The United Arab Emirates said on Tuesday that it would withdraw all of its forces from Yemen after Saudi Arabia targeted UAE-backed separatists in Yemen and demanded a UAE withdrawal within 24 hours.
The dispute between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi marks a nadir in the complex relationship between the two major Persian Gulf oil producers, both of which are hostile to Iran, close to the United States and have key roles in the effort to normalize relations between the Arab World and Israel.
The Saudi strike was on a weapons shipment for UAE-backed separatist forces in the southern port of Mukalla, Saudi officials said. Their UAE counterparts denied that the shipment contained weapons, and expressed “deep regret” at the Saudi accusations.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been allies in the war against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement over the past decade. Infighting between rival factions in Yemen, however, appears to have deepened a rift between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.
The Saudi foreign ministry in a statement Tuesday said that Riyadh “expresses its disappointment by the actions taken by the brotherly United Arab Emirates, pressuring the Southern Transitional Council’s forces to conduct military operations on the southern borders of the Kingdom in the governorates of Hadramout and Al-Mahara, which is considered a threat to the Kingdom’s national security.”
The Southern Transitional Council is a UAE-backed militia that earlier this month launched a major military campaign in which it captured some areas that had been controlled by the Saudi-backed, internationally recognized government of Yemen.
The Emirati defense ministry announced on Tuesday “the termination of the remaining counterterrorism personnel in Yemen of its own volition,” citing “recent developments and their potential implications for the safety and effectiveness of counterterrorism missions.”
The UAE’s foreign ministry in its statement said it “expresses concern regarding the statement issued by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the fundamental inaccuracies it contains.”
The UAE “categorically rejects any attempt to implicate the country in tensions among Yemeni parties and strongly denounces allegations that it exerted pressure on, or issued directives to, any Yemeni party to undertake military operations that would undermine the security of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the ministry said.
Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE expanded their involvement in Yemen, both in direct military presence and with proxies, following the capture of the capital Sanaa by Houthi rebels in 2014. The Houthis are an Islamist movement backed by Iran, which has fired dozens of rockets and launched hundreds of drones into Israel, in addition to disrupting international trade in the Red Sea.
Saudi Arabia has one of the Middle East’s largest and most modern armies, with about 250,000 troops and an air force roughly the size of Israel’s, according to the World Directory of Modern Military Aircraft (WDMMA). It has a gross domestic product of about $1.27 trillion and 38 million people.
The UAE has less than half the GDP of Saudi Arabia, much smaller army and air force, and about a third of Saudi Arabia’s population.
The UAE normalized relations with Israel in 2020. A future normalization with Saudi Arabia is widely considered key to advancing ties between Israel and other Arab and Muslim World countries and entities.
