It has a sort of film-like quality. An Israeli prime minister gets on board a plane in the middle of a war with Iran, takes off silently in the Emirates, and drives from the airport in a palace car. If that image is accurate, it gives you more of an idea about the direction the Middle East will take than many diplomatic communiqués ever will.

On Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu's office confirmed that he had secretly visited the UAE during the US-Israeli war with Iran, where he met with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed. The Prime Minister's Office released a statement that hailed the decision as "a historic breakthrough in relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Hours later, the UAE's official WAM news agency flatly denied that any such visit had occurred, insisting its ties with Israel are "public and conducted within the framework of the well-known and declared Abraham Accords."

So, two official statements, which say the exact opposite. It's all about that gap.

Politically, it's not hard to see the UAE's denial. Abu Dhabi is still in a part of the world where optics are very relevant. Across much of the Arab world, public opinion continues to be overwhelmingly negative towards Israel, and there is still a lot of anger over Gaza and over alleged war crimes. The risk exists that any sense that the UAE is taking an obvious side in a military operation against Iran could bring criticism from within the country and disapproval from other regional nations. The denial thus is not really an assertion but rather a form of political management.

The importance of this episode lies not in whether or not there was such a visit, but. It's all the things that are clearly going on around it.

Just one day before Netanyahu's office released its statement, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee publicly revealed that Israel had sent Iron Dome air-defense weapons and personnel to the UAE to operate them. For just a minute, consider that. Israeli troops with Israeli weapons on Emirati soil, protecting Arab cities from Iranian missiles. This is not a classified annex. The American ambassador expressed it publicly, in a public function in Tel Aviv. The deployment was the first in the history of the Iron Dome system outside Israel and is the first operational deployment by Israeli forces known to have been in an Arab state.

But this cooperation went both ways. There have been reports of military operations in the UAE during the conflict, including the UAE's attack on a refinery on Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf that was located in Iranian territory. Those strikes haven't been confirmed in Abu Dhabi. If true, however, it has major ramifications: an Arab Gulf monarch quietly striking at Iran while projecting a restrained stance, in part, thanks to Israeli missile defense, keeping its airspace clear.

The Middle East has become the new Middle East, as a reality, not a mantra.

This economic basis of the relationship is worth considering seriously as security alliances are not always lasting when based on common enemies. Much more lasting has evolved between Israel and the UAE since the signing of the Abraham Accords in September 2020. In 2022, Israel signed with the UAE its first free trade deal with an Arab country, which includes the removal of most tariffs, with a goal of reaching bilateral trade of more than $10 billion a year by 2027. In 2025, the two-way trade is already more than $3 billion a year, including in technology, healthcare, tourism and defence.

It's important how wide that commercial relationship is. The two countries work together in various fields such as defense, new technologies, AI, digital infrastructure, energy, water, agriculture, health, and tourism. There is a land corridor now between the two countries via Saudi Arabia and Jordan and, remarkably, direct flights between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv and Dubai have turned what was, a few years ago, almost unimaginable people-to-people contact into a reality. In 2022 alone, 268,000 Israelis visited the UAE.

Israel's Finance Ministry raised $6 billion in an international bond offering in early 2026 that saw interest from more than 300 investors across more than 30 countries, including states that have signed the Abraham Accords. Israel's economic ties with the Gulf were already producing real capital flows even in the midst of a war.

On the UAE side, of all the Abraham Accords signatories, the UAE has been most active with Israel, by far, in economic cooperation. The total goods trade between the two countries in 2021-24 was valued at $6.4 billion, which is more than the total amount of goods trade between Bahrain and Morocco in 2024. Neither side can easily break off from this relationship, no matter what their communications offices say on any given Wednesday.

Israel's strategic reasoning is simple. The UAE's geographical position is close to Iran, its modern infrastructure and logistics capabilities, and its financial strength and ability to support long-term cooperation. Israeli technology—whether in cybersecurity, missile defense, surveillance or intelligence—is a security blanket for Emirati policymakers that no other partner can offer in quite the same way as Israel.

Post-normalization, Israeli tech firms entered into Emirati markets. Joint investment projects flourished. There were signs of an increase in intelligence cooperation behind the scenes. However, the situation in Iran seems to have changed the nature of the relationship into something more significant, a regional security axis.

From Tehran's perspective this is the nightmare scenario Iran's leadership warned about for years. For decades, Iranian authorities had preached that normalisation with Israel by the Arab countries was a capitulation to the enemy. For years, Iranian leaders have attempted to isolate Israel and threaten the Gulf. Rather, Tehran brought Israel and the UAE closer together. The war has not affected the unity of the Abraham Accords. It put them to the test, and they weathered it — and then some!

For years, Iran has been condemning the Abraham Accords and has repeatedly proposed that Israel is operating military and intelligence facilities in the Emirates. At a time when such claims are dismissed in the West as Iranian propaganda, they seem more likely to be true than the emissaries of Abu Dhabi would care to acknowledge.

The meeting in Al Ain, confirmed by Netanyahu's office as taking place on March 26, their first confirmed meeting in person, resulted in “a historic breakthrough in relations,” said Netanyahu's office. The terms of the deal haven't been disclosed. According to analysts in several publications, the talks focused on “missile defense architecture, the scope of intelligence cooperation and perhaps the parameters of a post-war regional order in which Gulf nations and Israel would form a unified bloc to foil Iranian efforts to project power.”

In a statement, Emirates' presidential adviser Anwar Gargash reiterated a public stance of caution, noting that the Gulf "should not be secured through confrontation or through any other means other than diplomacy". However, the truth of the ever closer security ties with Israel has become harder to camouflage behind the scenes.

The regional dimension is also quite wide. The second Trump administration was reportedly planning to extend the Abraham Accords to Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, and in mid-2025, there was direct discussion between Israel and Syria. Saudi Arabia's attitude is the most significant factor. If a Saudi normalisation deal is ever to materialise, it will be a far more tectonic shift in Middle East politics than the Netanyahu-MBZ handshake during the war.

The Abraham Accords, which many analysts dismissed as a dead issue after October 2023, not only survived, but have transformed as they were intended in the Rose Garden. It started out as a diplomatic arrangement, centered on trade and tourism, but has come down to a wartime security structure. Israeli troops for the defense of Emirati skies. Emirati troops said to be attacking Iranian targets. One head of government, in the middle of a war said to have been historic, and one denied, speaks in secret.

A study projected that if the Abraham Accords were expanded to include other major Arab and Muslim countries, they would create more than four million new jobs and over $1 trillion in new economic activity in the next decade. Regardless of whether those forecasts come true, the trend is obvious. Ideology, solidarity with the Palestinian cause and fear of Iranian reaction are all now being carefully examined and rethought, quietly but decisively, in the face of Iranian missile fire and the concrete benefits of Israeli technology.

History doesn't always make itself known. Some of the time, it comes in a sheikh's private vehicle, on a tarmac no one is supposed to know about.

Sources: Times of Israel, Washington Post, NPR, NBC News, Al Jazeera, The Week, PJ Media, Israel Hayom, Al Bawaba, Bearing Drift, Chatham House, ORF Middle East, US Congressional Research, Abraham Accords Peace Institute. The data on trade was drawn from UN Comtrade, Israel Central Bureau of Statistics and Chatham House.