Israel has deployed Iron Dome air defense batteries and military personnel to the United Arab Emirates, the United States ambassador to Israel confirmed on Tuesday, in what marks the first publicly acknowledged stationing of Israeli troops on Arab Gulf soil.
Mike Huckabee, the US envoy to Israel, made the disclosure at a Tel Aviv conference, crediting the Abraham Accords normalization agreements brokered during Donald Trump’s first presidential term with making such cooperation possible. “Israel just sent them Iron Dome batteries and personnel to help them operate them,” Huckabee told the audience. “Because there’s an extraordinary relationship between the UAE and Israel based on the Abraham work.”
The revelation was seen as deliberate. Huckabee’s remarks came one day after US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz made similar comments at an event at the Israeli mission in New York, suggesting the disclosure was a coordinated and consensual release of information. Neither the Israeli nor the Emirati government issued an immediate formal statement.
The move underscores how deeply the conflict with Iran has reshuffled regional alignments. Iran has targeted the UAE more than any other country since the war began on Feb. 28 with US and Israeli strikes on Iran, launching hundreds of ballistic missiles and thousands of drones at Emirati territory during and after the current fragile ceasefire. The UAE’s layered defenses, mainly American-supplied THAAD and Patriot systems, have intercepted the vast majority of the attacks, but strikes have killed 13 people and injured more than 200 others.
The Israeli deployment is not the only foreign military presence reinforcing UAE airspace. On May 7, Emirati state media revealed that Egypt had stationed a detachment of Rafale F3R multirole fighters on UAE soil—the Egyptian Air Force’s first-ever combat deployment to a Gulf Arab state. Presidents Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan jointly inspected the Egyptian pilots in a hangar where Rafales bearing Egyptian markings were on display.
Sisi declared Cairo stood in “complete solidarity” with the Emirates, characterizing Iran’s strikes as violations of international law. “What affects the Emirates affects Egypt,” he said.
Defense analysts described the deployment as one of the most consequential Arab force-posture shifts since the crisis erupted, effectively drawing Africa’s largest military power into Gulf air-defense operations. French Air Force Rafales are also operating from UAE bases, having been deployed after Iranian drones struck France’s Camp de la Paix naval installation near Abu Dhabi in the early days of the war.
Complicating the picture further are reports that the UAE itself has not remained purely defensive. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Emirati forces carried out a covert strike on an oil refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf in early April; this would make the UAE the first country beyond the United States and Israel to be linked to direct strikes on Iranian territory during the conflict.
Iranian state media and some military analysts identified UAE Air Force Mirage 2000 fighters as the aircraft involved in the Lavan Island strike, though the UAE has not publicly confirmed or denied its involvement. Iran accused the UAE of the attack shortly after a ceasefire was declared on April 8.
Separately, Reuters reported on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia had also carried out covert strikes. While the UAE’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment, it reiterated the country’s stated right to respond to Iranian aggression.
The ceasefire remains shaky. Negotiations between Washington and Tehran are at a standstill, and Iran retains a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, keeping the risk of renewed conflict high. Huckabee framed the new regional order in blunt terms: “The Gulf states now understood they will have to make a choice. Is it more likely they will be attacked by Iran or Israel? They see that Israel helped us and Iran attacked us.”
