A Brief History of the United Arab Emirates: Copper, Pearls, Treaties and the Fastest Transformation on Earth

Companion pieces: A Brief History of Saudi Arabia (the giant next door, ally and rival), A Brief History of Iran (the neighbour across the water) and Islam: From Mecca to Two Billion People (the faith of the country and of most of its residents).

On 28 April 2026, the United Arab Emirates announced that it was leaving OPEC. The country had belonged to the oil producers' cartel since 1967, when it was not yet a country at all, just the sheikhdom of Abu Dhabi under British protection. Now, in the middle of a war, with Iranian missiles and drones falling on the Gulf and an aluminium plant in Abu Dhabi badly damaged, the Emirates decided that the quotas holding it to roughly 3 to 3.5 million barrels a day no longer suited it. It had the second-largest spare production capacity in OPEC, after Saudi Arabia, and it wanted to use it.

That decision says a great deal about the UAE. It is small, rich and very sure of itself. It acts alone when its interests demand it, even against its closest partners. It has fought in Yemen, recognised Israel, built the world's tallest building, sent a probe to Mars, and gathered some of the largest concentrations of migrant workers on Earth. And all of this has happened within a single lifetime. In 1960 the territory that became the UAE had about 130,000 inhabitants, most of them living by fishing, herding, date farming and diving for pearls. In 2025 it had more than 11.5 million.

How did seven small sheikhdoms on a hot, harbourless-looking coast become one of the most ambitious states in the world? The answer runs through Bronze Age copper, British gunboats, the collapse of the pearl trade, a lucky timing of oil and independence, and the choices of a handful of ruling families. This is that history.

In this history

1. Before the Emirates: tombs, copper and oases (to c. 600 CE)
2. Ports, tribes and the "pirate coast" (c. 600–1820)
3. The Trucial Coast under British protection (1820–1945)
4. Oil, Zayed and the end of empire (1945–1971)
5. Founding a federation (1971–1990)
6. Dubai's wager, and the crash (1960s–2010)
7. Citizens and newcomers: the people of the Emirates
8. Security first: the Arab uprisings and a more assertive state (2011–2019)
9. The Abraham Accords, Mars and a new president (2020–2025)
10. The UAE in 2026
11. How to understand the UAE today

Part 1 — Before the Emirates: tombs, copper and oases (to c. 600 CE)

The UAE occupies the south-eastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, where the coast of the Gulf curves north towards the Strait of Hormuz. Abu Dhabi alone covers more than three-quarters of its area, mostly desert, salt flats and dunes, with the great oasis of Liwa in the south. In the east, the rocky Hajar mountains, shared with Oman, rise behind a second coastline on the Gulf of Oman. Between desert and mountains lies the oasis of Al Ain, with its groundwater and palm groves.

The country is made up of seven emirates, each ruled by its own family:

Very early humans

People have lived here for a very long time. At Faya, in the desert interior of Sharjah, archaeologists have found evidence of human occupation stretching from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Neolithic, from about 210,000 to about 6,000 years ago. UNESCO inscribed the Faya Palaeolandscape on the World Heritage List in 2025.

The Bronze Age: Hafit, Umm an-Nar and Magan

In the Bronze Age, people around Al Ain built circular stone tombs; archaeologists name the cultures of the period after the sites of Hafit, Hili and Umm an-Nar. UNESCO's listing of the Cultural Sites of Al Ain (2011) dates the circular tombs to around 2500 BCE and describes wells and mud-brick houses, towers, palaces and administrative buildings: evidence of settled life in a desert since the Neolithic.

These communities were not isolated. Mesopotamian texts of the third millennium BCE describe trade with a land called Magan, which supplied copper. Most archaeologists place Magan in what is now the UAE and northern Oman, where the Hajar mountains hold copper ores; Mesopotamian sources also show that the Akkadian king Sargon's realm traded with the coast of Oman. Further up the Gulf, Dilmun, centred on Bahrain, acted as a middleman for this traffic between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. The south-east corner of Arabia was a supplier to the first cities in history.

