For over a decade, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates always projected an image of a near-perfect strategic alignment. They were seen as the twin pillars of the Arab Gulf order, which was bound by bloodlines, ideology, capital, and a shared obsession with stability on their own terms.
Together, they crushed Islamist movements, dictated oil markets, blockaded Qatar, and presented themselves as the region’s ultimate power brokers.
Alliances in the Middle East rarely collapse with a single betrayal. They are actually known to corrode quietly through overlapping ambitions, resource competition and proxy entanglements until one day the guns point inward.
Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, both allies of the United States, crossed that threshold between 2023 and 2026 and the alliance has since slid into proxy confrontation in Yemen and Sudan.
What began as tactical disagreements in Yemen and Sudan has somehow hardened into a direct competition for territory, resources, and influence, culminating in Saudi air strikes against a port allegedly supplying UAE-backed forces.
For the first time in decades, the two most powerful states of the Gulf have found themselves on opposite sides of active civil wars backing rival militias, undermining each other’s aligned partners and quietly preparing for a future where partnership is no longer guaranteed.
This is a story of how two friends turned into rivals, not based on ideology, but instead, their priority fixed on gold, ports, oil and geo-strategic space, which is a clear testimony to the importance of material over brotherhood.
Faultlines: Control of Resources
The popular narrative based on the divergent clash of styles portrays Riyadh as the cautious hegemon and Abu Dhabi as the nimble operator.
This narrative framing, however, misses the deeper truth.
The real rupture has been driven by competition for control over strategic resources and corridors across the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa, the Strait of Hormuz and the Southern Arabian Peninsula.
These areas suddenly gained traction due to three factors, that is, supply chain re-routing post Russia-Ukraine conflict, demand for critical minerals including gold and maritime choke points replacing pipelines as leverage.
These issues escalated into points of confrontation because both Yemen and Sudan realised that the convergence of these factors, set against an intensifying global race by certain powers to control strategic resources, directly threatened their interests.
By 2023, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE had begun to realise that, in the future, Gulf power would no longer be determined solely by oil markets but would expand to ports, logistics hubs, mineral access and proxy-secured terrain.
Joint War to Turf War
When Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen in 2015, the UAE was its most trusted military partner. Emirati forces were effective, disciplined and ruthless as well, especially fighting the jihadist groups along Yemen’s southern coast.
But by 2023, the coalition somehow started to look like fiction. Although both were in coalition, they had different objectives.
- Saudi Arabia was looking forward to a totally weak, dependent, but intact and manageable unified Yemen. Fragmentation would have threatened Saudi border security with regard to migrant flows and Iranian exploitation. Above all, Riyadh wanted no hostile or foreign-controlled entity entrenched near its southern provinces.
- For the UAE, Yemen had become a strategic real estate map involving control and influence over Aden, Mukalla, Socotra, leverage over Red and Arabian Sea maritime routes and long-term access to ports, energy infrastructure and security clients.
The driving factor behind this strategy was the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist force with local legitimacy.
Emirati backing and Riyadh’s ambitions were increasingly viewed as existentially threatening. By the year 2024, Saudi officials had privately acknowledged that the UAE was no longer merely backing an ally, but it was actually reshaping the map of Yemen.
The Interplay of Forces
Sudan: Gold, Guns & Gulf Rivalry
If Yemen was the emotional betrayal, then Sudan was the strategic one. Sudan’s civil war had exploded in the year 2023, but the groundwork for Gulf rivalry had been laid years earlier.
Sudan is not just a failed state; it is seen as a resource vault, being one of Africa’s largest gold producers, a gateway between the Red Sea and Sahel and a logistics corridor connecting Africa to Gulf ports.
Abu Dhabi cultivated deep ties with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary organization that controls gold mines, smuggling routes, and borderlands.
The RSF offered something formal governments could not: direct access to resources without bureaucracy. This was a familiar playground for the UAE exercising influence through militias, logistics networks, and commercial intermediaries with plausible deniability.
Riyadh backed the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), but not out of affection; rather, out of fear of precedent.
If paramilitaries backed by external patrons could carve up Sudan, then what stopped the same model from spreading across the Red Sea?
