Saudi Arabia has launched air strikes against a separatist faction in Yemen that is backed by the United Arab Emirates, underscoring a deepening rift between the Gulf’s two powerhouses.
The UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council said on Friday the Saudi bombardment was of “serious concern” and that it targeted some of its elite forces in central Yemen’s Hadhramaut province, which borders Saudi Arabia.
Riyadh did not comment on the strikes. Its military intervention comes three weeks after the STC launched an offensive to take control of Hadhramaut after clashing with factions aligned to the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, as well as al-Mahra province in the south-east, which borders Oman.
Analysts said it was unlikely the STC would have launched the offensive without the UAE’s acquiescence.
Hadhramaut is Yemen’s largest and richest region and has close ties to Saudi Arabia. The STC’s advance was regarded as a direct threat to the kingdom’s national security interests, as well as Riyadh’s role in Yemen, where it backs the internationally recognised government.
The crisis has laid bare the fraught relations between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, traditional allies that have become increasingly at odds over conflicts in Yemen and Sudan.
The STC launched its offensive three weeks after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman raised his concerns about the civil war in Sudan with US President Donald Trump during his visit to the White House.
Some analysts suspected the two events were linked, with the UAE annoyed that Prince Mohammed had raised the role of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the Sudanese conflict and intended to send a message to the kingdom.
The UAE’s role in Sudan has come under increasing scrutiny because it is alleged to have supplied weapons to the RSF, which has faced accusations of genocide. Abu Dhabi denies that it arms the RSF.
Saudi Arabia is considered a supporter of the Sudanese Armed Forces, the RSF’s main rival.
“The developments in eastern Yemen point to a quiet but consequential Riyadh—Abu Dhabi rivalry, one whose spillover effects risk intensifying proxy violence across both Yemen, Sudan and beyond,” said Mohammed Albasha, founder of Basha Report, a US-based risk advisory group
Saudi Arabia considers Sudan vital to its national security as it shares a long border with the Red Sea.
The UAE, one of the region’s most assertive nations, also views it as strategic to its interests and fears the Sudanese Armed Forces have been infiltrated by Islamists.
In Yemen, Saudi Arabia led an Arab coalition that intervened in that country’s civil war in 2015 to fight Iranian-backed Houthis after the rebels seized Sana’a, the capital, and ousted the government.
The UAE was its main partner in the coalition, but it and Saudi Arabia backed different anti-Houthi factions that have at times fought with each other.
Abu Dhabi began pulling its forces out of Yemen in 2019 as it shifted its policy. That year, it was accused by the Yemeni government of bombing its forces.
It continues to back the STC, which is the most powerful southern group. The STC is ostensibly part of the Yemeni government, but it wants the south to become a separate state, as it was before Yemen’s unification in 1990.
Saudi Arabia on Thursday condemned the group’s military advances, saying they were carried out unilaterally without the approval of Yemen’s government or in co-ordination with the Saudi-led coalition.
“As such, these movements resulted in an unjustified escalation that harmed the interests of the Yemeni people,” the Saudi foreign ministry said.
It added that it had been working with the “brotherly” UAE and the Yemeni government to “contain the situation”. It was hopeful, it said, that the “public interest would prevail through ending the escalation” by the STC and “the withdrawal of its forces” from the two provinces.
On Saturday, Saudi defence minister Prince Khalid bin Salman posted an open letter on X to “our people in Yemen”. He said the kingdom had always considered the southern cause to be a “just political cause that cannot be ignored” and urged the STC to act rationally.
“It is time for the STC in this sensitive period to prioritise the voice of reason, wisdom, public interest and unity by responding to the Saudi-Emirati mediation efforts to end the escalation, withdraw their forces from the camps in the two governorates, and hand them over peacefully to the National Shield forces and the local authority,” he said.
The UAE has said Abu Dhabi’s position was in line with Saudi Arabia’s in supporting the political process to end the war.
The STC said it launched its offensive after local factions halted crude production in Hadhramaut, the main source of oil revenue for the southern authorities. The offensive also aimed to combat Islamist extremists and to prevent weapons smuggling to the Houthis, who control most of the populous north, the STC said.
The group claimed the offensive gave it control across Yemen’s southern provinces, triggering a crisis in the Riyadh-backed government and undermining Saudi Arabia’s influence in Yemen.
It has shown no willingness to withdraw, with Amr al-Bidh, a senior STC official, saying this was “not an option”.
Saudi Arabia has been seeking to extract itself from the war for several years, after agreeing to a truce with the Houthis in 2022.
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