标签： Asia

On a Monday marked by renewed regional volatility following fresh Iranian air strikes against the United Arab Emirates, senior Emirati officials made the first public confirmation that the country is negotiating a currency swap agreement with the United States, framing the arrangement as a marker of membership in an exclusive cohort of US allies rather than a financial lifeline.

Speaking at the “Make It In The Emirates” manufacturing conference hosted in Abu Dhabi, UAE Trade Minister Thani bin Ahmed al-Zeyoudi clarified the context of the ongoing discussions. “We have this discussion and conversation with many, it’s part of an elite group that the US is having this swap policy with. They are only having it with five countries,” Zeyoudi told attendees. He emphasized that the agreement would not act as a bailout, noting instead that it reflects the deep integration of trade and investment ties between the two nations that have created a practical need for the swap arrangement.

Zeyoudi’s remarks mark the first on-the-record confirmation of the talks from an Emirati government official, after months of conflicting public statements from both sides of the negotiation. The confirmation comes against a backdrop of heightened military tension across the Persian Gulf: a fragile ceasefire collapsed into uncertainty Monday after Iran launched a wave of missiles and drones targeting the UAE, an attack widely viewed as retaliation for a planned US naval transit through the Strait of Hormuz amid ongoing US-Israel military operations against Iran-linked forces.

Weeks prior, UAE Ambassador to the US Yousef al-Otaiba pushed back against early speculation that the country was seeking external financial support. In a lengthy post on the social platform X, Otaiba noted the UAE holds roughly $2 trillion in sovereign wealth investments and $300 billion in foreign exchange reserves, stating that “Any suggestion that the UAE requires external financial backing misreads the facts.” He did not, however, explicitly deny that negotiations were underway.

Former US President Donald Trump first confirmed the existence of talks last month, and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later noted that multiple Gulf states and Asian economies had requested access to US currency swap lines. Zeyoudi’s framing of the potential agreement aligns with Otaiba’s earlier pushback, designed to quell rumors that the UAE’s financial position has weakened amid regional conflict.

Currency swap lines are traditionally a tool to provide central banks with access to US dollar liquidity during periods of economic distress. Historically, Washington has extended these short-term loan arrangements to two distinct groups: lower and middle-income economies facing financial instability, such as Mexico and Argentina, and large developed economies whose stability is seen as critical to global economic health, including Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan. Even with regional disruptions that have cut the UAE’s oil exports by more than half compared to pre-conflict levels – the country continues to ship crude through the port of Fujairah, which bypasses the blockaded Strait of Hormuz – experts note the wealthy Gulf state does not fit neatly into either existing category.

Brad Setser, a former US Treasury economist now based at the Council on Foreign Relations, described the UAE’s request as slightly unusual given the substantial reserves held by its central bank and the scale of its sovereign wealth funds.

Beyond economic considerations, the ongoing negotiations are unfolding alongside major shifts in the UAE’s geopolitical alignment. The country has publicly and privately lobbied Washington to adopt a far more aggressive stance against Iran, a position that puts it at odds with neighboring Saudi Arabia, which has backed Pakistani-led mediation efforts to de-escalate regional tensions. The talks also follow the UAE’s high-profile decision to withdraw from the Saudi-led OPEC oil cartel, a move that some analysts have linked directly to the negotiations with the US.

Ellen Wald, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of *Saudi Inc: The Rise and Fall of the World’s Richest Company*, laid out the broader geopolitical hypothesis in a recent LinkedIn post. “It is possible that this break could also be [the] result of some sort of ‘deal’ between [the] UAE and Israel [and the] US, wherein they helped defend the UAE from Iran in exchange for delivering a major blow to Opec, which Trump has long sought,” Wald wrote. She added that she would not be surprised to see a formal defense agreement between the UAE and US announced in the near future.

The 2026 conflict between the United States and Iran has delivered significant tactical wins for U.S. forces, but those gains have come at a steep, underreported cost: a wave of retaliatory Iranian strikes across Middle East bases has inflicted far more damage to critical U.S. military assets than initial disclosures acknowledged. International intelligence assessments and newly analyzed satellite data confirm that between February and March 2026, 16 U.S. military sites across eight Middle Eastern nations were targeted, with several installations suffering damage severe enough to render them non-operational.