Falaj: water from the mountains

In the Iron Age, people around Al Ain began to dig aflaj (singular falaj): gently sloping channels that carry water from underground sources to fields and villages. UNESCO describes the aflaj of Hili as one of the oldest examples of the technique. The falaj turned the oases into farmland and let date palms flourish, and sharing its water became one of the organising facts of village life.

The aflaj show something that runs through the whole history of this country: in an environment that seems impossible, people survived by organisation, engineering and trade.

Before Islam

In the centuries before Islam, the region was part of the wider world of south-eastern Arabia that it shares with today's Oman. Its people were Arab tribes, some settled in the oases, others moving with herds in the desert, others fishing on the coast. In 2026 UNESCO added a natural site, the mountain valley of Wadi Wurayah in Fujairah, home to more than a thousand species, to the country's World Heritage list: a reminder that the land is not only sand.

Part 2 — Ports, tribes and the "pirate coast" (c. 600–1820)

In the 7th century, the peoples of south-eastern Arabia became Muslim, and the region was drawn into the world of the caliphates described in A Brief History of Saudi Arabia. For the next thousand years, little in the written record focuses specifically on the coast that is now the UAE. Its history was part of the history of Oman, of the Gulf, and of the trade between the Middle East and India.

The most important town was Julfar, a port near today's Ras al-Khaimah. Britannica describes it as an ancient port, ruled at one time by Oman's Ya'rubid dynasty. The great prize of the region in these centuries was not the coast itself but the passage it guarded: the Strait of Hormuz, through which the trade of Iraq, Iran and Arabia passed to the Indian Ocean. Persian and Omani rulers and, from the 16th century, the Portuguese competed for control of it.

Life before oil

For most people, life was shaped by three economies:

• The sea. Fishing fed the coast, and every summer the men went out to the pearl banks of the Gulf.
• The oases. In Liwa and Al Ain, families grew dates and other crops with water from wells and aflaj.
• The desert. Bedouin herded camels and goats, traded with the towns, and provided the fighting men on whom sheikhs depended.

Society was organised by tribe and family. Rulers were the leading sheikhs of the dominant tribes, and their authority depended on wealth, generosity, skill in alliance and the willingness of the tribes to follow them.

The rise of the coastal powers (1700s–1820)

In the 18th century, as Persian and Omani power in the Gulf weakened, local tribes on the coast gained more freedom and competed for control of ports and trade. Two groups came to dominate what would become the UAE.

The Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah

The Qasimi family (plural Qawasim) established themselves at Ras al-Khaimah, on or near the site of old Julfar, by the early 18th century. Their prosperity depended on control of maritime commerce, and by the late 18th century, according to Britannica, they had emerged as the dominant force on the coast.

The Banu Yas and the Al Nahyan

Inland, a different power was growing: the Banu Yas, a confederation of tribes centred on the oases of Liwa and Al Ain. Their leading family, the Al Nahyan of the Al Bu Falah clan, had their earliest seat in Liwa. In 1761 members of the tribe found wells of drinkable water on a small island on the coast; they settled there and moved their headquarters to it in 1795. The island was called Abu Dhabi. In 1833 another clan of the Banu Yas, the Al Bu Falasah, mostly pearl fishers, broke away from Abu Dhabi after a rivalry and took over the small settlement of Dubai, known since 1799, without resistance. The Al Maktoum, who still rule Dubai, descend from them.

Piracy or resistance? A contested history

As the Qawasim expanded, their ships clashed with British and Indian vessels trading under the protection of the British East India Company. The British described the attacks as piracy, and in 1809 a British expedition razed Ras al-Khaimah. The town was rebuilt, and in 1819 the British returned, besieged Ras al-Khaimah and defeated the Qasimi forces. Qasimi power on the sea was broken.

How to describe what happened has been argued over ever since:

Both accounts can contain truth at once: there were attacks on shipping, and there was also an imperial power with strong commercial reasons to describe a rival as criminals. It is a good example of how the same documents can tell two stories.

Part 3 — The Trucial Coast under British protection (1820–1945)

The treaties

After its victory, Britain imposed a series of agreements on the sheikhs of the coast:

The result was an unusual kind of empire. Britain did not govern the sheikhdoms or tax them. It controlled their foreign relations and kept the peace at sea, leaving the rulers in charge of their own affairs on land. The coast became known as the Trucial States or Trucial Oman. The British cared above all about the sea route to India; the interior barely interested them.

