A bitter public dispute has erupted over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent claim of a secret March meeting with United Arab Emirates leader Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, pitting a prominent Emirati commentator against the Israeli leader while exposing underlying frictions in the Abu Dhabi-Tel Aviv relationship forged by the 2020 Abraham Accords.
The controversy began Wednesday, when Netanyahu’s own office announced that the Israeli prime minister had conducted an unannounced, off-the-books visit to the UAE amid the ongoing U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran. The claim was immediately pushed back by the UAE’s foreign ministry, which issued an official statement denying any such meeting ever took place.
In the wake of that official denial, prominent Emirati scholar Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Arab Gulf States Institute, delivered a scathing rebuke of Netanyahu in a post on the social platform X on Thursday. Abdulla labeled Netanyahu a war criminal and the killer of Palestinian children in Gaza, asserting the Israeli leader is completely unwelcome on Emirati soil. He went further, dismissing Netanyahu’s claim of a visit as a fabrication born of a distorted political imagination, arguing the false claim was crafted to advance Netanyahu’s opportunistic domestic electoral goals, given the prime minister’s long track record of misleading public statements.
The UAE foreign ministry’s formal statement stressed that all of the country’s relations with Israel are conducted openly within the framework of the officially recognized Abraham Accords, and do not rely on non-transparent or unofficial back-channel arrangements. The ministry also called on global media outlets to uphold professional standards of accuracy, urging them not to spread unconfirmed information or amplify misleading political narratives.
Despite the official UAE denial, multiple independent and open-source sources appear to corroborate elements of Netanyahu’s claim. Both Israeli and Arab sources told Middle East Eye that the meeting between Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Zayed did indeed take place on March 26 in Al-Ain, an oasis city located along the UAE’s border with Oman. Independent flight tracking evidence also supports this timeline: on March 26, Avi Scharf, open-source intelligence and national security editor for Israeli newspaper Haaretz, posted to social media noting that two Israeli business jets typically used for very important official (VVIP) travel had landed in Al-Ain and returned to Israel just four hours later that same evening. Independent verification of flight data has since confirmed that the two jets traveled from Tel Aviv to Al-Ain, departing Israel in the afternoon and returning the same night.
The dispute over the claimed visit unfolds against a shifting backdrop of security and diplomatic cooperation between the UAE and Israel, which has deepened dramatically since the Abraham Accords were first signed in 2020 under the first Trump administration. The agreement made the UAE the first Gulf Arab state to establish formal diplomatic ties with Israel, and the two countries have since partnered on multiple joint military and intelligence initiatives alongside the United States.
Ties between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv have grown even closer since the U.S. and Israel launched their coordinated military campaign against Iran in late February, but this deepening cooperation has also created new strains. The emerging security partnership has been thrown into sharp relief in recent days by the first on-the-record confirmation of Israeli military assistance to the UAE: U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee confirmed Tuesday that Israel has deployed Iron Dome air defense batteries to the UAE, alongside Israeli military personnel to operate the systems, to help the Gulf state defend against Iranian drone and missile attacks. Huckabee framed the deployment as proof of the extraordinary strategic bond between the two countries rooted in the Abraham Accords.
Huckabee’s public confirmation marked the first on-the-record acknowledgment of this Israeli military support, following earlier unconfirmed reports from outlets including Axios, which first reported the Iron Dome deployment last month. The Financial Times later added that Israel has also deployed its advanced Iron Beam laser defense system to the UAE, specifically designed to intercept low-cost drones and short-range missiles.
The deployment of Israeli air defenses comes after Iran launched a massive barrage of retaliatory attacks across the region, following the February U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign against Iranian targets. The UAE was one of the most heavily targeted countries, with Emirati authorities confirming that Iran fired roughly 550 ballistic and cruise missiles and more than 2,200 drones at targets across the country. While the vast majority of these projectiles were intercepted, the attacks have still caused significant damage and disrupted key sectors of the UAE’s economy. The country’s reputation as a stable luxury tourism and global financial hub has also taken a hit. Critical energy infrastructure has been particularly affected: the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company announced this week that the Habshan natural gas processing facility, the UAE’s primary gas plant, will not return to full operational capacity until 2027 after being targeted twice by Iranian attacks. The facility is currently operating at just 60% of its normal output.
The broader regional conflict has also exposed differing approaches among Gulf Arab states to the U.S.-led war on Iran. While most Gulf states opposed the initiation of the conflict, they have largely aligned with their long-standing core security partner the United States since fighting broke out. Saudi Arabia, for example, has provided the U.S. with expanded access to military bases, basing rights and overflight permission, but has also supported mediation efforts led by its close strategic partner Pakistan. By contrast, the UAE has adopted a far more hawkish stance aligned closely with U.S. and Israeli positions in the conflict.