Why Is the UAE Positioning Itself as a Hub for International Diplomacy?

Despite initiating untold Russo-Ukrainian prisoner exchanges and a senior presidential aide personally delivering Trump’s letter to the Iranian supreme leader in mid-March as a goodwill gesture, the UAE’s diplomatic intervention was sought by neither Moscow and Kyiv throughout the course of Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” nor Tehran and Tel Aviv at the height of their 12-day conflagration this summer. Both rivalries expose the limits of Abu Dhabi’s international relations double-dealing and how resultant conflicts of interest preclude it from serving as a universally trusted go-between. Being a massive beneficiary of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there is no genuine desire on the sheikhdom’s part to bring about an end to the biggest flare-up in Europe since World War II or facilitate a Moscow-Washington détente that would inevitably pave the way for Western sanctions relief.

The Kremlin’s post-war isolation has seen Russian oligarchs ejected from Euro-Atlantic capitals purchase expensive real estate, dock their yachts and set up shell companies galore in business-friendly Dubai — not to mention worldly, middle-class Muscovites leveraging the glitzy city-state’s extensive flight network to skirt around an EU-wide airspace ban imposed on Russian carriers and access mainland Europe or head even further afield. A similar argument holds vis-à-vis Iran and in particular, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) whose surrogates and frontmen have come to rely almost exclusively on Dubai as their de facto back door to the West amid Trump’s continued “maximum pressure campaign.”

Notwithstanding an existing territorial dispute over three Iranian-administered Persian Gulf islands — Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb — the UAE is the Islamic Republic’s second largest trading partner after China, with Emirati exports to Iran increasing nearly four-fold from $6 billion to $22 billion since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was scrapped. Needless to say, the Emiratis are more than happy to throw Iran’s beleaguered clerical establishment an economic lifeline and in effect, underwrite their own occupation for the sake of insulating themselves from the kind of kinetic action Qatar faced shortly after the Fordow nuclear enrichment facility was stuck by U.S-made “bunker buster” bombs.

Whereas Abu Dhabi’s cozy ties with Moscow have gone largely unnoticed in Western corridors of power to the extent that it was removed from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF’s) grey list in February 2024 and the EU’s “dirty money blacklist” last month, playing footsie with an equally radioactive Iran may be a bridge too far. Helping Yerevan and Baku reach an enduring settlement after nearly forty years of hostility is a golden opportunity for the oil-rich federation to claw its way back into the United States’ good graces given its full-fledged BRICS membership coupled with the sheer number of Emirati shipping firms and UAE-domiciled individuals sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) over their links to Iran’s illicit shadow fleet network.

Applying the finishing touches to what is widely considered a done deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan – barring one or two sticking points – will also remind the international community of Little Sparta’s strategic relevance at a time when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MbS) is convinced that his Vision 2030 modernization push can only be realized by cutting the Kingdom’s “inconvenient” neighbours down to size and leaving them with no real raison d’être. This dangerous zero-sum mentality could see the 39-year-old killer prince, who has a history of shafting those close to him, turn his back on once-mentors UAE President Mohamad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MbZ) and Dubai ruler Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum (MbR) if push comes to shove. With PIF-backed giga-projects like NEOM and Qiddiya afflicted by construction delays, budget overruns and mass layoffs, a vindictive MbS may simply find it more expedient to vent his frustration at the UAE instead of assessing what went wrong.

However keen the Emiratis may be to carve out a niche for themselves as indispensable bridge-builders, there is a very real risk of optics and prestige taking precedence over actually getting a sustainable Armenia-Azerbaijan peace treaty across the finish line. Worse still, Armenia should harbor no illusions about the UAE being a good faith interlocutor and not having a dog in this fight. As an opaque, family-run petrostate that deprives its citizens of the most fundamental civil liberties, subjects women to a patriarchal guardianship system and ranks 164th out of 180 countries in the latest press freedom index by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Abu Dhabi represents the complete antithesis of the open, meritocratic and self-correcting society Yerevan happens to be.