From OPEC to Fujairah, the UAE is the new focus of the Middle East war
Three Indian workers were wounded in the Iranian attack on the Fujairah oil terminal in the United Arab Emirates, the only one that bypasses Hormuz, a development that threatens to reignite the regional conflict, amidst competing alliances and interests. Against this backdrop, Abu Dhabi decided to leave the cartel of oil-exporting countries and consolidate its alliance with Israel. These steps, for Iran, will lead to the “collapse” of the Gulf.
Milan (AsiaNews) – The war waged by Israel and the United States against Iran has not only exacerbated relations between the Islamic Republic and the countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and United Arab Emirates (UAE), but has also fuelled divisions and tensions among the Gulf countries, nominally allies but often rivals.
This ostensibly led in late April to the UAE’s decision to leave the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the cartel that brings together the world's major oil-producing countries, effective 1 May.
The issue is not just about energy and economics, but has profound geopolitical and social implications for the entire Middle East, with the UAE increasingly associated with the "Abraham Accords" signed with Israel.
This is also why the Emirates are now emerging as the focal point of a conflict that only appears to be frozen, but which continues to smoulder under the cloak of international diplomacy (led by Pakistan) that has failed to so far achieve a peace deal.
Alliances and rivalries have varied over time, often drowned out by the clash of arms. Indeed, this is what happened yesterday, when Iran reportedly hit an oil refinery in Fujairah, the terminal of the Habshan–Fujairah oil pipeline, also known as "Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline (ADCOP), considered a key infrastructure for the UAE because it represents the only facility bypassing Hormuz. The attack injured three Indian migrant workers.
The pipeline, with a capacity of 1.5 million barrels per day and expandable to 1.8 million, was built specifically to export crude oil without passing through the rough waters of the Strait.
By targeting it with drones and missiles, the Iranian regime – divided internally between diehards pushing for war and a more moderate, dialogue-minded faction – wants to block the one of two overland transit routes. The other, the Saudi pipeline to Yanbu on the Rea Sea, had to cut its capacity by 700,000 barrels per day because of the Iranian attack in April.
UAE and OPEC: diverging paths
The UAE’s decision to leave the OPEC – a cartel that includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Venezuela, and Nigeria, but not Russia or the United States – has a significance that transcends economic factors alone.
Founded in 1960 to counter to Western powers, OPEC today controls approximately 70 per cent of the world's oil reserves and is able to influence global politics by managing production output, as it did during the great Oil Shock of 1973.
Qatar had already left in 2019, but the jolt triggered by the UAE stems from the deep political tensions in the Middle East and is destined to shape its future direction.
This decision cannot be explained solely by the war with Iran and Tehran's response, which has affected sectors of primary importance to the country, like energy (see yesterdays’ attack) and tourism.
At stake is also a different global vision from that of its Saudi cousins (and rivals), starting with ties with the Jewish state. The UAE established official relations with Israel in 2020, while Riyadh continues to express strong reservations about establishing full diplomatic relations with that country.
This is compounded by the Saudi kingdom's recent decision to boost its military alliance with Pakistan, benefiting from Islamabad’s nuclear shield.
Even more than economics, UAE’s move is part of a global political and strategic shift, with a clear choice of siding with Israel and the United States, but also with increasingly close relations with India.
The UAE shows a desire to increasingly diversify its economy, moving away from oil and focusing on tourism, logistics, innovation, and finance, along a path also undertaken by Saudi Arabia. However, the war and the associated damage threaten to undermine this long-term project.
Rivalry and a new balance of power
The war has further fuelled old divisions and conflicting interests, pitting the UAE against Iran over three islands – Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb – that Iran occupied when the UAE became independent from the United Kingdom in 1971.
These islands strengthen the Islamic Republic's strategic position along the Gulf shipping lanes, extending well beyond the Strait of Hormuz.
Kuwait has already suffered war damage on its soil, in the 1980s due to political violence linked to Iran and the invasion by Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1990.
The states that cannot bypass Hormuz – Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar – are those that have suffered the greatest economic damage from the war.
Conversely, Oman, which controls one side of the Strait, could benefit in the long term, including through a new agreement with Iran, with which it has always maintained strong ties.
Scholars and analysts say that the Israeli-American attack has reopened old rifts and could create new ones among the Gulf states, contributing to a reshuffling of rivalries and alliances.
The war is also undermining the remaining avenues of cooperation, possibly making a region that has experienced great instability and struggling to shore up fragile balances even more dangerous and fragmented.
Analysts and experts currently outline four different alliances at play: Iran with its regional proxies like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and Shia militias in Iraq; the UAE, Israel, and the US; Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; and finally, Turkey and Qatar, linked by a "Muslim Brotherhood" often disliked by the Gulf monarchies.
In this context, the attack on Fujairah risks becoming the spark that reignites the conflict, and it is precisely the UAE that now finds itself on the hot seat. According to some observers, the Emirates have three options, each with its own critical elements.
The first is to absorb the attack and avert an escalation with Iran, after having actively contributed in recent weeks to Israeli-American operations on Iranian soil. The second is to respond militarily to aggression, risking an open war in the Gulf and further exacerbating the oil crisis. Finally, it could request a direct US intervention, via US bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE.
Whatever the case, the explosive situation risks dashing any remaining hopes for a diplomatic solution.
The 'collapse' seen from Tehran
The Tehran Times, the English-language mouthpiece of the Iranian regime since 1979, recently published a lengthy editorial centred on the UAE, its decision to leave OPEC, and the region's new direction, starting from what is seen as the collapse of the old Persian Gulf order.
The UAE’s departure from OPEC was presented by Emirati authorities as a strategic move aimed at greater energy autonomy, but the reality, according to the article, is quite different.
It is instead the “tacit acknowledgment of a deeper geopolitical defeat”, the end of a decades-long project in which the Persian Gulf monarchies attempted to build a regional order that excluded Iran, and the collapse of the security architecture set up in 1981 in which the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (P-GCC) was conceived as a "cordon sanitaire against the Islamic revolution.”
Four decades later, that project is described as “more appearance than reality." Built on the pretence of shared monarchical solidarity, the GCC, for Iran, hides “profound rivalries and contradictory visions of the regional future”.
What held it together “was not a positive common project, but a common enemy: Iran.” But the blockade against Qatar between 2017 and 2021 exposed the depth of the divisions. Saudi Arabia and the UAE attempted to punish Qatar for its relations with Iran and Turkey, but Qatar “resisted”.
The war in Yemen is "another collective humiliation," while the war with Iran is sealing the group’s "disintegration." For Iran, the era of Saudi-dominated OPEC "is over," and the global oil market "operates under a new reality”.
According to Iran, the UAE and its leader, Mohammed bin Zayed, now face a strategic environment that is "fundamentally hostile," with Iran capable of taking action against the Emirates, while Saudi Arabia perceives them "as a competitor whose autonomy must be contained."
The role of "wild card" in the regional deck that the UAE played for years "has ended."
According to Tehran, “Abu Dhabi can no longer compete in the structures that defined the previous order,” while the emerging one “is being defined by powers that do not include the Emirates as a principal actor: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, with Chinese and Russian mediation.
“Abu Dhabi can adapt to this order or resist it, but can hardly shape it,” reads the editorial. Recent events are clear “manifestations of a deeper transformation: the end of the Persian Gulf order constructed under American hegemony.”
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04/09/2008
21/03/2007
