UAE’s UN Envoy Says Iran Chose to Attack, Insists Abu Dhabi Does Not Seek Escalation
Yemen Herald News 
The United Arab Emirates’ Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Mohamed Abushahab, told the Security Council in March 2026 that Iran had “chosen to attack us”, while insisting that Abu Dhabi was not seeking escalation. His remarks came during a session on the wave of missile and drone attacks that had struck Gulf states in the preceding weeks, and they were among the sharpest public accusations levelled by an Emirati official at Tehran since the fighting began.
The intervention followed the Security Council’s adoption on 11 March 2026 of Resolution 2817, which condemned in the strongest terms what it described as unprovoked missile and drone attacks by Iran against the United Arab Emirates, fellow Gulf Cooperation Council states and Jordan. The Emirati foreign ministry said at the time that the text had been co-sponsored by 135 countries, an unusually broad grouping for a resolution naming a specific state as the aggressor.
Abushahab said the adoption sent “a clear and unified message that the international community will not tolerate attacks on our sovereignty or the deliberate targeting of civilians and critical infrastructure”. He added that the UAE would continue to work within the United Nations framework to confront such violations and to prevent them from recurring, rather than pursuing redress outside multilateral channels.
At the same time, the ambassador reaffirmed what he described as the UAE’s right to defend itself “individually or collectively” in accordance with international law and the United Nations Charter. That formulation matters diplomatically: collective self-defence is the legal basis on which Gulf states have coordinated air defence with one another and with partner militaries, and invoking it at the Council signalled that Abu Dhabi regarded joint action as legitimate.
Abushahab said the country’s air defences had neutralised Iranian attacks. Emirati authorities reported a series of interceptions over that period, with the defence ministry announcing individual tallies of missiles and drones brought down over Emirati territory during March. The government did not publish a consolidated national figure at the time, and independent verification of the daily counts was limited.
Resolution 2817 itself was notable less for what it authorised than for the breadth of support behind it. Security Council texts that name a member state as the party responsible for an armed attack are comparatively rare, and diplomats at the time pointed to the co-sponsorship figure as evidence that the Gulf states had succeeded in internationalising a conflict Tehran had sought to frame as a confrontation with the United States and Israel alone. For Abu Dhabi, securing that language was a diplomatic objective in its own right.
The ambassador also leaned on a theme that has been central to Emirati messaging throughout the conflict, describing the country as a model of tolerance and coexistence and asserting that “no force can alter” that foundation. He said the leadership’s overriding priority was the safety and security of everyone inside the country, a point with particular weight in a state where foreign nationals make up the large majority of the population.
On the diplomatic track, Abushahab said the UAE had actively sought dialogue and had worked to prevent escalation in the region. Emirati officials repeatedly framed their military posture as purely defensive during this phase of the war, drawing a distinction between intercepting incoming projectiles over their own territory and taking part in offensive operations against Iran.
The Security Council session sat within the wider conflict that had opened in late February 2026, when Iran began launching drone and missile strikes at American and allied military facilities across the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain all reported attacks over the following weeks, as did Jordan, whose airspace lies on the corridor between Iraq and the Mediterranean.
The episode also sat against a longer regional pattern in which Security Council attention to cross-border missile and drone attacks has been uneven. Yemen has been on the receiving end of that inconsistency for years, with the Council’s engagement on strikes affecting Yemeni territory and shipping in the Red Sea moving considerably more slowly than the Council moved in the days after the Gulf attacks began.
Energy infrastructure and shipping were repeatedly among the targets, which gave the Gulf states’ complaints an economic as well as a security dimension. In the weeks that followed this Council meeting the UAE pressed the United Nations further on maritime access, accusing Iran of threatening navigation and asking the Council to authorise measures to keep the Strait of Hormuz open — a significant hardening from the position Abushahab set out in March.
The fighting ran for more than five weeks before the United States and Iran agreed a ceasefire on 7 and 8 April 2026 that also covered Israel. The truce proved fragile almost immediately: Gulf states reported drone activity within hours of the announcement, and the arrangement frayed repeatedly through the following months as attacks resumed and outside powers struck Iran-aligned groups in Iraq.
Seen from that later vantage point, Abushahab’s March statement reads as an early attempt to hold two positions at once — publicly naming Iran as the aggressor and securing a Council resolution to that effect, while keeping the door open to de-escalation and avoiding any commitment that would draw the UAE into the war as a belligerent. It is a balance Gulf capitals have tried to maintain, with varying success, ever since.
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