Inside that framework, the sheikhdoms competed. Under Zayed bin Khalifa (ruled 1855–1908), Abu Dhabi was the leading power of the Trucial Coast, though in the early 20th century it was overtaken by Sharjah and Dubai as centres of trade. Ras al-Khaimah broke away from Sharjah as a separate state between 1869 and 1900, rejoined it, and was finally recognised by Britain as a separate Trucial State in 1921.

Pearling: the economy of the sea

Before oil, fishing and pearling were the coast's most lucrative industries, and goods arrived by sea from along the Gulf and across the Indian Ocean. Every summer, fleets of wooden boats sailed to the pearl banks, and divers worked through the season gathering oysters on a single breath. It was hard, dangerous work, and most of the profit went to merchants and financiers rather than the men who dived. At the start of the 20th century Abu Dhabi town had perhaps 6,000 people, living on pearl diving and on local trade largely in the hands of Persian and Indian merchants.

Pearling made the coast part of a global luxury trade long before oil. It also made it dependent on a single fragile product, a lesson the region's rulers remember.

The collapse

In the 1920s and 1930s the pearl trade collapsed, killed by two blows at once: the development of cultured pearls in Japan, which could be produced cheaply and reliably, and the world economic Depression after 1929, which destroyed demand for luxuries. The coast fell into deep poverty, and as Britannica notes of Ras al-Khaimah, the decline of pearling emptied much of the shoreline of its people.

Dubai's difference

One sheikhdom handled the crisis better than the rest. Dubai's Maktoum rulers, unlike most of their neighbours, had long encouraged trade and commerce. By the beginning of the 20th century Dubai was an important port, and many foreign merchants, chiefly Indians, had settled there. Until the 1930s it was known for its pearl exports. Later it became the region's chief port for importing Western manufactured goods, and Britannica notes a brisk trade in gold to India, where gold imports were restricted. Dubai's habit of making money from moving other people's goods began early.

Part 4 — Oil, Zayed and the end of empire (1945–1971)

A council and a seventh state

After the Second World War, Britain began to take a more active role on land. From 1952 a council of the Trucial rulers met twice a year to discuss shared administration. In the same year Britain recognised Fujairah, under the Sharqi family, as the seventh Trucial State; it had previously been considered part of Sharjah. Borders mattered more now, because companies were looking for oil. In 1952 Saudi forces occupied part of the Buraimi oasis, near Al Ain, which Abu Dhabi and Oman also claimed; international arbitration collapsed in 1955 and the dispute dragged on for years.

Oil

In 1958 oil was discovered under the sea at Umm al-Shaif, off Abu Dhabi, and exports began in 1962 from Das Island, where a terminal was built to receive it. Onshore fields followed, notably at Murban and Bu Hasa. Abu Dhabi's reserves are among the largest in the world; Britannica estimates them at about a tenth of the world's total. Britain, recognising the change, opened a separate Political Agency in Abu Dhabi in 1961, ending its dependence on the British agent at Dubai. In 1966 Dubai found its own offshore field, Fateh, though its reserves were less than a twentieth of Abu Dhabi's.

Shakhbut and Zayed

The ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan Al Nahyan (ruled 1928–66), followed what Britannica calls "extremely conservative policies", so the town modernised slowly despite its oil. In 1966 he was deposed in favour of his younger brother, Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who had governed the Abu Dhabi-controlled part of the Buraimi oasis at Al Ain for years.

Zayed was the opposite of his brother. He launched an ambitious five-year plan in 1968; within a few years Abu Dhabi town had electricity, running water, sewers, roads, a seawall, government buildings, housing and a new port. Abu Dhabi also lent its wealth to the poorer sheikhdoms and to other Arab and developing countries, and Zayed is widely credited with the patience and generosity that held the federation together.

Source: World Bank estimates. The population doubled in the 1960s, then almost quadrupled in the 1970s as oil money drew workers from abroad.

Britain leaves

In January 1968 the British government announced that it would withdraw its forces from the Gulf by late 1971. The Trucial States, together with Qatar and Bahrain, began talks on a nine-member federation. After three years of negotiation, Qatar and Bahrain decided to become separate independent states.

