As the Iran war continues in its second month, the United Arab Emirates has positioned itself as the Arab state most closely aligned with the Trump administration against Tehran.
Hit by thousands of Iranian drones and hundreds of missiles while grappling with severe economic disruptions, the UAE now advocates a multinational military effort to forcibly reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which has been under Iran’s de facto control since early last month.
The decisive break from Abu Dhabi’s previous détente with Tehran has come with the UAE’s shift toward a confrontational strategy aimed at removing what some Gulf states see as nuclear, missile, drone, and proxy threats posed by Iran. Such changes in the UAE’s foreign policy put the decades-old Emirati-Iranian dispute over three Persian Gulf islands into greater focus.
On November 30, 1971, just as Britain was withdrawing from the Trucial States (the British-protected group of Gulf sheikhdoms that became the modern UAE in 1971-72), the Iranian navy captured Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs islands. Two days later, the UAE declared its independence. These three islands belonged to the Trucial States, but Iranians had long maintained that they were Iranian territory.
Since the shah of Iran deployed his country’s military to take control of these islands, Tehran has maintained control of them and insisted that all three are sovereign Iranian territory. The UAE, joined by other Arab states, holds that Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs rightfully belong to the Emirates of Ras Al-Khaimah and Sharjah.
Sensitive about territorial integrity, Iranian officials have never responded kindly to any suggestion that the UAE is the rightful owner of these islands. Even China and Russia’s calls for a diplomatic settlement to the territorial dispute have made Iran irate.
For the UAE, Iran’s hold over Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs is a lingering humiliation, and “retaking” them a matter of national pride. Over the decades, Abu Dhabi has repeatedly spotlighted the dispute on the international stage, seizing moments of heightened tension between the West and Tehran to rally global support for its claim.
Strategic stakes
Iran’s military presence on Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs has been consolidated since 1992. These islands have laid at the heart of Iran’s “arch defense,” channeling shipping lanes into narrow, predictable corridors.
With the disputed islands under Iranian control, these lanes have been highly vulnerable to missile and drone strikes, mines, and fast-attack craft staged from the islands. In the context of today’s Gulf war, these disputed islands are strategic linchpins in the struggle for control of the Strait of Hormuz. Some have described them as “stationary and unsinkable aircraft carriers,” making any effort to break Iran’s blockade likely contingent on seizing Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs.
This war has “brought a long-dormant dispute front and center of the conflict,” explained Dina Esfandiary, Middle East Geoeconomics Lead for Bloomberg Economics, in an interview with RS.
“The U.S. has limited options for re-opening the Strait, and all come at a high cost,” Esfandiary said. “Holding these islands would make it somewhat easier for the U.S. to be able to re-open the Strait forcefully.”
Abu Dhabi recognizes that forcefully taking these islands from Tehran would require help from a larger power. Any military campaign would probably need to operate within a U.S.-led framework. But even then, the risks for the UAE would be enormous.
The islands are integrated into the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ deterrence network — linking coastal missile systems, naval swarm tactics, drone warfare, and electronic warfare capabilities, explained Ghoncheh Tazmini, author of Power Couple: Russian-Iranian Alignment in the Middle East.
“Iranian sources show the islands are already integrated into recent IRGC naval drills across Abu Musa, the Tunbs, the Strait of Hormuz, and nearby waters,” she said. “Iran reported these exercises and the use of missile, drone, and air-defence capabilities in precisely this battlespace.”
Iran’s escalatory tactics
Tehran has declared that any military operation to take its islands in or near the Strait of Hormuz — Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb, Hengam, Qeshm, Larak, and Hormuz — will trigger a retaliation against the UAE far greater than any of the attacks launched by Tehran against the Emirates since February 28.
This could further destabilize the already fragile economies in the Gulf.
“If we look at recent history, Iranian strategic behavior, demonstrated during the ‘tanker war’ (1987–88), Iran’s mining campaign of Persian Gulf waters during the Iran-Iraq war, and subsequent crises, suggests that Iran will certainly calibrate an escalatory response,” noted Tazmini.
Given the unpredictability of U.S. foreign policy, the UAE would be wise to weigh the risks of joining a high-stakes military operation that hinges on Washington. Leaders across the Gulf have come to recognize that U.S. President Donald Trump is not dependable.
“There’s obviously the massive risk of going into an operation with Donald Trump and him U turning within forty-eight hours because obviously an operation like this would be far lengthier and would bog down American and Emirati troops for a considerable period of time, which the Iranians will not take lightly, and the Iranians will not forget,” said Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at the Defence Studies Department of King's College London, in an interview with RS.
“So, it comes with a massive price tag in terms of long-term costs for the Emirates,” he added.
In all probability, the UAE and U.S. could successfully usurp control of Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs. However, their extremely serious gambit would require holding the islands and maintaining secure lines of communication after the capture. Any American or Emirati forces stationed there would be sitting ducks, vulnerable to Iran’s missiles, drones, and potentially artillery.
According to Krieg, preventing Iran from striking these forces would require capturing Iran’s entire 950-mile Persian Gulf coastline and all territory up to 20 miles inland — a feat demanding hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground.
“The islands are an inseparable part of Iran. Any move against them would likely be interpreted in Tehran as an attack on Iranian sovereignty, not just a limited tactical operation,” said Tazmini. “This is why the idea is dangerous and for that reason unfeasible.”
Any attempt to wrest Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs from Iran, she explained, “would not be interpreted in Tehran as a limited or tactical move, but rather as an existential challenge to state sovereignty.” This is why, according to Tazmini, this territorial dispute “cannot be separated from the broader architecture of regional security and global energy flows.”
Signaling more than action?
All things considered, the UAE likely recognizes that such an operation may never happen. As Krieg suggests, Abu Dhabi’s talk of supporting a military campaign might be more about signaling than anything else. The goal is to send a message to Trump and anti-Iran hawks in Washington that, amid this war, the UAE stood out among Arab states in backing the American-Israeli effort against Iran. Once the dust settles, Washington will remember this, shaping debates over which Gulf state is America’s ‘best friend’ in the Gulf Cooperation Council.