The United Arab Emirates is reportedly privately pushing the United States to launch a ground invasion of Iran, while most other Gulf countries are pushing President Donald Trump to continue the war.
The UAE unexpectedly bore the brunt of Iran’s retaliatory assault, being targeted by more than 2,300 missiles and drones from Iran — more than Israel, a direct belligerent. The attacks, along with outsize damage against its economy, have pushed the country to be the most hawkish of all the Gulf states, with a Gulf diplomat telling the Associated Press that it is lobbying Trump to invade Iran.
Kuwait and Bahrain, which have also been heavily hit, favor a ground invasion. Saudi Arabia was noted as hawkish, while Qatar and Oman favored a diplomatic solution.
The outlet didn’t note what kind of ground invasion was preferred. Many analysts believe any U.S. ground operation will be limited to seizing Kharg Island, Iran’s central oil export hub, and possibly some small islands in the Strait of Hormuz.
Though Abu Dhabi hasn’t come out and said it favors an invasion, its officials have grown more hawkish in their rhetoric.
“An Iranian regime that launches ballistic missiles at homes, weaponizes global trade and supports proxies is no longer an acceptable feature of the regional landscape,” Noura Al Kaabi, a minister of state at the UAE’s Foreign Ministry, wrote in a Monday column in the state-linked newspaper the National. She added, “We want a guarantee that this will never happen again.”
Professor Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an influential Emirati political scientist and public intellectual close to Abu Dhabi, has been posting Emirati irredentist wishes on X, calling for the Emirati takeover of several islands handed over to the Shah before the Islamic Revolution.
“Britain committed a great sin when it handed over the Emirates Islands to the Shah of Iran in November 1971, and America committed a historic error when it gave the Shah the green light to occupy the islands and appointed him the policeman of the Arabian Gulf. It is time for America and Britain to rectify the grave historical injustice against the Emirates by returning the islands and ending the Iranian occupation,” he said on Sunday.
On Monday, he went so far as to directly call for Trump to take the Strait of Hormuz out of Iranian control.
“Freeing the Strait of Hormuz from Iranian occupation will be the most significant tangible geopolitical victory for America and President Trump and the world and everyone participating in liberating it from the control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s terrorism, and in return, its liberation will be the biggest geopolitical setback for the Iranian terrorist regime and may pave the way for its collapse,” he wrote.
Trump has expressed his gratitude toward the Gulf countries for their role in Operation Epic Fury, saying on Friday that Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have shown “bravery” in the war. He lauded praise on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, calling him a “warrior” and “fantastic man.”
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Iran’s attack on the Gulf countries hit them all by surprise, particularly the targeting of civilian and energy infrastructure. Analysts believe the Gulf states were targeted because Tehran was betting on making their situation intolerable, pushing them to use their influence in the Trump administration to force an end to the campaign. The actual effect has been the opposite, with the infuriated Arab leaders even floating the idea of joining the conflict outright.
The UAE’s status as the most hawkish of the Gulf countries comes as little surprise, given its foreign policy hawkishness over the past decade.