Revelations about UAE and Saudi strikes on Iran do not suggest a unified Gulf strategy against Tehran, with the Emiratis favoring a hawkish approach aligned with the Israelis and the Saudis favoring one of deterrence, a divergence that will leave the United Arab Emirates more exposed to future Iranian retaliation. On May 11, The Wall Street Journal reported that the United Arab Emirates had conducted multiple strikes against Iran, including an April 8 attack on the country's Lavan Island, as the U.S.-imposed ceasefire was about to be enacted. A day later, Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia had also conducted airstrikes on Iran in mid-March to try to convince Tehran to ease away from attacks on the kingdom. Emirati and Saudi officials have not publicly commented on the reports, but they were the first reputable confirmation of Gulf Arab military strikes in the course of the Iran war. The United Arab Emirates has maintained a more hawkish rhetorical stance against Iran than its Gulf neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, which has adopted a more balanced position that favors deterring Iran over defeating it. On May 12, a U.S. official also confirmed that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had deployed an Iron Dome air defense system and support troops to the United Arab Emirates during the war, confirming earlier rumors.

• The Emirati strikes reportedly targeted Iran's oil refinery on Lavan Island. The targets of the Saudi airstrikes remain unclear, but they reportedly occurred in conjunction with diplomatic messaging to Iran that Saudi Arabia would expand its strikes unless Tehran reduced its attacks on the kingdom. 
• Since the conflict began on Feb. 28, Iran has launched more than 2,800 attacks against the United Arab Emirates, targeting crucial oil and gas facilities, hotels and airports. 
• Since UAE-Israeli relations were normalized in 2020, the United Arab Emirates has supported Israel's anti-Hamas strategy in Gaza, while Israel has deployed Barak-2 air defenses to the Gulf country. In contrast, Saudi Arabia has publicly distanced itself from Israel, despite some behind-the-scenes security cooperation, and has refused to normalize ties until there is a viable path to a Palestinian state.

The United Arab Emirates, and in particular its capital emirate, Abu Dhabi, has long maintained a hawkish stance toward Iran due to a territorial dispute and ideological concerns about Iran's regional influence, which only deepened with the recent war. Abu Dhabi, led by President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has long seen Iran as its chief security concern. This is due in part to Iran's control of three disputed islands in the Persian Gulf, which the late Shah seized from the United Arab Emirates on the eve of its independence in 1971. But Mohammed bin Zayed also sees Iran's regional influence as a rival political model that seeks to destabilize the Gulf states and the Emirates itself, driving Abu Dhabi's anti-Iran policies that have been a hallmark of its foreign policy since the 2000s and have seen the United Arab Emirates back rival proxies in places like Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Abu Dhabi sees political Islamist movements, including Iran's Islamic Republic, as a potential ideological contagion that might threaten the more secular monarchies of the Gulf. In the course of the Iran war, the United Arab Emirates endured more attacks than any other country, in part because of its hawkishness toward Iran, its relations with Israel and its prominence as a global economic symbol. The Iranian attacks on the United Arab Emirates have, in turn, sparked an Emirati nationalist backlash against Iran. 

• In 1971, Iran's Shah seized Abu Musa and the two Tunb Islands, which were largely uninhabited at the time, to establish dominance over the Persian Gulf following Great Britain's withdrawal from the region. Both islands hold significant strategic value: the Tunb Islands are vital for controlling the nearby Strait of Hormuz, while Abu Musa serves as a key location for intelligence and operations against the United Arab Emirates due to its proximity to Dubai.
• In 2022, the United Arab Emirates suffered a series of cross-border attacks by Iran-backed Yemeni Houthis, threatening its reputation as a secure business hub. This prompted the Gulf country to reduce its direct military involvement in Yemen, where it has since focused on empowering local proxies to maintain its anti-Iran and anti-Islamist objectives there.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has steadily shifted its approach toward Iran, moving from a hawkish, assertive foreign policy to one primarily focused on deterrence and regional neutrality. After assuming office in 2017, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman initially embraced the United Arab Emirates' more hawkish view of Iran. But since 2019, he has steadily shifted away from this approach due to several key factors, including: the failure of the Saudi military intervention in Yemen against the Houthis to yield a decisive victory, instead exposing the kingdom to regular missile and rocket attacks; the realization that the United States would not provide Saudi Arabia with expansive security guarantees after it failed to respond to the Iran-backed 2019 attack on the Abqaiq oil facility; and finally, Riyadh's success in reaching a China-mediated detante agreement with Tehran in 2023, de-escalating regional tensions. While Saudi Arabia still does not trust Iran, it has embraced a non-confrontational strategy, viewing Iran as a permanent regional reality it must manage. Consequently, the Saudi goal recently has been to secure its domestic economic transformation (under the kingdom's ambitious Vision 2030 diversification plan) by focusing on deterring Iran and its proxies, rather than attempting to defeat or destabilize the Islamic Republic. This shift toward greater risk aversion compared with the United Arab Emirates likely helps explain Tehran's relative restraint in targeting Saudi Arabia during the recent conflict; while the kingdom has faced nearly 500 Iranian attacks, this is still far fewer than the thousands of strikes directed at the United Arab Emirates.