Among the costliest losses are high-value airborne early warning assets that form the backbone of U.S. regional surveillance and battle management. The U.S. Air Force’s E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), a decades-old but irreplaceable battle management platform built on the retired Boeing 707 airframe, suffered catastrophic losses that have worsened the service’s already shrinking deployable AWACS fleet. When the conflict began, the U.S. only had roughly 10 operational E-3s available for global deployment, as aging airframes have left many unflyable. In a decision now widely criticized as a major strategic mistake, the Pentagon moved the majority of its functional E-3 fleet – six jets to Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base and two to the United Arab Emirates’ Al Dhafra Air Base – to cut loiter time and extend on-station surveillance coverage.

This forward deployment left the already limited fleet extremely vulnerable. At the time of Iran’s coordinated March strikes, two E-3s were parked on the open tarmac at Prince Sultan, with no hardened aircraft shelters available to protect them – the 30-foot diameter radome mounted on the E-3’s fuselage is too large to fit in existing shelter infrastructure. Supported by geolocation intelligence from Russian and Chinese commercial satellites, including China’s high-resolution TEE-01B operated by Earth Eye (which has 0.5-meter imaging resolution), the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeted the base between March 13 and 15, the opening window of their retaliatory campaign. One E-3 (serial number 81-0005, manufactured in 1981) was completely destroyed, and a second was damaged beyond economical repair. A top-tier U.S. THAAD AN/TPY-2 radar at Jordan’s Muwaffaq As-Salti Airbase was also destroyed in parallel strikes.

While open source analysts debate whether the strike was carried out by an IRGC Khaibar-Shekan medium-range ballistic missile – a maneuverable third-generation design with a 550-kilogram warhead – or a modified Shahed drone (the observed blast size aligns closer to a smaller drone warhead), military analysts agree the incident highlights critical avoidable errors by U.S. planners. Many also note the strike carried echoes of Russian strategic retaliation: after the U.S. assisted Ukraine in destroying or damaging four of Russia’s own aging A-50 AWACS fleet between 2024 and 2025, a loss that severely strained Russia’s already limited airborne surveillance capacity, the sharing of targeting intelligence with Iran served as a direct tit-for-tat blow.

The conflict has also been marked by costly friendly fire incidents and embarrassing surveillance failures that expose critical gaps in U.S. and allied defense integration. On March 1, an Iranian modified F-5 fighter jet, domestically upgraded and renamed the Kowsar, evaded all layered U.S. and Kuwaiti air defenses to strike Camp Buehring, a critical U.S. Army prepositioning base 25 miles from the Iraqi border. Flying at extremely low altitude across the Persian Gulf to avoid radar detection, the Kowsar slipped into Kuwaiti airspace and reached the base in under 40 minutes, where it inflicted massive damage: the base command center and multiple prepositioned equipment warehouses were destroyed, a CH-47 Chinook was lost on the ground, six U.S. soldiers were killed, and nearly 60 more were wounded. The jet successfully returned to Iranian territory without interception.

Military researchers have hypothesized that radar ducting, an atmospheric phenomenon common over the Persian Gulf that traps radar signals along the surface and creates blind spots for ground-based radar, allowed the Kowsar to evade detection. Iranian forces are already known to have exploited these ducting blind spots in other strikes during the conflict, having studied U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile doctrine for low-altitude penetration that the U.S. itself used extensively against Iranian targets during the four-week conflict. Despite U.S. forces having access to look-down/shoot-down radar technology that can detect low-flying aircraft from above, no early warning was generated, leaving the base completely undefended against the strike. In the aftermath of the incident, the U.S. rushed mobile M-SHORAD air defense systems to Gulf bases to counter similar low-altitude threats, and by May, most of Iran’s Kowsar fleet had been destroyed on the ground by U.S. B-2 and F-35 strikes.

A day after the Camp Buehring attack, another devastating friendly fire incident unfolded over Kuwaiti airspace that killed no personnel but destroyed three advanced U.S. F-15E fighter jets. A Kuwaiti Air Force F/A-18C Hornet pilot engaged the three F-15Es, shooting all three down in a 30-second engagement using AIM-9M Sidewinder infrared homing missiles. Because F-15E variants do not carry infrared missile warning systems, the U.S. aircrews received no alert of the incoming attack, though military analysts note even with warning, evading the short-range missiles would have been extremely difficult. All three U.S. pilots ejected and were safely rescued.

