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Opinion
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Guest Essay
The Relationship Between America and the U.A.E. Needs an Upgrade
April 13, 2026,
1:00 a.m. ET
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Ricardo Tomás
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By
Badr Jafar
Mr. Jafar is the special envoy of the United Arab Emirates minister of foreign affairs for business and philanthropy. He wrote from Dubai.
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The United Arab Emirates in March 2025 undertook to invest $1.4 trillion in the United States — the largest single-country pledge on record. The commitment, accelerated during President Trump’s visit to the Gulf two months later, covered artificial intelligence, semiconductors, clean energy and the infrastructure of the future. In both countries, it was considered historic.
Nine months later, amid an uneasy cease-fire in the Iran war, the Gulf region is assessing the fallout from Iranian missiles. The economic disruption has been severe: Iran has choked the Strait of Hormuz and hit energy infrastructure, and now America has
declared a naval blockade
. Governments across the region are reassessing the pace of overseas commitments they can sustain under fire. The implicit bargain,
as one economist put it
, was that those investment pledges rested on a foundation of regional stability.
For decades, the U.S.-Gulf relationship was described in shorthand: oil for security. The Gulf provided the energy stability; America provided the military umbrella. But that framework was obsolete even before the war started. The United States achieved energy independence. Gulf economies are spending trillions to diversify beyond oil. The terms of exchange have fundamentally changed — and nowhere is this more evident than in the relationship between the United States and the Emirates.
What this moment calls for is not a rupture, but a recognition that the partnership is structurally deeper than either side fully acknowledged, and that it has outgrown the institutional architecture governing it. America and the Emirates need a more honest accounting of what they owe each other, one that goes beyond the ceremonial arithmetic of investment announcements. It requires recognizing that the United Arab Emirates is not simply a source of capital, but is also a strategic co-investor in shared prosperity; that stability in this region is the foundation on which the entire edifice rests; and that even the strongest partnerships require deliberate stewardship to endure.
The Emirates has been the top destination for American exports in the Middle East for 17 consecutive years, with bilateral trade in 2025 generating a $23.8 billion surplus for the United States, the fourth largest it gets from any country. The trade figures capture only one dimension. New York University has a full campus in Abu Dhabi. The Cleveland Clinic runs a major hospital there. The Guggenheim is building a museum on Saadiyat Island.
Sixty-five thousand Americans call the Emirates home; tens of thousands of Emiratis have studied at U.S. universities, and many have returned with deep ties to American institutions. The Abu Dhabi technology company G42 partners directly with American giants such as Microsoft, which has committed $15.2 billion to A.I. infrastructure in the country. The Commerce Department approved the export of advanced Nvidia chips to G42 for a reason: These collaborations serve American interests as much as Emirati ones.
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