Senior UAE official says re-establishing Iran trust important but difficult

A senior UAE official said on Monday that rebuilding trust with Iran will be difficult but necessary, in an apparent olive branch to Tehran after months of Iranian strikes on the Gulf. Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE President, also said Gulf countries failed to unite collectively against the Iranian threat during the Middle East war.

What did Anwar Gargash say about rebuilding trust with Iran?

Gargash said dialogue with Iran must move beyond transactional issues to address deeper strategic questions, including security, non-interference, freedom of navigation and economic cooperation. He described trust as "the mountain" the two countries must climb, saying rebuilding a functional relationship with Iran is necessary while restoring broken trust will be far harder.

"Our dialogue with Iran should be ambitious," Gargash said at the Hili Forum in Abu Dhabi. "Trust is the mountain we will have to climb, and there is something worth climbing towards." He added that geography leaves the UAE no alternative to engagement with Tehran.

Why did Iran target the UAE during the war?

The UAE lies across the Gulf from Iran, close to the Strait of Hormuz, and bore the brunt of Tehran's early attacks with 3,300 missiles and drones fired at the country. Iran struck America's Gulf allies after US-Israeli strikes in February decimated the Islamic republic's leadership.

A detente appeared to take hold after a June ceasefire between the US and Iran, but tankers belonging to state-owned ADNOC have faced repeated attacks in recent weeks. Tehran also says it targeted bases housing US troops in the UAE. The UAE denied one reported missile strike on its air base and declined to comment on subsequent Iranian claims.

Why did Gulf states fail to unite against Iran?

Gargash said Gulf countries responded individually with strength and resolve but failed to translate that into a coordinated regional strategy. "What worked so effectively at the national level did not translate with the same effectiveness to the regional level," he said.

He compared the response unfavorably to the Gulf's unity following the invasion of Kuwait and during the Arab Spring, saying the region did not rise strategically to the scale of the Iranian threat this time. Gulf states, he said, failed in translating shared understanding into a united strategic response.