Investigations into the incident found the Kuwaiti pilot misidentified the F-15Es as Iranian Kowsar jets, which had carried out the Camp Buehring strike just 24 hours earlier. The incident has raised major questions about allied identification friend or foe (IFF) protocols: while both U.S. and Kuwaiti forces use encrypted Mode 5 IFF systems that should prevent friendly engagements, analysts believe heavy electronic jamming across the theater either disabled IFF on the Kuwaiti jet or distorted the signal, leading the F/A-18’s radar to classify the U.S. jets as hostile. The pilot also failed to follow established rules of engagement by firing without requesting ground control clearance, a procedural failure that compounded the technical error.

Looking across the first months of the conflict, defense analysts including former U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Stephen Bryen, the author of this analysis, note that while the U.S. has achieved broad strategic objectives against Iran, the series of avoidable blunders exposes critical gaps in planning. Iran has proven far more tactically resourceful than many U.S. planners anticipated, and the consistent provision of intelligence and material support from Russia and China – which continues throughout the conflict – has amplified the impact of Iranian strikes. The question now facing U.S. defense leadership is whether the hard-won lessons from these losses will be integrated into future strategic planning, or if they will be overlooked as the U.S. focuses on its successes in the campaign.

Tensions between the United States and Iran have spiked dramatically this week after Iranian state media claimed Tehran’s forces struck a U.S. Navy warship entering the Strait of Hormuz without authorization, a claim immediately and categorically rejected by the Trump administration.

The standoff traces back to an announcement over the weekend from former President Donald Trump, who unveiled what the U.S. calls “Project Freedom” – an initiative under which the U.S. Navy would provide armed escort for commercial vessels transiting the strategic waterway. Iranian officials swiftly pushed back against the move, framing it as a deliberate provocation designed to draw Tehran into retaliatory action that would justify further escalation. Iranian military leaders pledged that any vessel attempting to pass through the strait without explicit Iranian approval would be intercepted immediately.

On Monday morning, Iran’s Fars News Agency, an outlet closely tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reported that such an interception had already escalated to an attack. Citing unnamed local sources, the agency said two missiles had struck a U.S. Navy frigate that had violated transit security protocols off the coast of Jask, after the vessel ignored repeated warnings from the Iranian Navy. The report claimed the strike disabled the warship, forcing it to retreat from the area and abandon its attempt to traverse the strait.

A senior Iranian official later told Reuters that it remained unclear how much damage the vessel had sustained, if any. Separately, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency released a statement from the Iranian army’s public affairs division claiming that Iranian naval forces had successfully prevented “enemy American-Zionist destroyers” from entering the Strait of Hormuz region through swift, decisive action.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) moved within hours to debunk the Iranian claims, publishing an official fact-check across its social media channels. The command explicitly refuted the assertion that the IRGC had struck a U.S. warship with two missiles, stating flatly: “No U.S. Navy ships have been struck.” CENTCOM added that U.S. forces continue to operate in support of Project Freedom and uphold an existing naval blockade on Iranian ports, noting that U.S. guided-missile destroyers recently transited the Strait of Hormuz to operate in the Persian Gulf, and are actively facilitating safe passage for commercial shipping. As an initial milestone, the command said two U.S.-flagged merchant vessels had already successfully transited the waterway and are continuing their voyages safely.

The strategic Strait of Hormuz, which carries roughly 20 percent of the world’s seaborne oil shipments, has been the focal point of a high-stakes standoff between Iran and the U.S.-led bloc since Iran moved to restrict access for unauthorized vessels in retaliation for a U.S.-Israeli military campaign launched in late February. The restrictions have already roiled global energy markets, pushing global oil prices sharply higher, driving average U.S. gasoline prices above $4 per gallon, and adding new inflationary pressure to economies worldwide.

Independent verification of both sides’ competing claims remains elusive. Open-source marine tracking analysts have noted that public tracking data does not show the two U.S.-flagged merchant vessels transiting the strait on Monday, though the vessels could have disabled their tracking systems to conceal their movement.