On 2 December 1971, six of the Trucial States, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Quwain and Fujairah, formed the United Arab Emirates. Zayed became its president, and Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum of Dubai its vice president. The UAE marks 2 December as National Day; the official portal describes it as the date of the first meeting of the federation's "founding fathers". Abu Dhabi became the provisional capital, a compromise that was extended several times until it was made permanent in the early 1990s.

The islands

Ras al-Khaimah, like Qatar and Bahrain, at first stayed out. Then, on 30 November 1971, two days before the federation was declared, Iranian troops landed on the islands of Greater and Lesser Tunb, which Ras al-Khaimah claimed; they met armed resistance from Ras al-Khaimah's police but took the islands. Iran also landed troops on Abu Musa, which belonged to Sharjah; there, an agreement between Iran and Sharjah let both flags fly over the island. The shock convinced Ras al-Khaimah's leaders that they needed the protection of unity, and in February 1972 it joined the UAE as the seventh emirate.

The islands dispute has never been resolved. Iran regards the islands as its own; the UAE, backed by its Gulf partners, regards them as Emirati land under occupation. In 1992 Iran tightened its control of the islands, and in 1996 it established an airport on Abu Musa and a power station on Greater Tunb.

Part 5 — Founding a federation (1971–1990)

Seven rulers, one state?

The new state was a federation of monarchies, each with its own ruling family, its own territory and, at first, its own security forces and finances. The constitution created a Federal Supreme Council of the rulers, which elects the president, a cabinet, and an advisory body, the Federal National Council. In practice, power has always been weighted towards Abu Dhabi, which has most of the oil and holds the presidency, and Dubai, which holds the vice presidency and premiership.

Building a real state took years of bargaining. In December 1973 Abu Dhabi began to centralise, moving several of its own ministers into federal posts. In May 1976 the seven emirates agreed to merge their armed forces. But in 1978 Dubai and Ras al-Khaimah refused to put their forces under federal command, and Dubai rejected a plan for a federal budget and the end of internal borders. The crisis eased when Rashid of Dubai was offered the post of federal prime minister, which he took in July 1979. The pattern was set: the UAE would hold together by consensus between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, with each emirate keeping wide autonomy.

Money and a currency

The oil boom of the 1970s changed everything. After the Gulf rupee, the currency then used on the coast, was devalued in 1966, Dubai joined Qatar in creating a riyal; in 1973 the emirates adopted their own national currency, the dirham. According to the World Bank, the UAE's output per person leapt from about $2,400 in 1970 to more than $27,000 by 1975 and almost $43,000 by 1980. Abu Dhabi opened its first oil refinery on Umm an-Nar island in 1976.

A dangerous neighbourhood

In 1979 the Islamic Revolution in Iran and, from 1980, the Iran–Iraq War brought danger close. Britannica notes that the revolution unsettled the UAE's large Iranian Shi'a community and inspired a growing number of young Sunni activists who felt the existing order did not uphold Islamic values. When Iran and Iraq began attacking tankers in the Gulf, fighting broke out within a few miles of the Emirati coast. In 1981 the UAE joined Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman in founding the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a regional body for security and economic cooperation.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the UAE condemned the invasion, provided facilities for Western forces and contributed troops to the liberation of Kuwait in early 1991. The lesson the leadership drew was that the UAE needed both powerful friends and, eventually, a capable military of its own.

Part 6 — Dubai's wager, and the crash (1960s–2010)

A city that decided to be a hub

Dubai's oil was never going to last, and its rulers knew it. Under Rashid bin Saeed (who ruled until his death in 1990) and his sons, the emirate bet on becoming the place where the world met to trade. It built infrastructure ahead of demand, again and again:

The free zone was the key idea: a special area where foreign companies could set up under business-friendly rules. Britannica judges the move largely successful; numerous international companies opened facilities at Jebel Ali. Dubai International Airport and Emirates turned the city into a stopover between continents. Hotels, malls, artificial islands such as the Palm Jumeirah and a stream of record-breaking projects followed, and tourism became a pillar of the economy.

