Following his assumption of de-facto power in 2017, the ascendant Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), looked eastward for a mentor in leadership within the Arabian peninsula. Soon, he would become a trusted ally and close friend of a fellow royal, King Muhammad Bin Zayed (MBZ) of the increasingly influential United Arab Emirates. While Riyadh had long been a center of traditional political power due to its control of Mecca and Medina, the UAE spearheaded the Gulf’s modernization, becoming a global center for technological development and investment. Anxious about the Kingdom’s reliance on oil revenue, MBS looked to his senior Emirati counterpart as a model for his own vision for Saudi Arabia, seeking to diversify the Saudi economy. Sharing similar concerns about a rise in political Islam across the Arab world, the two rulers were seemingly well set to further their partnership.
While the two nations often aligned on foreign policy goals, signs of divergence emerged throughout the 2010s and 2020s. In an effort to further his kingdom’s regional influence, Muhammad Bin Zayed began pursuing a foreign policy doctrine of supporting militant groups specifically centered around strategic geoeconomic positions, such as with Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council (STC) across the Red Sea and Somaliland for the Gulf of Aden. While the utilization of proxy groups was not an especially unique policy for Middle Eastern bellwethers—seen in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya or by the Ayatollahs in Tehran—Saudi Arabia had often prioritized maintaining the regional status quo, often agreeing to work with ideologically unaligned governments to ensure its broader regional interests. What began as a mentor-protege relationship has now fully deteriorated into a full-blown confrontational rivalry, with its implications bound to rock the already historically tumultuous Middle East.
The boiling point that fully unveiled the Saudi–UAE split emerged over the civil war in Yemen, in which both nations have been heavily involved. When Yemen’s Saudi-backed president, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, was overthrown by Houthi militants, a prominent minority Zaydi Shia political organization and militant group backed by Iran,Riyadh began what would culminate into a 10 year armed intervention into its southern neighbor, citing the goal of restoring the Yemeni government displaced by the Houthis.
While the two nations were formally allied over the war in Yemen, initially bonded over their shared goal of opposing Iranian influence through the Houthis, strategic decisions by both states on the ground began to shift as the war continued through the 2020s. While Riyadh prioritized maintaining Yemen’s sovereignty in whole, Abu Dhabi focused on its economically-guided goal of controlling critical land and maritime trading routes. As a result, the previously dismissed governor of Aden (owing to his close ties to the UAE), Aidarus al-Zoubaidi, formed the Southern Transitional Council in 2017, serving as a critical proxy for MBZ in pursuing his regional strategy.
While the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and the UAE-backed STC uneasily co-existed through the Riyadh Agreement, forming a united front against the Houthis, calls for greater STC activity emerged as Yemen struggled to hold territory in the South. In early December of 2025, the STC announced and commenced Operation Promising Future, a sweeping military offensive intending to wrestle control of Southern Yemen, nominally controlled by the Yemeni government (though alleged to be rife with illicit Houthi-aligned activity). Over the course of the month, STC forces rapidly gained territory, securing nearly all territories held by the former independent Republic of South Yemen of the Cold War era.
Already angered by the STC’s—and thereby the Emirate’s—overstep through Operation Promising Future, MBS ordered a mobilization of Saudi forces onto the Yemeni border on the 25th of December, demanding the STC withdraw from its recently acquired territory. In response, the STC unveiled a constitutional declaration on January 2nd, serving as a de facto prelude to an independent Southern Yemen. Hours later, the Yemeni government, backed by the Saudi military, launched a similarly wide-scaled counteroffensive, swiftly retaking territory taken by the STC along with core Southern Yemeni territory.
A critical juncture in the conflict emerged as Saudi airstrikes directly targeted UAE-origin ships positioned in the STC-controlled port of Mukalla, alleged to be holding weapons designed to support the STC. The airstrike served as the first direct Saudi–UAE military engagement, setting the course for wider confrontation across the Middle East. By the 9th of January, the STC had lost almost all of its territory with its leadership fleeing to the UAE and announcing the council’s dissolution.
While an early win for Muhammad bin Salman against his former mentor, multiple fronts are bound to bring the two rulers against one another. Most pressingly, the two sides back differing factions in Sudan as,mirroring the situation in Yemen, Riyadh supports the internationally recognized Khartoum government, while Abu Dhabi silently bankrolls and arms the rebelling RSF centered in the nation’s mineral-rich Southwest. Geopolitically, Saudi Arabia pushes for closer alignment with regional powers such as Pakistan and Turkey, sharing pan-Islamic foreign policy tendencies, as the UAE aligns with India and Israel as a counterbalance. Undoubtedly, the role of the youth within both countries, alongside their proxy states, are bound to play a role in shaping the Cold War. Whether it be calls for greater secularization seen in both MBS and MBZ’s kingdoms or a push for a modernist Islamist renewal, either trend will rely on the support of the nation’s youth, ever impressionable by broader global trends.
Once bonded by shared interests and admiration, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, led by Muhammad bin Salman and Muhammad bin Zayed respectively, now emerge as the primary heads for two conflicting visions for the greater Middle East. While unlikely to engage in direct border confrontation, owing to their shared ties to the United States and other global powers likely to arbitrate, a new Middle Eastern Cold War led by these former allies seems increasingly inevitable.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
