{"id":113759,"date":"2026-05-14T15:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T15:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/113759\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T15:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T15:10:13","slug":"why-did-saudi-arabia-and-the-uae-allegedly-carry-out-secret-bombing-raids-on-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/113759\/","title":{"rendered":"Why did Saudi Arabia and the UAE allegedly carry out secret bombing raids on Iran?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At least two Gulf states \u201csecretly\u201d carried out bombing raids on Iran<\/a> during the latest US-Israeli war against Tehran<\/a>, officials speaking on condition of anonymity told the media earlier this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The United Arab Emirates<\/a> struck several Iranian sites in early April, including an oil refinery on Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday<\/a>, citing people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n

And Saudi Arabia<\/a> also launched \u201cnumerous\u201d air strikes<\/a> against Iran towards the end of March, Reuters news agency reported Tuesday<\/a>, citing two Iranian officials and two Western officials briefed on the matter.<\/p>\n

Ready and willing<\/p>\n

There has been no official confirmation of what would be a significant escalation in the conflict that has swept the Middle East<\/a>, whether from Washington, Tehran, Riyadh or Abu Dhabi<\/a>. If the attacks indeed took place, it would be the first time that the two Gulf states have carried out direct attacks on the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n

“For the UAE strikes, there are photos that seem to confirm Emirati military involvement,\u201d said Veronika Hinman, deputy director for the Portsmouth Military Education Team at the University of Portsmouth.<\/p>\n

Images showing French Mirage fighter jets and Chinese Wing Loong drones<\/a> \u2013 both of which are used by the UAE \u2013 flying over Iran have been identified by independent military analysts on social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read moreMiddle East live: Ship reported seized off UAE coast, now bound for Iranian waters<\/a><\/p>\n

To judge how likely it is that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi carried out these attacks, \u201cwe first have to ask ourselves if they are militarily capable of it\u201d, said Shahin Modarres, a specialist in Iran and Middle East conflicts at the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS) Verona.<\/p>\n

Modarres said the answer was a firm yes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese two countries have the most modern and most well-equipped air forces in the region,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt they have the means to carry out precision strikes against Iranian infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

But do they have the political will to do it? Both countries say they refused to allow Washington to use their airspace to carry out strikes against Tehran in the lead-up to the war, appearing united in the desire to avoid being dragged into the fight.<\/p>\n

A warning to Tehran<\/p>\n

The war seems to have put that desire under heavy strain. Tehran has pounded both countries with drones and missiles throughout the conflict, hoping to raise the cost of the US-Israeli war on Iran by damaging critical energy infrastructure and shattering the Gulf states\u2019 long-cherished image as safe havens for international investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile Saudi Arabia was affected, no country was targeted as much as the UAE,\u201d Hinman said. The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran targeted the Emirates with more than 2,800 drones and missiles over the course of the war \u2013 more, even, than it had fired against Israel.<\/p>\n

Did Iran go too far? If the reports are true, said Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King\u2019s College London, the aim of the Saudi and Emirati attacks seem to have been to set a stark precedent with the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Iran can inflict costs on Gulf infrastructure, then the Gulf states can also inflict costs within Iran,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Emirati decision to send a message to Tehran through military force may not be entirely surprising.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe UAE has adopted a more aggressive stance, officially warning that it has the right to defend itself and aligning itself more closely with Israel<\/a> from an operational standpoint,\u201d Modarres said.<\/p>\n

Watch moreIran war hangs over Trump’s Beijing visit<\/a><\/p>\n

As Tehran unleashed its drones and missiles against the Emirates, Israel sent Iron Dome anti-air missile batteries to the UAE<\/a>, as well as personnel trained to use them, to help the country stave off further attacks.<\/p>\n

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a> also made a discreet visit to the UAE during the conflict, his office stated Wednesday, further strengthening the burgeoning ties between the two countries. The UAE, which normalised diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020 as part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords, denies that this visit took place<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tehran seems unconvinced. Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Thursday lashed out at Abu Dhabi<\/a> during a BRICS<\/a> summit in India, accusing the UAE of being \u201can active partner\u201d in the US-Israeli aggression against the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n

“I must say that the UAE was directly involved in the act of aggression against my country. When this aggression began, they even refused to condemn it,” Araghchi said.<\/p>\n

“It also became clear that they participated in these attacks and may have even acted directly against us,” he added.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, \u201chas adopted a much more cautious approach, favouring diplomatic channels through Pakistan<\/a>, Oman<\/a> and Qatar<\/a> to make it clear that it had absolutely no intention of joining a war alongside Israel,\u201d Krieg said.<\/p>\n

Secret strikes<\/p>\n

It\u2019s for this reason, Hinman said, that the bombing runs had been kept well under wraps.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea would be to prevent these air strikes from leading to an escalation of tensions as much as possible,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

By carrying out the strikes in secret, Krieg said, Saudi Arabia \u201cdidn\u2019t want to publicly humiliate Iran, which would likely have forced Tehran to retaliate\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a message intended for the authorities, who need to know where the strike came from \u2013 not for the whole country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Krieg added that the UAE had even more reason to maintain plausible deniability over the strikes: \u201cThey don\u2019t want these strikes to feed into the Iranian discourse that paints the UAE as Israel\u2019s Arab partner.\u201d<\/p>\n

For its part, Iran has a dilemma on its hands. If the ceasefire<\/a> with the US falls through and the missiles again fly, can Tehran follow the same strategy of launching air strikes across the whole region?<\/p>\n

Krieg said that the Iranian authorities \u201cmust now reckon with the possibility of direct retaliation from the Gulf states\u201d.<\/p>\n

Such an outcome would be militarily dangerous for Tehran \u2013 and maybe even damaging for its public image, Modarres said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir official line is that Iran is the victim of a war of aggression waged by the United States and its Israeli ally,\u201d he said. \u201cBut a more overt involvement by the Gulf states would undermine that narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s a course that could prove just as risky for the Gulf states themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the moment that they began bombing inside Iran, the line between defensive strikes and active participation in the conflict became blurred,\u201d Krieg said.<\/p>\n

He said that the UAE was in a particularly vulnerable position.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran sees Abu Dhabi as more threatening due to their already more aggressive diplomatic stance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If these strikes are confirmed, their impact will likely linger long into the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to turn back the clock and restart negotiations as though nothing has happened,\u201d Hinman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are likely witnessing a growing desire among these Gulf states to take charge of their own defence without always having to rely on US support,\u201d Modarres said. To put it another way,\u00a0while Washington might be glad in the short term to see its allies in the region throwing themselves more actively into its war against Iran, these strikes may also be a warning sign that the Gulf states are looking to cast off the heavy shield of Captain America.<\/p>\n

This article has been translated from the original in French<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least two Gulf states \u201csecretly\u201d carried out bombing raids on Iran during the latest US-Israeli war against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[260,714,34,37,39,50,39354,69,272,39353,6796],"class_list":{"0":"post-113759","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-persian-gulf","8":"tag-air-strikes","9":"tag-gulf-states","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-persian-gulf","13":"tag-saudi-arabia","14":"tag-shahin-modarres","15":"tag-tehran","16":"tag-united-arab-emirates","17":"tag-veronika-hinman","18":"tag-wall-street-journal"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116573570575050347","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}