• Until a 2022 ceasefire was reached in Yemen, the Houthis launched frequent attacks against Saudi Arabia, with some reaching as far as Riyadh, threatening the country's economic diversification efforts. Saudi Arabia also lost hundreds of troops in Yemen fighting the Houthis.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are now more likely to get directly involved in any future U.S.-Iran military escalation, but any Saudi operations will likely remain limited and focused on restoring deterrence, whereas the Emiratis are more likely to take more expansive action focused on destabilizing Iran and potentially retaking its lost islands. The recent airstrikes indicate a shift in the risk calculations for both countries, which had previously avoided directly attacking Iran in prior rounds of regional confrontations. But their strategies differ in intent, with the Saudis likely prepared to engage in more limited missions designed to restore deterrence, such as one-off airstrikes, while the Emiratis are more likely to favor more aggressive, persistent operations to undermine the Islamic Republic and potentially retake its lost islands. Between the two, Iran is likely to view the United Arab Emirates as a greater threat, given its connections with Israel and its more long-term, hawkish stance, making it a primary target of future Iranian attacks. As a result, if the United States pursues further military escalation against Iran, the United Arab Emirates will likely provide direct military support rather than just basing rights for U.S. forces. Should it remain an air campaign, this support would likely include Emirati Air Force involvement and independent strikes on Iranian energy, military and civilian infrastructure that might facilitate Iranian attacks on the United Arab Emirates. In a less likely but still plausible scenario in which U.S. ground troops begin landing on Iranian islands, the United Arab Emirates could send in its own airborne and marine forces to try to recapture the disputed islands it claims in the Persian Gulf. Emirati special forces might also play a supportive role in U.S. landings on other islands in the Gulf, attempting to take advantage of the military momentum against Iran to deploy Emirati forces against key Iranian targets. Meanwhile, the Saudis are likely to focus on air power and strikes on Iranian targets in proportional response to Iranian strikes on Saudi Arabia itself. Launching a major campaign against Iran would also risk unraveling Saudi Arabia's fragile ceasefire with the Houthis in Yemen. 

• UAE forces have trained for decades for possible amphibious landings in the Gulf as part of their overall goal to regain control of their disputed islands. Emirati ground forces have been deployed in Yemen and Afghanistan, while UAE intelligence services and special forces have worked in Libya, Syria and Sudan. Still, with a small ground force, the United Arab Emirates is less likely to land on the Iranian mainland, even if U.S. forces do so in this currently more remote scenario. 
• The United Arab Emirates Air Force is equipped with F-16s, Mirage and Rafale fighter jets, giving it a qualitative advantage over Iran's remaining air force and defenses, and has combat experience in Syria and Yemen. Saudi Arabia's air force is mostly equipped with F-16s and Eurofighters, and has proven combat experience in Yemen. 
• Saudi Arabia maintains a larger ground force than the United Arab Emirates, but much of it is tied up in the National Guard (which is focused on internal security) or the conflict in Yemen. The kingdom also has a larger navy and Marine component, but it is less inclined to deploy them against Iranian islands because it has no territorial disputes with Iran, unlike the United Arab Emirates. 