Critics have called into question the credibility of the Trump administration’s denial, pointing to a pattern of misleading statements from past U.S. military encounters in the region. Matt Duss, a former foreign policy advisor to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, warned the public to approach the administration’s claims with deep skepticism, citing a repeated pattern of immediate denials that are later walked back as damaging information emerges slowly over time, after public attention has shifted.

As a prominent example, Duss noted that after the first Trump administration assassinated IRGC General Qassem Soleimani in 2020, Trump initially claimed Iranian retaliatory strikes on Iraq’s Al Asad Air Base, a U.S. military installation, caused zero American casualties. In the weeks that followed, declassified Pentagon information confirmed more than 100 U.S. troops had suffered traumatic brain injuries from the attacks. More recently, Duss added, CENTCOM initially denied Iranian claims to have shot down a U.S. fighter jet in early April, claiming “all aircraft are accounted for” – even as one aircraft had indeed been downed, requiring a multi-day covert operation to rescue two pilots from Iranian territory.

Escalating geopolitical tensions around the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz have spurred a sharp standoff between Iran and the United States, with Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) issuing a clear, forceful assertion of its sovereignty over the key waterway over the weekend.

In an official statement published Monday on its affiliated media outlet Sepah News, the IRGC flatly denied recent claims circulated by U.S. officials, stating categorically that no commercial vessel or oil tanker has traversed the strait without explicit Iranian authorization in recent hours. The body emphasized that any unauthorized maritime activity that violates the rules set by its naval command carries severe consequences, adding that violators will be intercepted by force if they attempt to ignore Iran’s territorial regulations.

Semi-official Iranian news agency Fars further reported comments from IRGC Navy Deputy Commander for Political Affairs Mohammad Akbarzadeh, who warned that any U.S. military strike intended to forcibly reopen the strait would be met with a pre-planned Iranian operational response that will catch Washington off guard. “This response will be beyond the enemy’s calculations,” Akbarzadeh was quoted as saying.

The latest exchange of warnings came after U.S. President Donald Trump claimed Sunday that the U.S. military would escort all vessels stranded in the restricted Strait of Hormuz out of the area by Monday. Trump’s claim drew an immediate, harsh rebuke from Iran’s top military body, Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters. In a statement carried by Iran’s official news agency IRNA, the headquarters warned that any foreign armed force, particularly what it called the “aggressive U.S. army”, would face direct military attack if they attempt to approach or enter the strait without Iranian approval.

Local Iranian military sources added that on Monday, Iran’s naval forces already demonstrated their readiness by firing cruise missiles, rockets, and launching combat drones in areas close to U.S. destroyers that had moved toward the strait, in a clear warning to the American vessels to withdraw.

The current standoff around the strait, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supplies pass daily, has been building for months. Iran first tightened access controls on February 28, barring passage for any vessels owned by or linked to Israel and the United States. The restriction was imposed after joint strikes targeting Iranian territory carried out by the two nations. Tensions escalated further after ceasefire talks between Iranian and U.S. delegations held in Islamabad, Pakistan on April 11 and 12 failed to produce any breakthrough agreement, prompting the U.S. to implement its own blockade-related measures around the strategic waterway.

Tensions have escalated sharply in the Persian Gulf after former U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled a new U.S. military-led initiative to escort stranded commercial vessels through the closed Strait of Hormuz, a move Iranian officials have decried as a deliberate provocation designed to trigger conflict and justify expanded military aggression against the Islamic Republic.

The plan, branded “Project Freedom” and scheduled to launch Monday, was first announced by Trump on his social media platform Truth Social, and later confirmed by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). In his announcement, Trump framed the operation as a humanitarian gesture, stating his administration had notified nations with ships trapped in the key waterway that U.S. forces would safely guide vessels out of Iranian restricted areas so they could resume commercial activity. CENTCOM later released detailed force deployments for the mission: it will include guided-missile destroyers, more than 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain unmanned surveillance and combat systems, and a contingent of 15,000 active-duty service members. The command also noted the operation will be backed by a new cross-agency international coordination framework called the Maritime Freedom Construct, which pairs diplomatic outreach with military coordination to bolster maritime security in the strait.

