The old Middle East is dying in front of us.
For Jews whose families were exiled from this region, the existence of a Persian Gulf state that defends Israel with our soldiers on its soil is something close to a miracle.
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
This is a guest essay by Hen Mazzig, an Israeli writer, speaker, and social media influencer.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
The number that should grab your attention is 550.
That is how many ballistic and cruise missiles Iran fired at the United Arab Emirates during the most recent U.S.–Israel–Iran war — the war that started on February 28th with the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader.
Add 2,200 drones — more than Iran fired at Israel.
Read it twice.
The country that signed peace with Israel almost six years ago, that opened embassies and trade corridors and tourism routes, absorbed more Iranian fire than the country Iran has spent nearly half a century pledging to destroy. And while Saudi Arabia hosts a Gulf summit in Jeddah this week to perform unity, Abu Dhabi announced on Tuesday that, effective May 1st, it is walking out of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and OPEC+ (after almost 60 years inside the cartel) without consulting anyone.
The two facts are the same fact.
The headlines will frame the UAE’s withdrawal as an energy story. The story is political. Concede the obvious first: The UAE has spare production capacity that Saudi quotas have suppressed for years. The Emiratis benefit from pumping more crude in a tight market. Now ask why they chose to announce it now, the day Saudi Arabia is performing Gulf brotherhood for the cameras.
Energy Minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei said the quiet part aloud: “The UAE did not consult directly with other countries before making the decision, not even with Saudi Arabia.” You do not blindside the cartel that anchors your region’s economic order unless you have already decided that the cartel no longer serves you.
So why now?
First, because Iran fired 550 missiles at Abu Dhabi and the cartel structure had nothing to offer in return. Second, because the regional order Saudi Arabia spent decades curating, the careful calculus of OPEC quotas and Sunni solidarity and quiet accommodation with Tehran, became irrelevant the moment Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz and Emirati production crashed 44 percent in a single month.
And third, because the Emiratis looked around at their neighbors during the war and saw exactly what they are. Qatar and Oman whispered apologies to the Ayatollahs from behind the curtain. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait wore the suit of outrage one day, then took it off the next.
The context for OPEC is that the cartel is a polite fiction. The Emiratis stopped pretending.
If anyone tells you this came out of nowhere, point them to last December. Saudi Arabia bombed what it called a weapons shipment bound for Yemeni separatists backed by the UAE. That happened months before the war with Iran, and it happened between two countries that are nominally allies. The OPEC announcement only confirms what was already real on the ground.
Now the part most readers do not know yet: In the first days of the war, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed picked up the phone. He called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And Israel did something it has never done in its history: We sent a complete Iron Dome battery to a foreign country, with interceptors, with dozens of Israeli soldiers to operate it, and stationed it on Emirati soil.
According to the reporting, that single battery shot down dozens of Iranian missiles before they reached Emirati cities. It was the first time the Iron Dome was operationally deployed outside Israel or the United States.
An Emirati official told Axios what the deployment meant from the inside: “It was a real eye-opening moment. To see who our real friends are.”1
When the initial Abraham Accords were signed in 2020, this would have read as fantasy.
Now, it is what the difference between cold peace and warm peace actually look like. Egypt and Jordan signed treaties with Israel decades ago and, to this day, their public squares treat us as a contagion.
The Abraham Accords were always something else.
The Emiratis built the infrastructure and opened the banks. They condemned the terror attack near Israel’s consulate in Istanbul, and they issue statements every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, while almost no other Arab capital says a word. When the missiles started flying, they asked us for our most precious defensive technology, and we gave it to them, and our soldiers stood next to theirs on the rooftops of Abu Dhabi.
Call that what it is: alliance.
The Iranians understand this better than the West does. That is why Iranian state media spent the war calling the Emiratis traitors and warning Emirati Muslims to evacuate the ports. From Tehran’s perspective, the UAE committed an unforgivable sin: They invited the Jewish state into the Persian Gulf, the Iranian regime’s claimed home court, and gave Israel exactly the foothold the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spent half a century trying to deny us.
The Emiratis did not flinch. Their UN ambassador used the war to publicly resurface the UAE’s claim to the three islands Iran occupies in the Strait of Hormuz. Their president, on camera, warned anyone listening that Emirati softness is a costume: “Don’t let the Emirati appearance fool you. The UAE has thick skin and bitter flesh.” That is not the voice of a country planning to drift back into the cartel.
Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is still trying to manage the Iranians; still hosting summits where unity gets performed for cameras while the actual decisions get made in Abu Dhabi without anyone bothering to call Riyadh. The rivalry between Mohammed bin Zayed and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, quietly visible in Yemen and Sudan for years, has just broken into the open.
The war is not over. The April ceasefire is holding only in part. The Strait of Hormuz is still mostly closed, six ships passing per day where there used to be a 130. Iran’s regime is wounded but standing. Tehran’s latest proposal is reportedly unacceptable to the White House. Call this an interlude.
What gets built during the interlude will define the next decade. The grand project nobody wanted to talk about during the fighting is suddenly central again: the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), the trade corridor involving India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, and Jordan before the resources and other goods ultimately arrive in Europe. The original concept, with Asian cargo passing through Emirati ports, has been compromised by Hormuz’s vulnerability.
What is replacing it is more interesting.
The UAE has signed a $2.3 billion joint venture with Jordan to build a 360-kilometer rail line from the mining heartland to the Port of Aqaba, effectively replacing Saudi Arabia as Jordan’s lead infrastructure partner after Riyadh let the project stall for five years. The corridor that emerges from the rubble will run through us.
Almost six years ago this summer, the Abraham Accords were signed. They were dismissed at the time as a vanity project, a photo op, a deal between elites that would not survive contact with the Arab street. The war just tested those relations in the most brutal way imaginable, and they did not crack. They got stronger.
For most of our modern history, we have been told that we have no real friends, only interests; that every alliance is provisional; that every embrace ends at the door of the synagogue.
The cynicism is earned, but is also a prison.
The Emiratis took 550 missiles for a peace they signed with us. They asked for our help, and we gave it. We did not ask them to apologize for anything, and they did not ask us to apologize for being the Jewish state.
For Jews whose families were exiled from this region within living memory, from Baghdad and Tunis and Cairo and Tripoli, the existence of a Persian Gulf state that defends Israel with our soldiers on its soil is something close to a miracle. Our parents and grandparents and great grandparents were thrown out, and their descendants were not supposed to come back like this.
The old Middle East — organized around Sunni solidarity, managed Iranian appeasement, and ritual hostility to the Jews — is dying in front of us. What replaces it is not yet clear. But for the first time in my lifetime, the country pulling hardest in our direction is an Arab state in the Persian Gulf.
I’ll take that bet.
“Scoop: Israel sent “Iron Dome” system and troops to UAE during Iran war.” Axios.
Hen, excellent article. It really does feel like the old Middle East is dying and something far more pragmatic is beginning to emerge. What Iran and its proxies hoped would isolate Israel may be doing the exact opposite — pushing pragmatic Arab states closer to Israel because they recognize the same threat.
And if the Iranian regime were ever to collapse and be replaced by a more moderate government that wanted peace rather than permanent revolution, imagine what that could mean for the region. That would completely reshape the Middle East in the best possible way. For all the darkness of the past few years, we may actually be standing on the edge of something far better.
The cognitive dissonance this will create among the Jew Haters in the US and worldwide will be a beautiful thing to watch.