Even in the absence of a fresh military escalation with Iran, the United Arab Emirates's anti-Iran stance will likely harden, leading to deepened cooperation with Israel and a greater willingness to conduct covert operations against Iran in the future. With IDF forces already deployed defensively in the United Arab Emirates, the Emiratis are increasingly likely to consider a deepening of intelligence and covert ties with Israel to allow it to use Emirati territory to conduct covert operations inside of Iran itself. Such covert operations, run either by Israel's Mossad or in conjunction with Emirati intelligence services, would aim to undermine Iran's nuclear program, arm and inspire opposition groups, and threaten Iran's economic model in the long term, with the ultimate goal of weakening the Islamic Republic and eventually destabilizing it to the point of collapse. In scenarios in which the United States disengages from the conflict but Israel continues its own campaign against Iran, the United Arab Emirates would likely expand its support for Israel, going beyond more routine cooperation like intelligence-sharing to potentially hosting Israeli warplanes and/or drones for future strikes against Iran. This cooperation could also include conducting joint airstrikes alongside the Israeli Air Force in future rounds of escalation.

• According to American media reports, U.S. President Donald Trump has considered declaring victory and walking away from the Iran conflict. This move would shift the responsibility of managing a more aggressive Iran to Israel and the Gulf states, removing direct U.S. military involvement. The conflict is highly unpopular in the United States; the Silver Bulletin, a composite of polls, finds 56% of Americans oppose the war as of May 11. 
• Despite relatively high levels of anti-Israel sentiment in the country, the United Arab Emirates maintains more flexibility than Saudi Arabia to strengthen ties with Israel because its majority-foreign population has minimal political influence over the monarchy. 

Saudi Arabia's strategy toward Iran will remain more restrained by comparison, centered on deterrence rather than undermining the Islamic Republic or deepening overt ties with Israel, but a future Iranian escalation against the kingdom could prompt Riyadh to adopt a more aggressive stance. Unlike the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia is likely to avoid high-risk operations, such as sending ground troops to recapture islands or landing on the Iranian mainland. Instead, the Saudi military — primarily its air force — will likely focus on proportional airstrikes against Iranian targets in direct response to any future attacks on the kingdom itself. However, this restrained posture could shift toward more expansive operations if Iran launches a campaign to destroy critical Saudi infrastructure, such as power plants, desalination facilities or energy infrastructure. While Riyadh remains wary of the high economic risks to its Vision 2030 domestic transformation, significant civilian casualties or a major energy supply destruction could prompt the kingdom to launch a more extensive retaliatory campaign alongside the United States and/or the United Arab Emirates. But Saudi Arabia remains unlikely to normalize or overtly deepen ties with Israel, as this could expose the kingdom to Iranian retaliation triggered by future Israeli actions, should the United States cut a deal with Iran or disengage from the conflict. Saudi Arabia is also wary of embracing Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's current government, whose policies in Gaza have been highly unpopular among the Saudi public. 

Deepening hawkishness toward Iran will expose the United Arab Emirates to more frequent and severe Iranian-linked attacks that weigh on its economic model. Iran is more likely to see the United Arab Emirates and Israel as part of a coherent anti-Iran camp and link their behavior. As a result, Israeli provocations could readily spark retaliation against the United Arab Emirates from Iran and its proxies, while Iran may gain a vested interest in covert operations to undermine the United Arab Emirates' economic model (which relies on a high perception of security) through sabotage, cyberattacks and even militant operations on its soil. If Israel deploys more troops to the United Arab Emirates, Iran would likely target those forces in future rounds of regional escalation and could expand the target set to civilian infrastructure throughout the United Arab Emirates. This dynamic will keep the risk of war lingering over the United Arab Emirates' economic model, driving up borrowing and insurance costs, while potentially hindering its ability to attract and retain foreign workers. It will also incentivize the United Arab Emirates to invest more heavily in Israel-style civil defense, such as air-raid shelters and early warning systems, creating new construction costs and a fresh burden on the national budget. In contrast, while Saudi Arabia will remain exposed to future covert and overt attacks by Iran and its proxies, its more restrained stance toward Iran will limit its vulnerability compared to the United Arab Emirates. With both the Emiratis and Saudis vying for Gulf economic supremacy, this difference will likely result in a comparative gain for Saudi Arabia's business environment and further strain relations between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

• Iran-backed militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen could conduct strikes on the United Arab Emirates to threaten its economic model and attempt to deter it from hosting Israeli troops. 
• In 2024, Israel twice had direct exchanges with Iran without involving the United States; the first was prompted by Israel's attack on Iran's consulate in Damascus and the second was prompted by Israel's assassination of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. Similar Israeli missions in the future, regardless of whether they use basing in the United Arab Emirates, could spark Iranian retaliation against the United Arab Emirates.