Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two US allies, are competing fiercely for influence in the Middle East, as Washington's presence in the region fades.
Last December, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) held a surprise meeting with journalists in Riyadh and delivered a shocking message. He said the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the country's ally for decades, had "stabbed us in the back."
“They will see what I can do,” he said, according to people present at the meeting.
UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah in 2018. Photo: Reuters
A rift has formed in the relationship between the 37-year-old crown prince and his one-time mentor, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (MBZ), a clear reflection of the fierce competition between the two countries for geopolitical and economic power in the Middle East as well as the global oil market, according to observers.
The two leaders, who spent nearly a decade climbing to the top of power in the Arab world, are locked in a battle over who will lead the Middle East as America's role in the region fades.
Once very close, the two men, Saudi Crown Prince MBS and UAE President MBZ, have not spoken for more than six months, people close to them say.
US officials worry that competition in the Gulf could complicate efforts to build a unified security coalition to counter Iran, end the eight-year war in Yemen and expand Israel’s diplomatic ties with Muslim nations.
"To some extent, they still cooperate. But right now, both seem uncomfortable with 'two tigers in one forest'. After all, it's not in our interest to have them bully each other," a senior US administration official commented.
Publicly, UAE and Saudi officials say the two countries are close regional partners. But behind the scenes, things are very different. In December, after growing divisions over Yemen policy and OPEC production restrictions, Crown Prince MBS convened a meeting with journalists.
The Saudi leader said he had sent the UAE a list of demands. MBS warned that if the UAE did not comply, Saudi Arabia was ready to take punitive steps, as it did with Qatar in 2017, when Riyadh severed diplomatic ties with Doha for more than three years and launched an economic boycott, with help from Abu Dhabi.
“It will be worse than what I did with Qatar,” he declared.
Since the meeting, MBS has made a series of diplomatic moves to strengthen Saudi Arabia’s position. He has asked China to help restore Saudi Arabia’s relations with Iran and then arranged for Syria to return to the Arab League, a process initiated by the UAE several years ago. Syria was expelled from the League in 2011 after the outbreak of its civil war.
MBS is also in talks with the US about normalizing relations with Israel, something the UAE did in 2020. He has also led diplomatic efforts to quell violence in Sudan, where the UAE supports the opposition.
In an effort to ease tensions, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have issued statements outlining their concerns and demands for change, according to officials from both countries familiar with the matter.
In an apparent response to complaints from Saudi Arabia, President MBZ privately warned Crown Prince MBS late last year that his actions were undermining relations between the two countries.
President MBZ accused Crown Prince MBS of being too close to Russia on oil policy and pursuing risky moves, such as a diplomatic deal with Iran, without consulting the UAE, Gulf officials said.
Syrian President al-Assad shakes hands with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan in Abu Dhabi in March. Photo: Reuters
The UAE leader did not attend a summit in Saudi Arabia last December that was attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping. He also did not vote in favor of Syria's return to the Arab League in May. As for MBS, he was absent when President MBZ met with Arab leaders at a regional summit in the UAE in January.
"Tensions are rising between them, partly because MBS wants to step out of MBZ's shadow. Things will get worse, because both countries are becoming more confident and assertive in their foreign policies," said Dina Esfandiary, senior adviser at the Middle East and North Africa program at the independent think tank International Crisis Group.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE once considered each other their closest allies. The two countries became closer during the rise of Crown Prince MBS and President MBZ.
President MBZ became the country's leader at the age of 54 in 2014, when his half-brother, President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, suffered a debilitating stroke. He also sought to strengthen ties with Crown Prince MBS, who began accumulating power after his father King Salman ascended the throne in 2015.
When formulating plans to reform and open up the country, Crown Prince MBS turned to President MBZ for guidance.
Crown Prince MBS and President MBZ have since formed a foreign policy alliance that has intervened in Yemen, consolidated the power of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt, armed Libyan fighters in the divided country's east and boycotted Qatar over its ties to Iran and Islamists.
But now, Crown Prince MBS feels that President MBZ has led him into disastrous conflicts that only serve the UAE's interests, according to Gulf officials familiar with the matter.
Douglas London, a scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, said that as the threats from Iran and terrorist groups recede, tensions between them are likely to continue to escalate. But he noted that the Saudi crown prince has developed a more pragmatic approach to running the country, making it harder for him to take rash actions against the UAE.
The rift became most apparent last October when OPEC decided to cut oil production. The UAE agreed to the cuts, but privately told US officials and the media that Saudi Arabia had forced the decision.
The move reflects a feud between Saudi Arabia and the UAE over policy within OPEC, which Riyadh has long dominated as the world's top crude exporter.
The UAE has increased its oil production capacity to more than 4 million barrels per day and plans to increase it to over 5 million. However, under OPEC policy, it is only allowed to pump no more than 3 million barrels of oil per day onto the market, costing the country hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue.
Increasing oil production capacity also gives the UAE the ability to adjust output to the point where it can influence global oil prices. Until recently, only Saudi Arabia had that kind of market power.
The UAE’s frustration is so great that it has told US officials it is ready to withdraw from OPEC, Gulf and US officials said. At the last OPEC meeting in June, the UAE was allowed to increase production capacity, but only modestly.
The split between the two leaders also threatens to undermine efforts to end the war in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia, the UAE and a range of Yemeni factions are fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels who took control of much of the country in 2014, including the capital Sana'a.
The UAE continues to support Yemen’s separatist movement, which seeks to create a Yemeni state in the south. This could undermine efforts to unify the country. Saudi- and UAE-backed fighters fighting the Houthis have at times turned against each other over the years.
Smoke rises from the site of airstrikes in the capital Sana'a, Yemen, in March 2021. Photo: Reuters
Last December, the UAE signed a security agreement with Yemen’s presidential ruling council that gives Abu Dhabi the right to intervene in Yemen and its offshore waters, a challenge Saudi officials see as a challenge to their Yemen strategy.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia plans to build an oil pipeline from the country to the Arabian Sea, passing through Yemen’s Hadramout province, with a port in Mukalla, the regional capital. UAE-backed forces in Hadramout are threatening those plans.
Farea al-Muslimi, a researcher at the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based Chatham House think tank, said Yemen's opposition forces are preparing for new clashes, threatening ongoing peace talks.
"It is clear that the two Gulf states are increasingly at loggerheads with each other in the region and Yemen is just the first front line," he wrote on Twitter.
Vu Hoang (According to WSJ )
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