Why The Mullahs Shot The Messenger

Bent on hosting U.S-Iranian peace talks, the UAE did itself no favours by sending hardline Iran critic Anwar Gargash to Tehran last month with Donald Trump’s intimidating letter.

When the current U.S administration chose to pursue dialogue with Iran rather than double down on ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions and kinetic threats, the UAE wasted no time making its good offices available for negotiations that would have seemed unthinkable six months ago. Trump was game, given the $1.4 trillion windfall Abu Dhabi promised to inject into the American economy over the next decade coupled with his lucrative real estate ventures in the federation. The Islamic Republic, by contrast, appeared far more skeptical about the proposed venue and understandably so. Despite Iran-UAE ties improving markedly during Joe Biden’s presidency, bad blood still exists to the extent that Little Sparta was ultimately iced out at the mullahs’ behest in favour of neighbouring Oman.

The Emirati government not only lays claim to three Iranian-occupied Persian Gulf islands, but has also used this unresolved territorial dispute to drive a wedge between Iran and its main strategic partners – namely, Russia and China. It is also worth recalling that one of the conditions set forth by the UAE to rehabilitate Ba’athist Syria and seek Western sanctions relief on its behalf was for then Syrian commander-in-chief Bashar al-Assad to distance his regime from Iran. More importantly, however, the GCC sheikhdom rushing headlong into the Abraham Accords five years ago was perceived as a ‘stab in the back to Muslims’ by Tehran and remains a major sticking point insofar as its rapprochement with Abu Dhabi is concerned.

Admittedly, it is not so much the recognition of Israel by a prominent OIC member state that ruffled the clerical establishment’s feathers as Emirati officials flaunting their unholy alliance with Tel Aviv even amid the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) scorched-earth pulverisation of Gaza and the West Bank. Anwar Gargash, the UAE envoy who conveyed Trump’s ‘take it or leave it’ ultimatum to Ayatollah Khameini, had suggested back in February 2022 that the so-called “deal of the century” would pave the way for Palestinian statehood and lasting peace in the Levant region. Now a senior advisor to Emirati leader Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MbZ), the 66-year-old seasoned statesman has always had a penchant for running his mouth and going the extra mile to please his bosses. Being part of the downtrodden Huwala minority whose allegiance to the UAE is often questioned, Gargash serves as an overzealous mouthpiece for the ‘Bani Fatima’ brothers to reassure them of his fealty. Much of his time as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs was spent smearing Iran and agitating for the rescission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Getting a deeply disliked, self-hating ethnic Iranian to frequent Tehran as a bearer of bad news blew any remote chance the UAE stood of earning itself a seat at the negotiating table. Considering the economic strain Iran is under and the military action it risks facing if nuclear talks with the United States go askew, its top brass had no interest in the kind of dog and pony show the Emirati authorities would have put on if they were appointed mediators. With the Saudis already cosplaying ‘honest broker’ in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, holding U.S.-Iran discussions in the UAE would have meant Trump’s two Middle Eastern mega-donors sharing the spoils of restoring world peace.

From the Iranians’ perspective, Oman was both a safer bet and a known quantity owing to its track record of facilitating complex backchannel communication discreetly. Besides their diplomats’ disinclination to make a PR spectacle of high-stakes deliberations aimed at averting the “mother of all wars”, the Sultanate is a truly non-partisan arbiter that boasts a far less significant CENTCOM presence than do most fellow GCC petromonarchies and an amicable relationship with Tehran undergirded by mutual respect as opposed to opportunistic mercantilism.

The UAE, on the other hand, is looked upon by Iran as an artificial construct bereft of any sense of nationhood. In contrast, its commercial hub Dubai has long been a go-to haven for the Iranian elite to launder their wealth, acquire alternative passports and access international capital markets. That said, the opaque city-state has become less permissive of illicit financial flows from Iran in recent years thanks to U.S.-led coercion and its pro-business ruler Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum (MbR), being entirely at Abu Dhabi’s mercy ever since Dubai was bailed out of the 2009 property glut he created.

Needless to say, Iranian passport holders are barred from opening bank accounts in the UAE and routinely denied work permits or visa renewals by the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) on national security grounds. Meanwhile, Emirati Vice President and Prime Minister MbR has been reduced to a lame duck by the Nahyan dynasty following a litany of scandals that brought disrepute to the country including kidnapping two of his estranged daughters abroad and threatening his ex-wife Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein of Jordan’s Hashemite royal family at gunpoint.

The self-styled ‘Sheikh CEO’ is a staunch proponent of bridging the trust deficit between Iran and the UAE via normalised bilateral trade and greater people-to-people exchanges, yet the consolidation of power by a comparatively hostile Abu Dhabi has made life much harder for the Iranian diaspora. Their continued stigmatisation has not sat well with the regime in Tehran, seeing as Baluchi and Achomi merchants from southern Iran were among the first communities to settle down in the Trucical States and help transform a barren, barely habitable wasteland into the thriving metropolis it is today. Neither has the UAE’s excessively muscular and interventionist foreign policy adventurism under MbZ’s watch – whether it be the illegal 2017 economic and political blockade of Qatar, the savage bombardment of Yemen alongside the Saudis or helping the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) carry out genocide in Sudan by funding and arming them to the hilt.

The fact that Jamshid Sharmahd – the Iranian-German ringleader of monarchist terror outfit Tondar – was captured in Dubai in broad daylight by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operatives speaks volumes about Iran’s sheer contempt for the corrupt and morally depraved family dictatorship at its doorstep. To their credit, the Iranians did not entertain Gargash’s phony ‘kiss and make up’ escapade and understand full well that the UAE’s sudden about-face is fuelled by weakness and vulnerability rather than a genuine desire to mend fences after decades of harbouring animosity towards the Islamic Republic.

The Emiratis were among the first foreign governments to offer the supreme leader their condolences when Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani was assassinated in early 2020 and refused to allow U.S strikes on Iran from the Al-Dharfa Air Base that would render it fair game for a retaliatory IRGC attack and upend its expat-driven economy as a result. Insisting that nuclear discussions take place in Muscat instead of Dubai or Abu Dhabi turned out to be a wise move on Iran’s part, not least since both the Iranian and U.S negotiating teams came away from the first-round of talks with an air of cautious optimism which could spare the West and the Global South alike mutually-assured destruction if this positive momentum is built upon.

[Image Credit: Foreign Ministry, Islamic Republic of Iran/X]

Saahil Menon is an investment analyst based in Dubai. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect TGP’s editorial stance.