Mideast wars drag US to back ally UAE

Dubai: The wars of the wider Middle East that long surrounded the United Arab Emirates now have encroached into daily life in this USallied nation, threatening to draw America further into a region inflamed by tensions with Iran.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have launched missile and drone attacks since January targeting the Emirates, a federation of seven sheikhdoms home to oil-rich Abu Dhabi and the skyscrapers and beaches of Dubai.

American forces at Al-Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, home to some 2,000 U.S. troops, twice have opened fire with their own Patriot missiles to help intercept the air assaults by the Iranianbacked Houthis. The two incidents represent the first time since 2003 that the U.S. has fired the Patriot in combat — a nearly 20-year span.

It also comes after the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and its declared end to the American combat mission in Iraq. Though overshadowed by the Ukraine crisis, the U.S. now says it is committing more advanced fighter jets to the Emirates, as well as sending the USS Cole on a mission there.

This spillover of Yemen’s yearslong war into the UAE puts American troops in the crosshairs of the Houthi attacks — and raises the risk of a regional escalation at a crucial moment of talks in Vienna to potentially restore Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers. The Emirates since its founding in 1971 has been an otherwise safe corner of the Mideast. During the bloody 1980s war between Iran and Iraq,

Dubai’s massive Jebel Ali port repaired ships damaged in the so-called Tanker War. The 1991 Gulf War saw Kuwaitis flee into the Emirates and gave birth to the close military ties America has with the country today. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed again saw Dubai take in the money and families of wealthy émigrés. But the Emirates always seemed to remain out of bounds amid its neighbours’ wars. Part of that came from the centrist foreign policy of its founders whose oil wealth built cities from the sand, the other from its economic importance. Dubai, for instance, has been a major trade outlet for Iran even as it faced cycles of international sanctions. (AP)