Saudi Arabia and the UAE Must Mend Their Rift Before the Houthis Take Yemen

The choice of host and guest says more than the statements. Sheikh Mansour is not a ceremonial figure. He is vice president, deputy prime minister and chairman of the Presidential Court, the brother of President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, and the owner of Manchester City. In recent years he has been the Emirati leader most often sent to Saudi Arabia, attending the Arab and Islamic summits there, and he has good personal relations with both Mohammed bin Salman and Khalid bin Salman.

According to the Saudi defence ministry’s statement, carried by AFP, Prince Khalid extended the invitation “to his brother” Sheikh Mansour. Prince Khalid received him at the airport and saw him off. The make-up of the Emirati delegation confirms the purpose. The National reported that Sheikh Mansour brought Ali Al Shamsi, secretary-general of the Supreme Council for National Security; Ali Al Neyadi, head of the National Emergency, Crisis and Disaster Management Authority; and Dr Nasser Al Nuaimi, secretary-general of the Tawazun Council for Defence Enablement. Those are the people a state sends to plan a war, not to exchange courtesies.

There is also a family logic at work. The first session brought together Sheikh Mansour, the crown prince and Prince Khalid; the crown prince then met Sheikh Mansour alone. Two brothers were talking to two brothers. What neither Mohammed bin Salman nor Mohamed bin Zayed can easily say to the other in public, Khalid bin Salman and Mansour bin Zayed can say in private. Family ties can break deadlocks that formal diplomacy cannot. This was a high-level security meeting, a diplomatic meeting and a family meeting all at once.

The pictures were part of the message. Meetings like this produce hundreds of photographs, and the royal court chooses the ones it releases. A smiling crown prince and a relaxed, brotherly sitting were selected on purpose. Riyadh wanted the region to see warmth.

To see why this meeting matters, start with how close the two men at the top once were. When Mohammed bin Salman rose to power in 2015, Mohamed bin Zayed treated him almost as a younger brother. As The New York Times reported in 2019, the Emirati leader mentored the young Saudi prince in foreign policy and introduced him to Washington’s networks, including advisers to Donald Trump. The two went hunting together and built their foreign policies side by side. Saudi policy in those years moved almost in step with the UAE’s.

Then the student graduated. Having learned the lessons, Mohammed bin Salman wanted to make his own decisions, and that is a normal course for a ruler rather than a betrayal. Saudi Arabia ended the blockade of Qatar at AlUla in January 2021, restored relations with Iran in a China-brokered deal in March 2023, and opened files on which the two capitals disagreed.

Economic partnership also turned into competition. Since January 2024, Saudi government bodies have been barred from awarding large contracts to foreign companies that do not keep a regional headquarters in the kingdom. Hundreds of companies have moved regional offices to Riyadh. That is the model Dubai built its economy on, and it put the two economies in direct competition.

These were real differences, but they stayed below the surface. Both countries are Egypt’s closest allies, and neither was in the wrong for pursuing its own interests. It took Yemen to turn quiet rivalry into open rupture.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE entered Yemen’s war together in 2015 and fought it together. On the ground, the UAE did much of the work. It built and trained the southern forces: the Giants Brigades, Tareq Saleh’s National Resistance Forces on the west coast, and the units of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), the separatist movement in the south.

In December 2025 the STC launched a sweeping offensive that Riyadh had not approved and saw as a threat to its own security. Saudi Arabia then did something that would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. On 30 December, coalition aircraft struck the port of Mukalla after two ships arrived from the Emirati port of Fujairah and unloaded what the Saudi military said were weapons and combat vehicles for STC forces. The UAE denied the cargo was weapons. Yemen’s Saudi-backed government ordered UAE forces out of the country. Within weeks, Saudi-backed troops had retaken most of the south, and the UAE effectively withdrew from Yemen.

From there the rift went public. The UAE lowered the level of its representation at meetings and events in Saudi Arabia, sending a deputy where a minister would once have gone. The two sides backed opposing camps in Sudan. The biggest blow came on 28 April 2026, when the UAE announced it was leaving OPEC, effective 1 May, walking out of the oil cartel Saudi Arabia leads.

The cost of the split showed up on the battlefield. The southern forces the UAE had built lost their organiser. The Giants Brigades no longer coordinated with Tareq Saleh’s forces, and the southern command could no longer lead its troops effectively. When the Houthis launched their latest offensive, Saudi Arabia could see that these forces were not fighting the way they once had.

