UAE is a dead duck because it’s relied on America! – Lim Tean
The entire regional architecture of the Middle East is being rewritten with Iran holding all the cards.
Yesterday (Saturday April 4, 2026), China, Russia and France vetoed a UAE and Bahrain backed draft resolution in the United Nations for force to be used to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
As a reward, Iran has now worked out an agreement with France to allow French ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and the first French vessel passed through yesterday. After the Strait was closed, President Macron had announced that France was prepared to send its naval forces to escort French vessels out of the Strait. It is to his credit that he changed tack and realised that diplomacy and not military force was what was needed if he wanted to get French vessels out of the Persian Gulf.
The entire regional architecture of the Middle East is being rewritten with Iran holding all the cards. The Gulf States now realise that they have to work with Iran if they want to export their oil, gas, fertilisers and aluminium. You see Qatar, Oman and even Saudi Arabia now abandoning the Americans.
Qatar now wants to have good relations with Iran and says it will no longer allow America to use its territory to attack Iran.
The biggest shift comes from Saudi Arabia, which was always a rival of Iran. MBS was so incensed by Trump’s insult that “….he didn’t think he’d be kissing my a** “ that he has vowed never to buy American weapons again. And yesterday MBS called Putin and had a long conversation with him. It has been reported that the Saudis are looking to the Russians for their defence needs. Saudi’s defence budget is over US$90 billion a year, and together with the oil it sells in American dollars, it is estimated to make up half of all the petrodollar transactions annually. With a crazy remark, Trump has destroyed the petrodollar. The Iranians wasted no time in embracing the Saudis and now call them “a Brotherly Nation”.
You will see in the coming months how UAE and Bahrain, which thought hewing to American protection, would save them, will be destroyed by Iran in the grand scheme of things. UAE’s ambassador to Washington had suicided his nation by writing in a Washington Post article that his country was entering the war on the side of America. Abu Dhabi and Dubai are now the past and the global rich will look for new playgrounds.
In the coming decades, scholars will study how the UAE and Bahrain destroyed themselves by not being able to discern which way the wind was blowing, and by backing the wrong horse.
