A United Arab Emirates senior official on Sunday denied to The Jerusalem Post that the country was involved in a strike against an Iranian desalination facility.
It is the Post’s understanding that the UAE would not strike a civilian target to enter the war, but would target a military site. The IDF has also denied involvement in the strike.
“The UAE will never place the Iranian people in the same basket as the Iranian regime. The Iranian people are the real victims of that regime and the ones who suffer the most from its policies,” Ali Al Nuaimi, Chairman of the UAE’s National Defense Committee, stated.
“As neighbours, we recognize this reality, and we care about their well-being.”
The United Arab Emirates was initially said to have struck an Iranian desalination facility on Sunday, in what would have been its first retaliatory attack against Iranian drone and missile fire as part of Israel and the US’s war on the Islamic regime.
A source close to the UAE said that officials in Abu Dhabi are having difficulty understanding Israel’s conduct and the nature of the briefings coming out of Jerusalem, saying the UAE is a sovereign state that makes its decisions independently and that publications of this kind do not assist the regional effort and could harm relations.
The source added that it is inappropriate for what is described as a “senior Israeli official” to speak on the UAE’s behalf or to spread rumors about the actions of another sovereign state.
The reported strike joined a similar report from last week, in which a senior Western diplomatic source told the Post that Qatar carried out strikes inside Iran last week in retaliation for recent Iranian drone and missile attacks.
Abu Dhabi had reportedly contemplated whether it should react after it, along with a host of Gulf nations, was attacked by Iran since Israel and the US launched strikes on February 28. Last week, authorities in the United Arab Emirates’ Fujairah extinguished a fire caused by debris after a drone was intercepted by air defenses in the Fujairah oil industry zone.
A Wall Street Journal report from Friday said that the UAE is considering freezing billions of dollars’ worth of assets belonging to Iran, a move that would cripple the country’s connection to the global economy.
Later on Sunday, the UAE Defense Ministry also announced that the death toll from Iran’s attacks had risen to four.
Two Kuwaiti firefighters killed as Iran deals Gulf heavy blows
Along with the UAE, the governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain reported Iranian drone attacks in their countries on Saturday and early Sunday, with a huge fire engulfing a government office block in Kuwait.
Kuwait’s interior ministry said two of its officers were killed “while performing duties.”
In an apparent attempt to cool anger across the Gulf, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian apologized to neighboring states for its attacks on US bases in those countries on Saturday.
