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The United Arab Emirates and Iran held secret high-level face-to-face talks this week, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter. If confirmed, the meeting would mark the first direct contact between the two countries since the war broke out on Feb. 28.
The sources told Bloomberg that the talks represented a sharp shift in position for both sides and that each country had developed a growing recognition of the importance of a more stable bilateral relationship.
Before the war, relations between the UAE and Iran had been relatively cordial. Iran used the UAE as a conduit to circumvent economic sanctions, while the UAE cultivated friendly ties with Tehran in exchange for security benefits.
Once the war began, however, Iran made the UAE — the most economically prosperous country in the Middle East — a primary target. Tehran justified the attacks by claiming that US military bases on UAE soil were being used to strike Iran, but the broader aim was to destabilize the security and economic infrastructure of the regional hub in order to pressure Washington.
Relations between the two countries deteriorated further after reports emerged that the UAE had coordinated directly with Israel in airstrikes against Iran.
Bloomberg said the UAE leadership wants to press ahead with its ambitious economic agenda — including ramping up oil production and attracting investment in AI data centers — without disruption. Abu Dhabi had concluded that it could not afford to leave Iran, just tens of kilometers away, as a persistent security threat.
Bloomberg also noted that the UAE had been one of Iran's largest trading partners before the war and a key transit route for sanctioned Iranian oil, giving Tehran its own reasons to mend ties.
The sources said the UAE's motivation for agreeing to face-to-face talks was a recognition that, even as it views Iran as an adversary, the current Iranian leadership is unlikely to be removed from power — making a détente worth pursuing.
Bloomberg said the UAE appears to be following the same path as Qatar and Saudi Arabia in seeking to repair relations with Iran. Despite suffering heavy losses from Iranian attacks, these Gulf states are increasingly aware of the need to coexist with a neighbor across the Persian Gulf that commands a population of 90 million and formidable military power.
The sources said the UAE had taken a hard line against Iran but failed to persuade neighboring Gulf states to join that stance. A prolonged blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a fragile truce and a stalemate in US-Iran negotiations all contributed to Abu Dhabi's recalculation, they said.
Whether as a result of the UAE's outreach or not, when Iran struck back against US attacks this week, it targeted Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan — but left out the UAE, which had previously been its primary target.
One source said the talks were the fruit of repeated Iranian attempts to reopen high-level contact with the UAE. The UAE had held back, the source said, because it wanted to confirm that any interlocutor had direct lines to the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, and to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Abu Dhabi was trying to determine who actually holds power in the leadership that emerged after much of Iran's top command was killed.
Another source said the channel opened after Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, visited China and met with President Xi Jinping.
yckim6452@heraldcorp.com