Abu Dhabi's different path

Abu Dhabi, with its oil and its huge sovereign investment funds, developed more cautiously. It built its own airline, Etihad, and from the early 21st century invested heavily in culture to attract visitors and keep residents. A controversial deal with the French government lent the Louvre's name and works to a new museum for 30 years; after almost a decade of delays, Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by Jean Nouvel, opened in 2017. Abu Dhabi has also spread its wealth: to its sister emirates, to other Arab countries and to development projects abroad.

What kind of place Dubai became

Britannica's account of Dubai catches both sides of its success. It describes a city often compared to Singapore and Hong Kong, the Middle East's leading trading hub, where a huge expatriate population makes it feel like a "melting pot" and the atmosphere is generally tolerant: churches and Hindu temples stand alongside mosques. It also notes that criticism of the government and ruling elite "is not tolerated". The deal that made Dubai, openness to money and people combined with tight political control, has defined the whole country.

Dubai did not have much oil, so it sold something else: location, efficiency, stability and the promise that business could be done quickly, safely and with few questions. The rest of the Gulf has spent twenty years trying to copy it.

Going global

By the 2000s Emirati state companies were buying assets around the world. In 2006 a storm broke in Washington when state-owned DP World bought a British firm that managed several American ports. Members of Congress, citing security fears after 9/11 (two of the nineteen hijackers had been Emirati citizens), threatened to block the deal; DP World agreed to sell the American operations. The episode showed both how far the UAE's reach had grown and how much suspicion it still faced.

Crash and rescue (2008–2010)

The boom of the 2000s ended abruptly with the world financial crisis of 2007–08. The impact fell hardest on Dubai, where the economy had come to depend on property and construction. Big projects were suspended, and real-estate values fell by about 50% in a single year. World Bank figures show the UAE's output per person dropping from about $50,000 in 2008 to under $38,000 in 2009.

In late 2009 Dubai World, the emirate's government-run investment company, announced that it would not be able to repay its debts on time. Dubai's solution came from its richer neighbour: at the end of the year Abu Dhabi provided a $10 billion loan that helped Dubai avoid defaulting.

The symbolism was not lost on anyone. Three weeks later, on 4 January 2010, Dubai opened the world's tallest building, 828 metres high with 163 floors. It had been built as Burj Dubai. At the opening it was renamed Burj Khalifa, in honour of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, the ruler of Abu Dhabi and president of the UAE.

The crisis settled an old question about the federation. Dubai had been the dynamic one, Abu Dhabi the rich, quiet one. After 2009, there was no doubt where ultimate power lay.

Dubai's luxury property market soon recovered, though doubts lingered about its debts. The episode left a lasting lesson about the risks of growth built on debt, and a lasting shift in the balance between the two leading emirates.

Part 7 — Citizens and newcomers: the people of the Emirates

A country of migrants

No country's population has changed faster. The World Bank estimates that the UAE had about 131,000 people in 1960, about 3.5 million in 2000, nearly 6.9 million in 2010 and about 11.5 million in 2025. Almost all of that growth came from migration.

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (data updated October 2026).

The UAE's official government portal reported that the population grew from about 4.1 million in 2005 to about 10 million by the end of 2021, of whom UAE citizens numbered "around 1 million": roughly one in ten. It notes that more than 200 nationalities live in the country, and that 69% of the population was male, the result of a workforce dominated by men who came without their families. The International Labour Organization estimates that the UAE hosts about 8.7 million migrant workers, more than 80% of the resident population.

The migrants are not one group. Britannica notes that Dubai's construction boom brought a huge increase in South Asian labourers alongside skilled expatriates from all over the world; Human Rights Watch names Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal among the countries to which workers send their wages. They build the towers, staff the shops, drive the taxis and work in homes; others run banks and companies. Residence, however long, is not a path to citizenship for most of them.

The kafala debate

For decades, foreign workers in the UAE, as across the Gulf, were governed by the kafala (sponsorship) system: a worker's legal residence was tied to a particular employer, who could prevent him or her from changing jobs or leaving the country. Critics argued that this gave employers enormous power and allowed abuses: confiscated passports, unpaid wages, illegal recruitment fees and, in the worst cases, forced labour.

