As Saudi Arabia prepared to host a summit of Gulf Arab leaders on Tuesday, political commentators in the neighboring United Arab Emirates began furiously dropping hints online that major news was coming.<\/p>\n
For weeks, Emirati officials had been openly expressing frustration with their Arab neighbors, complaining about their weak stance toward Iran, which had fired thousands of missiles and drones at Gulf countries in response to U.S. and Israeli bombing. Analysts wondered if the Emirates would demonstrate that displeasure at the summit.<\/p>\n
Then, just as the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, commenced the meeting, the Emirati government dropped a bombshell from hundreds of miles away: It announced that it was leaving OPEC, a cartel of oil-producing countries that wields sway over global energy prices.<\/p>\n
Emirati officials said they were doing so in order to unilaterally increase their oil production and meet the market\u2019s long-term needs, but the fact that OPEC\u2019s de facto leader is Saudi Arabia was lost on no one in the region.<\/p>\n
Whether the timing of the announcement was intentional or coincidental, it was a potent symbol of the recent, tectonic shifts reshaping the Middle East, which have only accelerated during the war. By pulling away from OPEC, the Emirati government demonstrated that it is willing to make dramatic moves in its own interests, and will not be constrained by traditional alliances and conventions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an Emirati declaration of independence,\u201d said Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, a research organization. \u201cThey no longer feel beholden to institutions that don\u2019t align with their interests.\u201d<\/p>\n
The advent of an unbound Emirates has implications for markets, economies and conflicts around the world. With more than $2 trillion in sovereign wealth, the tiny country has cultivated influence far beyond its borders.<\/p>\n
In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, the Emirati energy minister, Suhail Al Mazrouei, suggested that the decision to withdraw from OPEC had \u201cnothing to do with any specific producer.\u201d Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are \u201cbrothers,\u201d standing together during the crisis caused by the war, he added.<\/p>\n
Yet it is undeniable that the Emirates \u2014 a major oil exporter and close U.S. ally \u2014 has increasingly been going its own way in the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing today is like a new U.A.E.,\u201d said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a prominent Emirati political scientist. \u201cThis is how the U.A.E. will be behaving, and will be conducting itself regionally, globally.\u201d<\/p>\n
In recent years, Emirati officials have spoken of the importance of pursuing their own economic interests, chafing at quotas set by OPEC<\/a> that curtailed their oil production.<\/p>\n They have deepened their alliance with Israel<\/a>, while other Arab governments keep their distance or pull further away from it.<\/p>\n In Yemen, the Emirates has supported an armed insurgency<\/a>, angering Saudi leaders, who back the government there.<\/p>\n And in Sudan\u2019s brutal civil war, where Saudi Arabia and Egypt support the government, the Emirates has backed a rival paramilitary group. Emirati officials have denied sending weapons to the Sudanese group, the Rapid Support Forces, despite extensive evidence<\/a> to the contrary<\/a>.<\/p>\n The rift between Saudi Arabia and the Emirates has been developing<\/a> for years and extends to the highest levels of the two governments.<\/p>\n Prince Mohammed of Saudi Arabia and the Emirati leader, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, were once close partners, joining forces in 2015 to fight the Houthi rebels in Yemen, but they have since diverged significantly, pursuing different visions<\/a> for the future of the Middle East that have come into conflict<\/a> with one another. That rupture burst into public view<\/a> in December, but appears to have hardened during the war with Iran.<\/p>\n Since the U.S.-Israeli assault began on Feb. 28, Iran has directed the brunt of its retaliation at Gulf countries that host American military installations.<\/p>\n Instead of uniting the Gulf states against a common enemy, the Iranian attacks appear to have helped splinter the region.<\/p>\n As Gulf Arab officials weigh how to respond to Iran, the Emirates has taken measures to sever its longstanding cultural and economic ties<\/a> with the country. Saudi Arabia, which has faced fewer and less damaging attacks, has condemned Iran strongly<\/a>, but has supported efforts led by Pakistan to find a diplomatic resolution to the war \u2014 an initiative from which the Emirates has kept some distance.<\/p>\n Emirati officials have spoken repeatedly of their dissatisfaction with Arab and Islamic multilateral organizations, hinting that they would have preferred a stronger stance against Iran.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery Gulf state had its own policy of containment toward Iran, and all of those containment policies have failed,\u201d Anwar Gargash, a senior Emirati official, said at a conference in Dubai on Monday. \u201cAll our policies have failed miserably.\u201d<\/p>\n Gulf solidarity \u201cwas not at the level of the challenge\u201d that the war presented, he said.<\/p>\n The Gulf countries are also reckoning with<\/a> how to handle their relationship with the United States, which could not fully protect them<\/a> from the barrage of Iranian attacks, despite being their main security guarantor for decades.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of the states in the region have been adapting to the fact that the United States is not going to provide the kind of security umbrella that they had come to appreciate,\u201d Ms. Diwan said. \u201cIt requires each state to kind of chart its own direction \u2014 and they haven\u2019t been able to align.\u201d<\/p>\n These trends coalesced with Tuesday\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n For years, oil policy has been a visible source of tensions between the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The Emirates appears to favor a strategy of maximizing its oil production \u2014 in effect, selling as much of its oil as it can before energy markets move on from fossil fuels.<\/p>\n On the other hand, Saudi Arabia generally seeks higher oil prices in the long term, a strategy that sometimes requires constraining the production of OPEC members, including the Emirates.<\/p>\n A much larger and more oil-dependent country, Saudi Arabia needs higher revenue<\/a> in order to fund its government budget, as well as the crown prince\u2019s ambitious and expensive plans to turn the kingdom into a business and tourism hub.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile Saudi Arabia aims to sustain oil markets for the next century, the U.A.E. feels no such urgency,\u201d said Bachar El-Halabi, senior analyst in Dubai for Argus Media, a commodities research firm.<\/p>\n