The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has been a strategic setback for the United States and has generated a series of profound questions about the future of the Middle East and the U.S. role in the region. Among them are questions about the utility of the regional security arrangements the United States has constructed over many decades. At the heart of those arrangements is the U.S. military basing architecture throughout the region. That physical presence, intended to provide protection, has instead created vulnerabilities, with Iran not only targeting U.S. bases but also critical infrastructure throughout the Gulf. In addition to questions about the reliability of the United States as a security guarantor, the war has only furthered growing concerns about Israeli militarism and the ability of the United States to contain its close partner.
Although the United States remains deeply embedded in the security architecture of its Gulf partners and interlinked with their economies, successive U.S. administrations, including the current one, have committed, at least rhetorically, to creating a more durable security order that is less dependent on U.S. presence. Unlike the 1956 Suez Crisis, however, which saw a changing of the guard as a retreating British empire gave way to an increasingly assertive post-war United States, no alternative has yet emerged to replace the United States as a regional security guarantor. There are also no signs that Washington is yet willing to fundamentally reassess its approach to the region.
Building a stable Middle East that is less dependent on the United States will be a difficult job under any circumstance but stands to be further complicated by the growing rift between two key U.S. partners, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The two countries now find themselves divided by their competing visions for the region and increasingly at loggerheads on key regional issues.
For Washington, which has traditionally sought to create greater interoperability and cooperation among its Gulf partners, these fissures portend a future in which Gulf security is undermined by sharpening divergences, further limiting the ability of the United States to soberly assess the means by which to rationalize its presence in the region, a task at which it has so far miserably failed.
The Saudi-UAE rift predates the war and appears undimmed despite the shared threat faced by Gulf nations as they found themselves to be convenient targets for Iranian retaliation. If left unchecked, the tensions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE are likely to further destabilize an already fragile region, undermine the needed collective approach to regional security and entangle the United States in the acrimonious relations of its partners. To avoid that fate, the United States will need to take seriously the risks posed by further deterioration and actively seek to contain further spillover.
The Growing Standoff
The divide between Saudi Arabia and the UAE grew out of a once-close cooperative relationship, particularly between the two key leaders, Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed. The two men saw themselves as modernizers bent on pushing back against rising Islamist militancy and expanding Iranian influence while establishing a new model of self-sufficiency with respect to national security and military affairs. That partnership was the driving force behind the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen, which proved the limits of such aggressive interventionism but also created friction between the erstwhile partners.
Partnership has since given way to dueling visions. Saudi Arabia has reverted to its traditional role as a status quo power and sees itself as the center of gravity for the Arab world. It has sought to cement the centrality of its economic role while looking to shore up the ailing States of the region, such as Sudan and Yemen. For its part, the UAE feels constrained by Saudi Arabia and no longer wants to defer to its larger neighbor. It has increasingly charted an independent path, as demonstrated by its withdrawal from OPEC earlier this month, and has sought to move beyond its junior partner status by creating a global trading empire, often through partnerships with sub-national forces, most notably in Sudan and Yemen, that have at times threatened to destabilize the Arab State system.
The tension between these countries is on full display in Sudan, where Saudi Arabia and the UAE are lined up on opposing sides of that country’s gruesome civil war. Saudi Arabia is now backing the army and the UAE (despite its denials) is credibly reported to be serving as the primary patron of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Because of the peripheral position of Sudan in U.S. foreign policy, the United States has not fully grasped the import of this growing divide and has proceeded as if the outside rivalries fueling the conflict could be compartmentalized and contained. The Trump administration has sought to channel its diplomacy through the so-called Quad, a grouping that includes it alongside the key outside players, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt, but U.S. efforts to secure a humanitarian truce as a first step toward a peace process have been stymied by a lack of diplomatic urgency that has undermined its ability to push these outside forces to come to an agreement. More ominously, the war and the outside powers driving it are increasingly spilling over into the Horn of Africa, with countries lining up on opposite sides of the region’s numerous fault lines.
Such dynamics are likely to be replicated elsewhere in the Middle East, as demonstrated by the late 2025 clashes between rival Yemeni forces, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE on opposite sides again. These battles pitted the forces of Yemen’s internationally recognized government, backed by Riyadh, against a southern secessionist group backed by Abu Dhabi. When the southern secessionists unexpectedly seized huge swathes of Yemen’s largest province, Saudi Arabia rallied forces and coordinated a counteroffensive that routed the UAE-backed group, but tensions persist. Other fragile settings, such as the occupied Palestinian territories or post-Assad Syria, may also become sites of contestation.
Glimpses of the rivalry have also been on display throughout the war with Iran, with Saudi Arabia backing mediation efforts more forcefully and maintaining more regular diplomatic contact with Tehran. By contrast, the UAE has at times viewed the mediation as skewed toward Iran. These differences in approach have also put pressure on other regional countries such as Egypt. While it has long been forced to balance its relations with its two most important Arab partners, Egypt’s current mediation efforts with Iran have become a source of tension. Riyadh has not stood in the way of Cairo’s role prior to and during the war and is more tightly aligned with it on a host of regional issues, including Sudan. This alliance has naturally created some consternation for Abu Dhabi and raised the specter of a potential post-war reassessment of relations, which could prove costly for an already-fragile Egypt battered by the economic spillover of the Iran war and still heavily reliant on UAE economic support and investment.
In the face of this tumult, the UAE, which has been Iran’s most prominent target during the war, has increasingly linked its security with that of Israel, with which it normalized relations in 2020. But the tightening of ties with Israel now makes it an outlier among its Arab peers who have grown warier and more suspicious of Israel over the course of the post-October 7th wars that have rocked the region. The Trump administration will applaud any tightening of security cooperation between the Arab world and Israel. That said, Washington cannot allow developments on that front to overshadow the more consequential underlying rifts that are driving these two Gulf partners in opposing directions unless it wants to find itself fighting fires in the Middle East and beyond as these key Gulf partners look for advantage elsewhere.
Start with Sudan
Although it may not have the wherewithal to fully squelch these frictions, which have deep historical roots, Washington can do much more to exert pressure on both countries to contain and constrain these ruinous dynamics. A logical starting point for those efforts is Sudan, whose plight has been obscured by the Iran war and remains the world’s direst humanitarian crisis. To bring an end to the conflict there will require diplomatic discipline, focus, and competence that the administration has not been able to muster. Sudan is not simply a humanitarian catastrophe. It is also a competition among outside actors and it is fueling increased conflict risks throughout the Horn of Africa and deepening suspicions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE more broadly. Sudan is neither a sideshow nor a diplomatic backwater. As the site of the most significant friction between the two countries, a lack of meaningful progress there will undercut efforts to de-escalate tensions elsewhere in the Middle East.
As a first step, the United States will need to make clear to its partners that peace in Sudan is a top priority, something it has not done to date. That message will have to come from President Donald Trump himself and will have to be reiterated at all levels of government. The Trump administration will also have to make clear that a lack of cooperation on this issue will have consequences on other aspects of U.S. bilateral relations with each.
With the United States having again engaged in costly conflict in the Middle East, it is difficult to look beyond the Trump administration’s unbalanced and destabilizing policies in the region on a number of fronts. However, any course correction aimed at constructing a more viable and less U.S.-centric regional security order will require a more cooperative and stable regional environment. The current landscape provides a shaky foundation upon which to begin such an arduous task.
