Ukraine war exposes cracks in US ties to Middle East allies

The UAE and Saudi Arabia are pursuing their own interests, analysts say, as the US urges a united front against Russia’s Putin

Washington, DC – With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dominating discussions around the world, the Biden administration has been promoting global unity against what it calls Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “war of choice”.

But despite those efforts, the conflict has highlighted cracks in some of the United States’ most prominent alliances in the Middle East, notably with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia.

The latest manifestation of this apparent rift came last week when the UAE hosted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad despite repeated warnings from Washington against normalising ties with the government in Damascus. It was al-Assad’s first visit to an Arab country since the Syrian war broke out in 2011, and it came weeks after the Syrian president expressed full support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“Al-Assad coming to the UAE, shortly after the Gulf Arab country voted to abstain from a UN Security Council resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine last month, tells us that the Emiratis are very serious about asserting their autonomy from the United States,” said Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of Gulf State Analytics, a Washington, DC-based geopolitical risk consultancy.

Abu Dhabi’s abstention last month from the US-backed United Nations Security Council proposal on Ukraine was followed by anonymously-sourced media reports alleging that Saudi and Emirati leaders rebuffed calls from US President Joe Biden. And last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Arabia is in talks with China to ditch the US dollar in favour of the yuan to conduct oil transactions with Beijing.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia appear to be sending a message to the US, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Middle East fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told Al Jazeera: “‘We’re going to act upon our interests and not what you think our interests are.’”

Mounting tensions
The Wall Street Journal reported this month that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – as well as Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan – had rejected calls from Biden. But the White House dismissed that report as “inaccurate” while the US has repeatedly stressed the importance of its relationships with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Cafiero noted that the UAE is not walking away from its relationship with the US, as Washington remains Abu Dhabi’s “security guarantor”. He added that the UAE enjoys a “very strong position in Washington”, especially after leading a push by Arab states to normalise ties with Israel via the so-called “Abraham Accords“.

“The leadership in Abu Dhabi is very confident that it can take steps that upset Washington, such as welcoming Bashar al-Assad to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, without having to pay a big price in terms of its relationship with the US,” Cafiero told Al Jazeera.

Washington issued rare public criticism of Abu Dhabi over al-Assad’s visit, however. US Department of State Spokesman Ned Price told the Reuters news agency on the weekend that the US was “profoundly disappointed”, calling the Syrian president’s trip an “apparent attempt to legitimise” his government.

Abu Dhabi’s push to normalise ties with al-Assad has been going on for years despite Washington’s protests. But the UAE’s main grievances with the US appear to be over Yemen, not Syria.

Missile and drone attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on the UAE and Saudi Arabia intensified in January and February – and the Wall Street Journal, in its article on the allegedly rebuffed calls, reported that the Gulf nations had concerns about what they view as a “restrained US response”.

The US sent fighter jets and a guided-missile destroyer to help bolster Emirati defences in the aftermath of the attacks, while US forces in the UAE also said they helped intercept Houthi missiles aimed at an airbase where they are stationed in the country.

But the Emirati leadership has pushed the Biden administration to designate the Houthis as a “terrorist” group, a move that rights organisations have warned would worsen the country’s humanitarian crisis. A Saudi-led, US-backed coalition that included the UAE intervened in Yemen in 2015 to push back the rebels, who had taken over large swathes of territory, including the capital, Sanaa.

Annelle Sheline, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a US think-tank, said that despite the purported frustration from the Gulf countries, the Biden administration has backed Riyadh and Abu Dhabi against the Houthis, both in rhetoric and practice.

“From my perspective, this notion that the US isn’t doing enough to support what the Saudis and Emiratis are doing in Yemen just seems somewhat absurd,” she told Al Jazeera last week. “But I know that in particular, the UAE wants the US to redesignate the Houthis as a terrorist organization.”