Sudan became the first clear indication that Saudi Arabia and the UAE were backing opposite sides in the same war with incompatible endgames. What Yemen hinted at, Sudan confirmed clearly, indicating that it was ‘not a coordination, but it was a competition’.
Transformation From Competition to Conflict
The situation further changed in late Dec 2025.
Saudi intelligence tracked a shipment arriving at Mukalla Port in eastern Yemen, a port considered critical not just for trade but for energy and military logistics.
Riyadh claimed the shipment contained weapons and armoured vehicles destined for STC forces. What made this development explosive was not just the allegation but the implication because of UAE linked support to a separatist force operating near Saudi borders during a fragile de-escalation phase.
As per Riyadh’s perspective, this crossed a threshold; thus, Saudi aircraft struck the port. This was not a warning shot, but it was a strong message that even allies are not exempt from enforcement.
Within hours of this strike, Yemen’s Saudi-aligned government demanded that all UAE forces leave immediately, suspending all defence agreements.
Gulf markets dipped and diplomats scrambled to contain what many quietly called a fracture within the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Abu Dhabi denied the allegations, but the damage was done. Days later, the UAE announced that it was withdrawing its remaining troops while the STC escalated its push toward de facto independence.
The signal was unmistakable that Saudi Arabia and the UAE were no longer fighting the war with a common goal.
Alliance to Adversarial Co-existence
What makes this profound rupture is not hostility, but strategic incompatibility. While Saudi Arabia wants borders respected, states preserved with dignity and influence exercised from capitals, the UAE has a different perspective.
The UAE seeks nodes, not nations; access, not flags; and leverage over territory without ownership. These visions can coexist only temporarily.
Thus, this coexistence finally ended by the beginning of the year 2026. Yemen and Sudan are not anomalies, but now they are templates for future rivalry involving Red Sea ports, African resource belt, proxy forces with Gulf patrons and deniable confrontation instead of an open war. The situation has now gravitated to 4th-generation competition beyond alliance politics.
Implications Beyond the Gulf
The Saudi-UAE rupture weakens the very idea of a unified Gulf bloc. There will be more economic competition in the region now.
The rift creates an opening for Iran, Turkey and external powers to exploit any one of them for their own interest in the region.
The crack will force smaller Gulf states to hedge and complicate the United States’ strategic planning.
The Pakistan-Saudi Arabia Strategic Defence Mutual Agreement in September 2025, followed by a 3-hour visit by His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the UAE to India on 19 January 2026, is a testimony to the region’s external alliances.
The partnership between close allies, which has finally turned the critical resource zone into a contested arena, will definitely impinge on the safety of sea routes and resources in the region. Most importantly, it marks the end of Gulf consensus politics.
The Middle East is entering an era in which wealthy allies will compete like mid-sized powers, using capital, militias and logistics rather than declarations.
This conflict also weakens the regional order that both Russia and China quietly benefit from, but how much they would directly intervene is difficult to guess under the prevailing global security scenario.
As far as India is concerned, its core interest lies in a cohesive, stable and cooperative Gulf that remains focused on economic transformation rather than geopolitical rivalry and prolonged instability.
Conclusion
The conflict in the region has transformed the scenario from brotherhood to a resource race. Saudi Arabia and the UAE did not fall over ideology or personality; the map changed them, as they could not afford to share the space.
Yemen and Sudan have both exposed the truth that Gulf leaders rarely publicly admit: alliances in the region last only as long as interests do not collide.
They have clearly demonstrated to the world that when gold, ports and influence came into play, then brotherhood gave way to rivalry.
Finally, the Saudi-UAE relationship has not cracked, but rather transformed from partnership to managed competition. In the Middle East, this phase of managed competition is the most dangerous phase of all.
So, finally, in essence, the ongoing Saudi–UAE conflict will weaken the region, empower adversarial forces, prolong wars and inject economic volatility into an already turbulent Middle East. For the region, the cost would not merely be a diplomatic discord but a long-term erosion of stability and strategic autonomy.
- Lt Gen Abhay Krishna (retd), PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, SM(G), VSM, is a former Army Commander of South Western, Eastern, and Central Army Commands.
- Views expressed are the author’s personal.
