Saudi Arabia Wants the UAE Back in Yemen. Tehran Will Set the Pace

The choice of channel tells the story. According to Tactical Report, a Middle East intelligence newsletter, Mohammed bin Salman is pushing for a complete return to the old alliance, not just a military arrangement for Yemen, and he has given the file to Khalid bin Salman rather than to the foreign ministry or the national security adviser. On the Emirati side, the counterpart is Mansour bin Zayed. Two powerful brothers of the two rulers are rebuilding the relationship as a family bond, not a diplomatic negotiation.

There is a second reason. As long as Khalid and Mansour carry the messages, the two leaders have not staked their own names on the outcome. If the talks fail, the failure belongs to the envoys, not to Mohammed bin Salman or Mohamed bin Zayed. That is why the reconciliation can still go either way: it could collapse, or it could take off and leave the alliance stronger than before.

The same newsletter reports that most of the crown prince’s circle backs reconciliation, naming senior royals including Prince Khalid bin Bandar, Prince Faisal bin Turki and Prince Turki al-Faisal. A smaller faction wants a slower approach, and another rejects it outright; the report does not name either.

The case for reconciliation is simple. Saudi Arabia is at war, and it has run out of options for a ground force. Riyadh’s allies are lining up to defend the kingdom. Türkiye and Pakistan activated the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement on October 5 to rush forces to the kingdom, and on October 26 Egypt’s parliament authorised military support for Saudi Arabia by a two-thirds majority. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has drawn the line clearly: Egypt will defend Saudi Arabia but not attack Yemen. Everyone will send soldiers to Saudi Arabia. Nobody will fight the Houthis inside Yemen.

The UAE is the one country that did. Its troops and the southern forces it trained and paid were the backbone of the ground war from 2015. For the Saudi princes who favour reconciliation, an Abu Dhabi that agrees to fight the Houthis again is no longer just an ally but a brother in arms.

The battlefield explains the urgency. Operation Dawn of Yemen, announced on October 5 by Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, to retake Sanaa, has delivered gains near the Bab al-Mandab strait but no breakthrough. The Giants Brigades, the southern force the UAE built in 2016, are doing most of the fighting; the rest of the government’s forces have struggled to advance. Supporters of the deal argue that with Emirati money flowing again, more southern units could move to the Red Sea coast and change the balance.

The doubters in Riyadh are not against the UAE. They are worried about the bill. Abu Dhabi has not said what it wants in return, and two demands frighten them.

The first is inside Yemen: a referendum on independence for the south, the cause of the Southern Transitional Council, which takes its cues from Abu Dhabi. The second is outside Yemen. The UAE left OPEC on May 1 after 59 years, and the two countries have differed over how to deal with Iran. Tactical Report says explicitly that the Emirates could table demands beyond Yemen.

The way the UAE left makes its return harder. In December 2025 the Emirati-backed council seized most of Hadramawt and parts of al-Mahra, Saudi aircraft struck what Riyadh called an Emirati weapons shipment, and Riyadh gave Abu Dhabi 24 hours to pull its forces out. The southern forces stood down, and the UAE formally withdrew.

That exit was quick. The return will not be. Riyadh is not asking a new partner to test the waters in Yemen. It is asking the same partner it showed the door, on a deadline, to walk back in. Any state in that position names its price, and that is why the crown prince is not pressing his princes every day for results. What exists now is a roadmap still under negotiation, with no timetable.

Mohammed bin Salman has his own reasons to move carefully. He started this initiative, and if Abu Dhabi’s terms prove impossible, the failure would be his. Yemen is also where the quarrel became public after years of disagreement smouldering under the surface; repairing the alliance through the very file that broke it is not simple.

On October 26, Khalid bin Salman was in Tehran with Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin, a Mecca pact delegation that Saudi officials said was aimed at de-escalation. It is a last attempt before a wider war. Military analysts have reported a Saudi offer to keep its airspace closed to US forces if Iran reins in the Houthis. If that bargain holds, Riyadh will feel less urgency about the UAE. If it fails, Saudi Arabia will race to rebuild the alliance with the UAE as fast as it can. Cairo showed how closely Riyadh’s partners are reading the Tehran track: Egypt’s parliament postponed its vote twice before approving support on the very day the delegation sat down in Tehran.

The second clock is American. The signals in Washington point to US strikes on Iran soon after the November 3 midterm elections. That would push Riyadh and Abu Dhabi together faster than any envoy can. The threat is already shared: the State Department ordered non-emergency staff out of Saudi Arabia on October 21, urged Americans on October 23 to leave the kingdom, and has thinned its missions from the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait to Israel and Lebanon. States that fight the same enemy while quarrelling are weaker than states that fight it as allies.

Abu Dhabi has its own reasons to say yes. A friendly Saudi Arabia on its border is worth more than a hostile one. Reconciliation could bring the UAE back into OPEC, and it would restore joint defence planning and diplomacy that presses on the same files instead of pulling in opposite directions.

The two countries were at their strongest when they worked as one. Mohamed bin Zayed was long described in the American press as Mohammed bin Salman’s mentor, and both governments backed the same people in Washington: Saudi Arabia has invested $2 billion in Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, according to congressional investigators, and Abu Dhabi’s Lunate added capital in 2024, Reuters reported. One foreign policy made both of them stronger. Working against each other makes both of them weaker.