On 10 September the Houthis seized the Red Sea port of Mocha after Tareq Saleh’s forces withdrew, and then took Mayun (Perim) Island and the Hanish Islands in the Bab al-Mandab strait, the chokepoint at the mouth of the Red Sea through which about 12 percent of the world’s seaborne oil trade passes. At the same time they turned their missiles on Saudi Arabia. Al Jazeera reported that on 24 September the Houthis claimed strikes on Aramco facilities in Yanbu and a target in Riyadh, and that Saudi forces intercepted six ballistic missiles. Brent crude rose above $108 a barrel. As we have argued, Arab states must stand with Saudi Arabia against these attacks.

Now the front has reached Taiz, the gateway between Yemen’s north, centre and south. The Institute for the Study of War reported on 30 September that the Houthis have ordered a general mobilisation to reinforce their lines, which may signal an intent to keep advancing in Taiz Governorate and along the Red Sea coast, and that Saudi and government forces have been striking Houthi depots on the supply routes near Taiz City. Taiz is where government troops and southern forces are supposed to fight side by side. Their performance there will decide whether the Houthis are stopped.

Saudi Arabia is building a wide coalition against the Houthis. France has promised soldiers, radars and air defences for the Yanbu terminal, and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni called the crown prince on 29 September, the same day as the Riyadh meeting, to stress freedom of navigation through Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab. In the same days the crown prince also spoke to Qatar’s emir and to the head of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council. But this coalition will not move in Yemen before the United States does, and until Washington returns to the fight, Saudi Arabia has to hold the line with the partners it has.

Among those partners, the UAE matters most, because the UAE built the forces in southern Yemen that are now failing without it. Ali Shihabi, a Saudi commentator close to the royal court, told the Financial Times that Riyadh wants Abu Dhabi to manage the southern Yemeni factions and stop them undermining the anti-Houthi front. Saudi Arabia would lead the government’s forces and the UAE would lead the south, as before. Middle East Eye reported that after Sheikh Mansour’s visit the UAE sent two planeloads of officials to Riyadh to coordinate on Yemen.

This arrangement has worked before. In early 2022, when the Giants Brigades drove the Houthis out of Shabwa, the Houthis answered with missile and drone attacks on Abu Dhabi. They struck Saudi Arabia and the UAE every time they lost ground, because coordinated Saudi and Emirati forces were pushing them back. That coordination is the reason the Houthis never took all of Yemen. Today they are trying to take all of it, because the coordination is gone. If the two countries coordinate again, the Houthis will not only stop advancing; they will retreat and be defeated, even with Iran’s support.

Gulf commentary is already full of talk that the Saudis and Emiratis are brothers and that all is well. The reality is harder. The Financial Times reported that neither the UAE nor Saudi Arabia is rushing to restore the relationship in full, and the disputes over Sudan, Somaliland and oil remain. Full reconciliation will not happen soon.

It does not need to. What is needed is a gradual return, starting with the file that cannot wait, and Yemen cannot wait. Saudi Arabia and the UAE do not have time to think it over. That is why the meeting skipped the usual ladder of ambassadors and foreign ministers and went straight to the crown prince and the UAE’s vice president.

There is a scene that has puzzled observers in the West. One American writer said he could hardly believe what he was watching: every Gulf state had been struck by Iran, not one was spared, and instead of uniting to respond, they argued among themselves over how to respond. He called it the product of old quarrels. Had these states acted together, they could have dealt Iran a crushing blow, not because of the size of their armies, but because a single decision is powerful. Opening their bases to American aircraft together, for example, would be one decision with real weight.

Instead each state has gone its own way. Qatar talks of reconciling with Iran. Oman coordinates with Tehran in the Strait of Hormuz. Kuwait and Bahrain refuse to talk to Iran at all. Saudi Arabia is busy fighting the Houthis. The UAE has trade ties with Iran. Who, then, answers Tehran? Every one of these quarrels works in Iran’s favour.

The Gulf Cooperation Council should have been the place where six states agree quickly. Instead it has stopped being effective, and has begun to resemble the Arab League at its worst, where governments meet to trade accusations and leave without a decision.

The stakes now are existential. A Houthi victory would threaten Yemen’s survival as a state, Saudi territory and the UAE alike. The UAE would find itself caught between Iran on one side and the Houthis on the other.