UAE vice president Sheikh Mansour visits Saudi Arabia in first trip since rift

On Sept 29, UAE Vice President Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited Saudi Arabia and met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the kingdom's defence minister, in the first visit by a senior UAE official since a deep rift emerged between the two Gulf powers last year. The visit followed an invitation from Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman. It came as Riyadh faces growing pressure from the Iran-backed Houthis, who have for weeks fired missiles and drones at the kingdom. Saudi Arabia has been seeking international support to confront the Houthis, though it was not immediately clear whether that request extended to the UAE.

The UAE was once Saudi Arabia's main regional partner in the war against the Houthis. According to a post by the Saudi defence ministry on X, Sheikh Mansour and Prince Khalid discussed topics of mutual interest and ways to strengthen cooperation and coordination between the two countries. In a separate meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday, Sheikh Mansour reviewed the "fraternal relations" between the two countries and developments in the region.

The Saudi state news agency said the UAE and Saudi Arabia have had years of disagreements stretching from geopolitics to oil policy, with those tensions surfacing in December after an advance by a UAE-backed southern Yemeni separatist group brought the issue close to Saudi borders. Saudi Arabia condemned the UAE's role and struck a UAE-linked weapons shipment at Yemen's Mukalla port in an airstrike. The UAE later said it had pulled all of its forces out of Yemen, but the strain between the two sides has persisted. Yemen has been mired in a 12-year-long civil war since the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa, which led to a Saudi-led military intervention.