Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he secretly visited the United Arab Emirates during the war with Iran and met President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, a claim the Emirati foreign ministry swiftly rejected as entirely unfounded.
Netanyahu’s office said the meeting produced a historic breakthrough, but the UAE said the reports of the prime minister’s visit, or of any other Israeli military delegation, were not based on non-transparent or unofficial arrangements. quoted a source as saying the meeting took place in Al-Ain and lasted several hours.
The clash over the visit lands at a sensitive moment for the Gulf state, which has faced Iranian missiles and drones during the conflict and has tried to keep its public line focused on restraint and diplomacy. On 10 May, the UAE Ministry of Defence said air defence systems had engaged two drones launched from Iran, and the country said it had intercepted a total of 551 ballistic missiles, 29 cruise missiles and 2,265 missiles since the war broke out in late February.
The war began in late February after the US and Israel attacked Iran, and a ceasefire between Washington and Tehran has now held for about a month. Even as the fighting has eased, the diplomatic and military fallout has not. The reported on Monday that the UAE had also carried out strikes on Iran that it had not yet publicly acknowledged, while an earlier report in early April said the UAE had not publicly acknowledged an attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island.
The dispute also exposes how carefully Abu Dhabi is balancing its public ties with Israel against its fear of being dragged into a wider regional confrontation. The UAE foreign ministry said its relations with Israel are public and conducted within the framework of the Abraham Accords, but it also stressed they are not based on non-transparent or unofficial arrangements.
That message has been complicated by the war itself. Mike Huckabee said Israel sent anti-missile batteries from its Iron Dome system to help the UAE combat Iranian attacks, and the US ambassador to Israel described the relationship between the UAE and Israel as extraordinary. Iran has repeatedly criticised the UAE for what it sees as closer ties with the US and Israel, even as Emirati officials say they did not seek the war and worked to avoid it.
On Wednesday, Emirati presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said the UAE remained committed to diplomacy and had a right to defend itself, adding that Arab-Iranian relations in the Gulf cannot be built on confrontations and conflicts. For now, the question is not whether the UAE wants to be seen as a battlefield, but how long it can keep its diplomacy public while parts of the war remain deliberately hidden.