The government has reformed the rules repeatedly, and the two sides of the argument now look like this:

Britannica records that under international pressure the UAE met the ILO's minimum requirements on migrant protections in 2017. The government stresses the scale of what has changed, and many migrants earn more than they could at home and send money back to their families. Critics stress how much power still lies with employers and how little the workers can do collectively. Both accounts describe the same country.

Emiratis

For citizens, the oil era brought a degree of prosperity that few societies have known, with generous state support. Life expectancy at birth rose from about 51 years in 1960 to 83 in 2024, and the average number of children per woman fell from 6.5 to 1.2 over the same period. The government treats preserving Emirati national identity as a national goal, in a society where citizens are a small minority; it even tracks a "National Identity index" of citizens' sense of belonging, which it put at 97.8% in 2021.

Part 8 — Security first: the Arab uprisings and a more assertive state (2011–2019)

At home: no Arab Spring

When popular uprisings swept the Arab world in 2011, the UAE moved early to make sure nothing similar happened at home. In April 2011 five activists who had signed an online petition calling for an elected parliament were arrested; they were convicted of insulting the country's leaders and then pardoned and released in November. In 2012 new measures banned public and online criticism of the government, and dozens of democracy activists and members of the Islamist opposition were detained. In 2013, in the mass trial known as the "UAE94", dozens were convicted. In 2014 the government banned several Islamist groups, including the influential Islah association, saying they had ties to terrorism.

The government argues that it acted to protect a tolerant, stable, prosperous society from extremist movements, above all the Muslim Brotherhood, which it regards as a threat to the region's states, and points to the chaos that followed the uprisings in Libya, Syria and Yemen. Human rights groups argue that peaceful critics have been jailed alongside genuine extremists. In March 2025, according to Human Rights Watch, a court upheld the convictions of 53 human rights defenders and dissidents, 43 of them sentenced to life in prison, many of them already jailed since the 2013 trial; among them was Ahmed Mansoor, winner of the Martin Ennals Award for human rights defenders, serving a 15-year sentence.

The state also tried to widen participation in limited ways. From 2006 an electoral college chose half the members of the advisory Federal National Council; by 2015 it had been expanded to about a third of citizens of voting age. The council remains advisory.

Abroad: from cautious to forceful

The UAE's foreign policy was transformed in these years, driven largely by Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ), crown prince of Abu Dhabi and, after his half-brother Khalifa suffered a stroke in 2014, the country's de facto ruler. According to a former US envoy quoted by Al Jazeera, MBZ was driven by the belief that the Gulf monarchies could no longer simply rely on the United States, especially after Washington abandoned Egypt's Hosni Mubarak in 2011. He built the armed forces into a high-tech military and used it.

Yemen

The UAE's role in Yemen was large and costly. Emirati forces backed local fighters in the south, and Emirati commandos fought al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula on the southern coast. More than 100 Emiratis were killed. In 2019 the UAE pulled most of its forces out, a sign of a growing gap with Saudi Arabia. That summer, the southern separatists the UAE had backed, the strongest force in the coalition's camp, turned on the Saudi-backed government and drove it out of Aden. The UAE argued that the separatists were the most effective force against the Houthis; Saudi Arabia wanted a united government. The quarrel would return in 2025.

In 2016 a UN panel reported that some actions of the coalition, of which the UAE was the second member, may have amounted to war crimes. The UAE says it fought to stop an Iran-aligned militia from seizing Yemen and to defeat al-Qaeda.

Part 9 — The Abraham Accords, Mars and a new president (2020–2025)

Recognising Israel

On 13 August 2020, the UAE and Israel announced that they would establish full diplomatic relations, in a deal brokered by the administration of US President Donald Trump. Israel agreed to suspend its plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank. The UAE became the first Gulf Arab state to normalise relations with Israel, and only the third Arab state after Egypt and Jordan. The treaty, together with a similar deal with Bahrain and a general declaration known as the Abraham Accords, was signed at the White House on 15 September 2020; Morocco and Sudan joined later.

Views divided sharply:

The UAE's ties with Israel were still in place in 2026.

Hope, Expo and the future

The UAE also set out to be a country of the future. On 9 February 2021 its Hope probe entered orbit around Mars, making the UAE the fifth entity to reach Mars orbit after the United States, the Soviet Union, