The United Arab Emirates tried unsuccessfully to persuade fellow Gulf states to join a coordinated military attack on Iran shortly after the U.S. and Israel launched their campaign against the Islamic Republic in late February, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

According to the report, UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed personally phoned leaders across the region, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to argue for a collective Gulf response. His counterparts refused.

The breakdown helps explain a series of recent fractures between the UAE and its Gulf neighbors, most notably Abu Dhabi’s shock decision last month to withdraw from OPEC after six decades of membership, a move widely seen as a blow to Saudi Arabia and the cartel it leads.

Saudi Arabia did strike Iran in March, according to the Bloomberg report, but quickly pivoted to backing Pakistani-led mediation efforts to end the war. The UAE, the report said, was upset that it was not invited to play a greater role in that process.

Qatar, after Iran struck its Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas plant – the largest in the world – considered retaliating but ultimately opted not to.

The Trump administration was aware of the UAE’s effort to assemble a joint military response and had hoped Saudi Arabia and Qatar would join, the report said.

The revelations come amid mounting evidence that the UAE has emerged as the most hawkish of the Gulf states on Iran, and the one most deeply aligned with Israel. The UAE has carried out multiple covert strikes on Iran during the war, including an early-April hit on an Iranian oil refinery on Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf, according to earlier reporting from The Wall Street Journal. Bloomberg reported this week that at least one of those strikes was coordinated with Israel as a response to an Iranian attack on the UAE’s Borouge petrochemicals facility.

Saudi Arabia, by contrast, has taken a sharply different approach. After its initial March strike, Riyadh distanced itself from further offensive action, wary of the implications for its oil infrastructure, its Red Sea diversification plans, and the prospect of drawing Houthi forces more deeply into the conflict.

The widening rift between the UAE and Saudi Arabia has reshaped Gulf politics. Saudi Arabia has aligned more closely with Turkey and Pakistan, while the UAE has leaned harder into its Abraham Accords partnership with Israel. According to Axios, when the UAE announced its OPEC departure on the same day Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman convened a Gulf leaders’ summit in Jeddah, the Saudis were “blindsided and livid.”

Personal animosity between the two leaders, combined with longstanding disagreements over Yemen, Sudan and Palestine, has fueled the breakdown, and the Iran war appears to have accelerated it. UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed had initially lobbied Trump to avoid the war, but once it began, pushed for a decisive outcome, determined that Iran not emerge emboldened. Mohammed bin Salman, by contrast, was initially supportive of the war but quickly sought an off-ramp as damage to the Saudi oil economy mounted.

The Trump administration, U.S. and regional sources told Axios, was slow to recognize the depth of the rift and chose not to intervene as it deepened. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly told both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi early in the crisis that Washington would not take sides.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)