From Neighbor to Target: Iranian Analysts on the UAE

On October 4, strategists Mehdi Kharatian and Ali Samadzadeh as well as Majid Shakeri, advisor to Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Qalibaf, recorded a panel discussion released by the TamamRokh YouTube channel on October 8. The panelists cast the United Arab Emirates as Iran’s principal regional adversary. They called for targeting UAE oil infrastructure and Dubai, and they warned that delay would only raise the cost of confrontation.

• October 8: TamamRokh hosted the panel discussion “The War: A Blunt Assessment of the Past and Realistic Scenarios Ahead” and released a video on its YouTube channel:
  • Ali Samadzadeh argued that under both of President Donald J. Trump’s terms, the United Arab Emirates, like Israel, used U.S. power to advance its regional agenda, saying: “The UAE has turned from a neighbor into a regional node of containment and participation in anti-Iranian plans.” Samadzadeh claimed that Abu Dhabi used its role in sanctions circumvention as a shield while pressing its claim to the islands of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb and that the UAE aligned with India and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor to weaken Iran’s position. He said the UAE had won a strategic concession during the Islamabad memorandum talks – “don’t hit Fujairah” – in exchange for merely “technical” favors, such as releasing Iranian ships.
  • Samadzadeh continued: “Responding to the UAE must be part of our program” in every scenario, because “this is not like Kuwait; it is not like Bahrain.” He pointed to the Habshan-Fujairah pipeline, which moves roughly 3 million barrels of oil per day around the Strait of Hormuz and to “Fujairah port itself” as targets that would “deliver a sustained and significant shock to the energy field” more efficiently than striking ships. He said the main obstacle is not military but “cognitive” suggesting that “the UAE is bringing us some benefit, so it’s good that we don’t hit it.”
  • He also urged haste: “If you put confronting the UAE on the agenda today, damaging it is certainly easier than it will be in a few years,” given its planned purchases of Rafale and F-35 fighters. He claimed that “in a short, one week of war, the UAE expected Iran to collapse.” On day 39 of the war, the UAE “took an independent action against Iran.” He concluded that “The Islamic Republic should not allow itself new hesitation and must take urgent action,” and that it must “remove the UAE entirely from the position of the regional role it designed for itself.”
  • Majid Shakeri, advisor to Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Qalibaf, implicitly threatened Dubai’s airport: “If flights do not take off from our airports, flights won’t take off from the region’s airports either … The region’s airport is Dubai.” He predicted that “The UAE’s influence in Iran will be rolled up but after another war,” and blamed an “Emirati lobby” inside Iran that “will impose another war on us … through America.”
  • In more measured comments, Mehdi Kharatian said he does not reject negotiation with the UAE, but he said that on territorial claims Tehran should tell Abu Dhabi: “You are not big enough for this; if you repeat it, I will certainly confront you militarily.” He called for a “division of interests” in air and sea transit so that Dubai does not “overshadow” Iranian airports and ports. He also urged a postwar order brokered by China, which would agree that weakening the UAE, “an ally of Israel and India,” serves everyone’s interests.

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