UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash publicly criticised Gulf Arab states for failing to translate their shared understanding of the Iranian threat into a unified strategic response, while announcing that the Emirates is building alternative ports, pipelines, and rail corridors to shield its energy exports from disruption in the Strait of Hormuz.
The remarks, delivered at the Hili Forum in Abu Dhabi on Monday, signal that the UAE is designing infrastructure for prolonged instability. Gargash said restoring trust among neighbours after Iranian missile and tanker attacks could take decades.
The Gulf’s collective security architecture has been fraying for years. On Monday, Anwar Gargash said out loud what diplomats had been trading in private: it does not work. Speaking at the Hili Forum in Abu Dhabi, the UAE presidential adviser told Gulf Arab states that their shortcoming was not in understanding the challenge Iran posed, but in failing to turn that understanding into a sufficiently united and strategic response.
The timing was not accidental. The UAE had already suspended all financial and economic transactions with Iran in August, a move Emirati officials attributed to Iranian military escalation and missile threats. Now the Emirates is building redundancy into its own export routes—expanding eastern-coast port capacity, laying new pipelines, and running more rail freight—so that its energy exports and trade are not, as Gargash put it, held hostage by the war.
The infrastructure pivot is the visible half of the story. The other half is the diplomatic fracture it reveals. Abu Dhabi is no longer waiting for consensus.
The critique that redraws the Gulf map
Gargash’s remarks were calibrated. He left room for a functional relationship with Iran—one he said can and must be restored—but warned that rebuilding trust after attacks on Emirati oil tankers and missile strikes on the UAE could take decades. The message to Tehran was firm. The message to Gulf partners was sharper.
“Our energy exports will not be held hostage, nor will our trade and economic activity,” Gargash said. The statement was both a declaration of intent and an indictment of the collective security framework that was supposed to make such unilateral measures unnecessary.
The UAE’s eastern logistics expansion has already begun. Suhail Al Mazrouei, the Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, said port capacity along the eastern coast had increased twenty-fold since the crisis began, while Etihad Rail trips rose from one daily departure to six. The numbers are provisional, but the direction is clear: the Emirates is building a supply chain that does not depend on the Strait of Hormuz.
Gargash said that for many years Gulf states had broadly agreed on the nature of the challenge posed by Iran. The shortcoming was not a lack of understanding, he indicated, but rather in translating that shared understanding into a sufficiently united and strategic response.
The competing interests pulling at the Gulf’s trade routes are easier to map than to reconcile.
Chris Wright, the U.S. Energy Secretary, noted that oil transits through Hormuz were still averaging over nine million barrels a day, and that bypass pipelines likely kept total flows at two-thirds or more of pre-conflict levels. The strait remains critical, but its grip is loosening.
A structure built for low trust
The UAE’s suspension of transactions with Iran appears to be an executive trade-and-financial directive rather than a parliamentary process, giving the foreign ministry immediate scope to halt commercial activity. Its practical reach still depends on banks, exchange houses, customs enforcement, and free-zone compliance. External constraints come from U.S. sanctions risk—the Treasury has already acted against Banque Misr‘s UAE branches over Iran-linked dealings—and from any future Emirati decision to roll the policy back.
The regional ripple is uneven. Saudi Arabia is likely to lean harder on east-west redundancy, having already invested in overland pipeline routes. Oman benefits as an alternative maritime corridor, its ports outside the strait suddenly more valuable. Kuwait and Qatar, more exposed to Hormuz dependence, will push for tighter Gulf security coordination—precisely the kind Gargash suggested has been lacking.
Noam Raydan, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Iran is likely to keep hitting tankers to preserve leverage over the strait. Raydan assessed that Iran wants to demonstrate it will retaliate against any effort to reduce its coercive power over the waterway. The pattern is not new. What is new is one Gulf state deciding, publicly, that it cannot rely on its neighbours to absorb the blow.
For a Western energy trader watching the forward curve, the calculation has already changed. The old assumption—that Hormuz disruption meant immediate supply shock—now competes with a new one: that the UAE can keep barrels moving even under attack. The honest caveat is that no one knows how much capacity is enough. The twenty-fold port expansion sounds large, but the baseline was small. Whether it can absorb a prolonged closure of the strait remains untested.
