The Telegraph 1.1M Followers The Saudi-Emirati clash is bad news for the whole world
The Saudi-Emirati clash is bad news for the whole world
Downing Street is fully preoccupied with its homemade firestorm over welcoming a Middle Eastern rabble-rouser here, so it has nothing to say, let alone contribute to calming the crisis as Britain’s two key partners in the Gulf are suddenly at each other’s throats.
Saudi Arabia’s decision to bomb what it claimed was an arms shipment to Yemeni insurgents sent from the United Arab Emirates brought into the open the dangerous tension between the Middle East’s leading oil-rich Sunni Muslim states.
Only recently, the ruling Saudi and Emirati Crown Princes – Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh and Mohammed bin Zaid in Abu Dhabi – had seemed blood brothers in alliance against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. But in fact their failed joint intervention against Yemen’s Houthis, abandoned by the UAE in 2019, poisoned their relations.
The UAE had not withdrawn from Yemen entirely but consolidated its presence in the south of the faction-ridden country, where the oil is. Dominating the energy rich south and its coastline shadowing the route to the Suez Canal as well as a long border with Saudi Arabia give the UAE a potential direct threat to Saudi territory from the south.
Once it was all so different when MBS seemed to want to turn Saudi Arabia into a mega-version of the UAE. The Saudis were set to follow its model of encouraging ex-pats from non-Muslim countries like Britain to bring their business skills and money to invest in Dubai while leaving their Western democratic politics at home. Now MBS’s planned multi-billion dollar tourist hub at Neom on the Red Sea could be a target in a shooting war. The mischievous Houthis have claimed that the UAE offered them millions of dollars to switch their drone attacks from Red Sea shipping approaching the Suez Canal and Israel’s port at Eilat to the building works at Neom!
The UAE is tiny by comparison with Saudi Arabia, but its relative wealth per capita is much greater. The UAE has a docile population kept sweet by economic success and in line by a watchful police. Its military, staffed by many mercenaries, has performed better in regional interventions than the Kingdom’s forces.
Saudi Arabia’s much larger population has seen living standards squeezed as energy prices have not kept pace with demography. Whereas MBZ has cash to fund his geopolitical adventures in a swathe of territory from south Yemen across the Red Sea deep into war-torn states like Sudan and Libya, MBS’s Saudi Arabia has a budget deficit and is trying to attract investment to its Red Sea coast. The Saudis need calm in neighbours like Sudan so as not to frighten off potential tourists and investors.
Chaos from Sudan to Libya and Mali has left vacuums filled with gold and precious stones exported under Emirati mercenaries’ watchful eyes to supply Dubai’s exchanges. That same disorder haunts MBS’s plans for a new Saudi Arabia.
Classic Middle Eastern causes of conflict like attitudes to Israel are a minor aspect of this new crisis. Yes, the UAE has diplomatic relations with Israel and the Saudis have taken up the cause of Palestinian statehood, but the crown-princely antagonism is based on the rival clans’ claims to predominance in Arabia.
But a local conflict between two states sitting at the heart of the world’s energy supply and astride major trade routes won’t remain parochial for long.
Samuel Ramani
The carnage in Yemen deserves the world's full attention
Sadly, this country’s historic role in the region is now in the hands of New Labour’s own Crown Prince, the Foreign Minister responsible for the Middle East, Hamish Falconer, the son of Charlie Falconer – Tony Blair’s veteran consigliere and erstwhile Lord Chancellor – so who believes Sir Keir Starmer will give this crisis the attention he squandered on an Egyptian delinquent? At least Whitehall’s past generations of reviled Arabists would have known where Britain’s real priorities lay.
America still matters but Donald Trump has been courted by all the Gulf despots and may find it hard to mediate without alienating one or all.
Iran will rejoice to see its Sunni neighbours at each others’ throats. If the USA and its European allies take sides – presuming they take the same side (which is not guaranteed for Macron’s France) – Russia, too, will be happy to back whichever Gulf monarchy is spurned by Washington and Co.
China is anxious for peace in the region where it has vast commercial interests and which it needs for safe trade routes to Europe for its exports and back to China for its energy imports. Beijing has its own reasons for pouring oil on troubled waters in the Gulf. But as Mao’s veteran foreign minister, Zhou Enlai, once warned, “Distant waters cannot quench local fires.”
2025 has been a year of dramatic foreign policy crises, not least in the Middle East. Sadly, 2026 looks set to open with the worst imbroglio yet. A Saudi-Emirati conflict spreading contagiously across the region and deep into Africa will hit the world economy badly, whoever gets the upper hand.
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