able to manifest in a couple of techniques, together with rising financial pageant in spaces equivalent to AI investments, the place the Saudis, as soon as once more, are enjoying catch-up to the UAE. Those are spaces of pageant that might simplest accentuate as each Gulf states attempt to acquire a bonus with a transactional Trump management.
Given the demanding situations that the extensive area faces – now not simplest in Yemen but in addition in war-torn Gaza and Lebanon, a Syria rising from civil warfare, and now, probably, an Iran embroiled in protest – a fractured imaginative and prescient of regional order between the Gulf’s two largest avid gamers does now not bode smartly for the longer term.
