The other high-risk gamble in West Asia

The UAE’s decision to walk out of OPEC and OPEC+ is not just about oil. It represents a blunt geopolitical rupture. Abu Dhabi is no longer disguising its rivalry with Saudi Arabia nor walking a tightrope between regional camps. It is openly gravitating towards a new axis consisting of the US, Israel and increasingly India — and this high-risk strategy is deepening conflict lines across regions already on edge.

OPEC, created in 1960, was designed to coordinate oil production and give oil-producing countries collective control over global prices. OPEC+ came into being in 2016 to fold in 10 other countries, including big producers like Russia. For decades, Saudi Arabia dominated both structures, using them as instruments of economic and geopolitical influence. The UAE’s exit strips away part of that leverage and signals that Abu Dhabi no longer accepts Riyadh’s leadership, not just in oil but in the broader regional order.

The economic argument for leaving is straightforward. The UAE wants to produce more oil than OPEC quotas allow because the Iran war has put its economy under great strain. It wants to monetise its reserves quickly, to hedge against a future where fossil fuel demand has declined. But this is only the surface. What lies underneath is a deeper strategic break with Saudi Arabia, stretching across energy policy, military alliances and global partnerships.

The Abraham Accords of 2020 marked a significant geopolitical shift, with the UAE normalising relations with Israel and building cooperation in trade, technology and security. In contrast, Saudi Arabia declined to join the Accord, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman maintaining that normalisation of ties with Israel would be contingent on the establishment of a Palestinian state and broader regional considerations.

This divergence between the UAE and Saudi Arabia is growing, and it shows in their external alignments.

Where Saudi Arabia is strengthening ties with Pakistan through a formal defence partnership, the UAE is moving closer to India, expanding cooperation in defence, intelligence, energy and technology, while also embedding itself deeper into a shared strategic space with Israel.

The United States has quietly encouraged this shift. Washington has long viewed OPEC as an obstacle to lower oil prices and greater Western leverage over energy markets. By leaving OPEC, the UAE weakens the cartel’s collective ability to control supply and pricing, opening space for increased Emirati production and greater market volatility that could benefit American oil producers.

Abu Dhabi’s move aligns neatly with broader US strategic interests: weakening Saudi-dominated oil coordination, reducing OPEC’s influence and committing the UAE more deeply to a US-led geopolitical and economic order.

The UAE’s growing proximity to India is also not just economic. It is political and strategic as well and carries serious implications. Abu Dhabi has chosen to align itself with a government in New Delhi whose domestic and regional policies have caused deep concern in the Muslim world. At the same time, India has been moving closer to Israel, expanding defence cooperation, intelligence sharing and technological partnerships.

The convergence of interests — seen in evolving UAE–India ties and India–Israel relations—is not accidental but part of an opportunistic geopolitical realignment that prioritises security cooperation and economic gain without bothering with notions of accountability and justice or a rules-based order.

The UAE’s relations with Pakistan have deteriorated sharply. Abu Dhabi has scaled back financial support, cooled diplomatic engagement and withdrawn from investment commitments. Pakistan was asked to pay back the entire UAE debt of $3.5 billion in April.

So, the UAE–Saudi rivalry will extend beyond West Asia, and what was once a regional competition is now entangled with India–Pakistan dynamics, creating overlapping fault lines. Instead of trying to reduce tensions, the UAE is embedding itself firmly on one side of a deeply polarised geopolitical divide.

The UAE’s broader foreign policy reinforces this pattern. From Yemen to Libya, from Ethiopia and Sudan to the Horn of Africa, Abu Dhabi has pursued influence through strategic investments, military interventions and even proxy actors.

In Yemen, it backed separatist groups that clashed with Saudi-supported forces. In Sudan, it supports paramilitary actors accused of terrible atrocities. In Libya, it armed and financed a rival strongman. It has forged ties with Somaliland. All these actions have entrenched division.

The UAE frames its activism as a fight against extremism and disorder. But the reality is more troubling. It has continued to expand economic, technological and military cooperation with Israel despite its horrific genocidal project in Gaza. Trade has grown and defence and intelligence ties have deepened. The Iran war has only hardened Abu Dhabi’s conviction that its security lies with Israel and the US, not with Arab institutions.

The addition of India to this axis intensifies the problem. By aligning with Netanyahu-led Israel and Modi-led India while distancing itself from traditional partners, the UAE risks deepening divisions across West and South Asia. It also risks undermining its own credibility. A state that claims to promote tolerance cannot indefinitely ignore the implications of its alliances.

Saudi Arabia is not without fault. Its own interventions and ambitions have contributed to regional instability. But the UAE’s challenge is not a progressive alternative. It is a competing model of authoritarian power projection. The rivalry between the two is less about ideology and more about who will dominate the next phase of regional politics.

The risk is that this competition, now intertwined with India-Pakistan dynamics and reinforced by external alliances, will deepen instability across multiple regions. Yemen, Sudan and Libya are already paying the price. South Asia could become another arena for Gulf rivalries to play out.

Ashok Swain is a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, Sweden. More by the author here