Iran-UAE trust crisis deepens; rebuilding trust between Abu Dhabi and Tehran will take “ages and ages,” UAE presidential advisor Anwar Gargash said Friday, after Iran targeted the United Arab Emirates during the Middle East conflict.
“You can’t be attacked with 2,800 missiles and drones and then talk to me about trust. That will take ages and ages,” Gargash said at a World Policy Conference in the town of Chantilly north of Paris.
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The debacle of lost trust
The top official said that 89 percent of the Iranian attacks targeted “civilians, civilian infrastructure, and energy infrastructure.”
“Tehran was telling the Arab Gulf countries that ‘you don’t matter in my calculations,’ and I think this is going to last for a very long time,” he said.
Iran: a strategic threat to the UAE?
“To the region — to the United Arab Emirates and other countries, Iran will be seen as a strategic threat,” Gargash said.
Israeli-US strikes on Iran in late February sparked regionwide conflict, with Tehran targeting US allies in the Gulf.
A ceasefire was agreed at the start of the month, but peace talks in Pakistan have stalled in recent days.
Is there still common ground in the Strait of Hormuz?
Since the truce, the United States and Iran have shifted their focus to the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas exports ordinarily flow.
Iran has nearly closed it in response to the war, and the US has blockaded Iranian ports.
Gargash said earlier this month he thought Israeli influence in the Gulf would increase as a result of Iran’s strategy in the region.
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