The UAE tried to ally with pro-Israel US lobbying groups in its spat with Saudi Arabia, one current and one former US official told Middle East Eye.
At least one group, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), came under pressure from the UAE to make a statement raising concerns about alleged antisemitism in Saudi Arabia, the current US official told MEE.
AJC is an ardent defender of Israel with deep ties in Washington. The CEO is former US Democratic Congressman Ted Deutch.
The UAE’s decision to utilise its close ties with pro-Israel US lobbying groups shows how Abu Dhabi is trying to capitalise on the 2021 Abraham Accords, under which it normalised ties with Israel.
AJC established a satellite office in Abu Dhabi in 2021 called The Sidney Lerner Center for Arab-Jewish Understanding. The office’s mandate is to promote “Muslim-Jewish dialogue” and “Combat antisemitism wherever it appears”, along with promoting the 2021 Abraham Accords.
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The head of the Abu Dhabi office referred MEE to AJC’s press team for this story. The press office did not respond to MEE’s request for comment.
AJC has not waded into the rift between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, at least publicly, but other groups have.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) posted a statement in January warning of the “increasing frequency and volume of prominent Saudi voices … using openly antisemitic dog whistles and aggressively pushing anti-Abraham Accords rhetoric”.
The ADL partnered with the UAE to launch the Al Manara Centre in Abu Dhabi in 2023. This article is the first time that direct Emirati lobbying has been reported.
The ADL has a long history of describing Palestinian rights movements as antisemitic and has, in the past, worked with US law enforcement to spy on and target Arab-American groups, among others. It has also facilitated and funded US police training trips to Israel.
The UAE embassy in Washington also did not respond to MEE’s request for comment.
‘Damage control’
Both current and former US officials told MEE that the lobbying is part of a broader Emirati effort to level charges of antisemitism at Saudi Arabia that have come under the attention of administration officials.
“This feud has taken on a religious dimension,” the US official told MEE.
The charges of antisemitism against Saudi Arabia would be particularly damaging inside Washington.
Saudi Arabia’s defence minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, met with pro-Israel groups, including the AJC and ADL, in Washington last month during his US visit.
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Saudi Arabian officials also held follow-up meetings with AJC officials after the defence minister’s visit, a separate source briefed on the matter told MEE.
A former US official described Saudi Arabia’s outreach as “damage control” to MEE.
Ties between the erstwhile allies, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, have been strained for years, but the tension erupted in spectacular fashion in December when the latter led a counter-offensive against the UAE’s allies in Yemen.
Riyadh has since moved to evict the UAE and its local proxies from the country.
Across the Red Sea, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are at loggerheads over Sudan, where the kingdom, along with Turkey and Egypt, backs the Sudanese army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which is supported by the UAE.
Saudi Arabia is also moving closer to Eritrea and Somalia as the UAE deepens ties to Ethiopia.
At times, however, the geopolitical manoeuvring appears to be playing catch-up with the nasty social media war.
Saudi Arabian commentators have accused the UAE of supporting secessionist movements across the region and fuelling instability. Meanwhile, pro-Emirati commentators have alleged Saudi Arabia is harbouring “extremists”.
Prominent pro-Israel voices and journalists in the US have also alleged that Saudi Arabia is engaging in “anti-Israeli conspiracies, anti-Abraham Accords rhetoric and even antisemitic language”.
Saudi Arabian commentators have virulently pushed back on the notion that criticism of Israel, and the UAE’s partnership with it, equates to antisemitism.
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President Donald Trump considers the Abraham Accords to be a defining foreign policy achievement. At the beginning of his second term in office, he regularly said that he would get more countries to normalise ties to Israel. Besides Kazakhstan’s announcement that it will join the accords, he has found few takers. The Central Asian country already has diplomatic relations with Israel.
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Saudi Arabia never ruled out establishing diplomatic ties with Israel. In 2002, it led the Arab Peace Initiative, which floated full relations with Israel in return for the creation of a Palestinian state along Israel’s 1967 borders.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman rose to power with the support of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed. The two blockaded Qatar together and joined forces to try to oust the Houthis from Yemen. At the time, the Saudi leader also began to toy with the idea of normalising ties with Israel under a deal brokered by Trump.
In 2020, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secretly travelled to Saudi Arabia to meet the crown prince and discuss a deal, The Wall Street Journal and others reported.
The Biden administration picked up where Trump left off, negotiating normalisation in return for Saudi Arabia gaining access to US nuclear technology, expedited arms sales and a defence treaty. Those talks were upended by the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said that Israel’s onslaught in response to the attack is a genocide and preconditioned any negotiations on the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Over 72,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. The United Nations has also deemed Israel’s war on the enclave a genocide.
Israel’s covert ties with Saudi Arabia and even overt ties with Egypt have frayed over Gaza and Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Syria. The UAE and Israel have remained close.
In December 2025, Israel recognised the breakaway region of Somaliland as an independent state, where the UAE has established a strategic military base.