Beyond the headline
The Bigger Picture
This is not just a rerouting story; it is a bet that redundancy is now a national-security asset. The UAE is treating logistics capacity as a deterrent tool, because the side that can keep exports moving under attack has more room to absorb coercion without conceding politically.
The Timing
The timing matters because the infrastructure shift is being announced while maritime pressure remains active, not after the crisis has passed. That means the UAE is designing for prolonged instability, which makes the message to Iran and to Gulf partners more forceful than a routine diversification plan.
The Power Behind It
The real center of gravity is not the public critique itself but who gets to define Gulf resilience. Gargash’s remarks show that Abu Dhabi wants to set the regional security script: more redundancy, less reliance on consensus, and a narrower tolerance for partners who do not match rhetoric with capacity.
The Gulf’s new fault line
With the UAE signalling that it will act alone if collective security fails, four groups face immediate decisions.
- Western energy trader with Gulf exposure
Re-evaluate risk premiums on crude and refined products originating from or transiting the Gulf. The emergence of bypass routes does not eliminate Hormuz risk, but it changes the supply response time during disruptions. Track Abu Dhabi Ports and ADNOC press releases over the next month for capacity announcements that could shift forward-curve assumptions.
- Marine insurer underwriting Middle East shipping
Reassess policy terms for vessels operating in the Gulf. War-risk premiums have repriced quickly in past Hormuz crises, and the availability of alternative eastern-coast discharge points may alter voyage routing and coverage requirements. Monitor Etihad Rail and port throughput data for evidence that cargo is actually shifting eastward.
- Supply chain manager for Europe-Asia trade via Gulf
Investigate the viability of rerouting cargo through the UAE’s eastern ports and new rail and pipeline networks. The infrastructure is still scaling, but early movers may secure capacity before demand pushes rates higher. Compare transit times and costs against current Hormuz-dependent routings.
- US Treasury compliance officer monitoring Iran sanctions
Monitor evolving UAE-Iran financial policies closely. The August suspension and past Treasury actions against Banque Misr’s UAE branches show that dollar-access risk remains live. Check the U.S. Treasury sanctions page for any new Iran-related enforcement actions affecting UAE banks over the next two weeks.
Explainer
- Strait of Hormuz
- The narrow waterway between Iran and Oman connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea. Roughly 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point, it is the world’s most important oil chokepoint, with tankers carrying about one-fifth of global petroleum consumption transiting daily. Iran’s ability to threaten shipping there has made it a persistent flashpoint in Gulf security calculations since the Tanker War of the 1980s.
- Etihad Rail
- The United Arab Emirates’ national railway network, developed to connect the country’s seven emirates and eventually link into the broader Gulf Cooperation Council railway system. Originally conceived for freight, it has become central to the UAE’s strategy for moving goods between coasts without relying on maritime routes through the Strait of Hormuz. Its eastern-corridor expansion is now a national-security priority as well as a commercial one.
- Hili Forum
- An annual policy conference held in Abu Dhabi that brings together Emirati officials, regional diplomats, and international analysts to discuss Gulf security and economic strategy. Named after the Hili archaeological site in Al Ain, it has become a venue where the UAE government signals shifts in strategic thinking before they appear in formal policy documents. Anwar Gargash used the 2026 forum to deliver the UAE’s sharpest public critique of Gulf coordination failures.
- ADNOC
- The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the state-owned energy giant that manages the UAE’s vast hydrocarbon reserves—among the world’s largest. ADNOC controls the country’s upstream production, refining, and export infrastructure, making it the operational backbone of any effort to reroute oil and gas flows away from the Strait of Hormuz. Its investment decisions on eastern pipelines and terminals will determine whether the pivot becomes physical reality or remains strategic signalling.
- Abu Dhabi Ports
- The state-owned developer and operator of the UAE’s commercial ports, including Khalifa Port and the expanding facilities along the eastern coast. As the entity responsible for building the alternative maritime capacity that the UAE’s Hormuz-bypass strategy depends on, its project timelines and throughput figures are now watched as closely by energy traders and insurers as by shipping lines.
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