Iran, which closed the strategically critical strait in response to the U.S.-Israeli war and the Trump administration’s naval blockade of the country, has issued a firm, unified rejection of the plan. An anonymous senior Iranian official told independent outlet Drop Site that Trump’s proposal is engineered to goad Iran into firing the first shot, creating a false pretext for military escalation. The official stressed that any commercial vessel attempting to traverse restricted transit routes without prior coordination with Iranian authorities will be intercepted immediately by Iranian security forces. Should U.S. military vessels intervene to disrupt these interceptions, the official added, Iran will respond with immediate, proportional force. The official also noted that U.S. warships are currently positioned far from the restricted transit corridor, meaning Iran would engage non-compliant commercial vessels long before they could reach American assets, accusing Trump of leveraging civilian ships as political pawns in his domestic and geopolitical agenda.

Ebrahim Azizi, chair of the Iranian Parliament’s national security commission, echoed the criticism, warning that any U.S. interference in Iran’s new maritime regulatory framework for the Strait of Hormuz constitutes a direct violation of the ceasefire brokered earlier this April. He dismissed Trump’s initiative outright, stating that the strategically vital waterway cannot be governed by “delusional posts” on social media.

The escalation over the strait comes as both sides navigate fragile, indirect negotiations to end the three-month-long war. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei confirmed Sunday that Tehran is currently reviewing the U.S. government’s response to Iran’s 14-point peace proposal, which was shared via Pakistani intermediation. Baghaei clarified that the proposal is exclusively focused on ending immediate hostilities, and that no nuclear-related negotiations are currently underway, despite repeated claims from Trump and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that halting Iran’s purported nuclear weapons program is a core U.S. war aim. Iran has long denied pursuing nuclear weapons, and U.S. intelligence assessments have repeatedly concluded Iran does not maintain an active nuclear weapons program as described by U.S. officials. Trump has already cast doubt on the proposal’s viability, writing on social media Saturday that he cannot imagine the plan being acceptable, claiming Iran has not paid a sufficient price for its actions over the past 47 years.

The exact details of the 14-point proposal remain publicly unconfirmed, but foreign policy analysts have offered preliminary assessments. Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued Sunday that the proposal represents an unstated push for a broad grand bargain to resolve the 47-year history of U.S.-Iran hostility, rather than just a temporary ceasefire. Parsi noted the plan implicitly calls for both sides to restrain their regional proxies, including Israel and Hezbollah, an approach that could align with Trump’s known negotiating instincts.

Domestically, the war has become a growing political liability for Trump. A new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released Friday found that 61% of U.S. voters view Trump’s decision to launch the war as a mistake, while 66% disapprove of his handling of the conflict. The poll also recorded Trump’s lowest presidential approval rating to date.

Analysts have noted that Iran’s current strategy, which includes closing the Strait of Hormuz to disrupt global energy and commodity trade, aligns directly with a long-documented asymmetric warfare doctrine developed by Iran’s military leadership. Archival footage from the 1990s, recently shared online by journalist Séamus Malekafzali, featured late Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Hossein Salami — who was killed in a U.S.-Israeli strike last year — outlining the doctrine for IRGC staff. Salami argued that while direct conflict with the U.S. is possible, victory is achievable if Iran can shift fighting to terrain that neutralizes U.S. military advantages and exploits U.S. weaknesses. Geopolitical analysts paraphrase the doctrine as focusing on drawing out conflict to raise economic costs and fuel domestic political turmoil in the U.S., eroding its political will to sustain military engagement.

This approach is already visible in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that carries roughly 25% of global seaborne oil trade and one-third of the world’s seaborne fertilizer trade annually. Harrison Mann, a fellow with the advocacy group Win Without War, explained the dynamic during a Sunday CNN appearance, noting that Iran is able to inflict meaningful economic pain on the U.S. and its allies through this form of economic warfare, a pressure campaign that will be unsustainable for Trump over the long term.

Project Freedom has drawn immediate backing from hardline U.S. Iran war supporters, including South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a leading Republican advocate for military action against Tehran. Graham said he fully endorses Trump’s decision, stating that while he supports a diplomatic end to the conflict, it is past time to reestablish freedom of navigation in the strait and respond forcefully to Iran if it continues what Graham described as “terrorizing the world.”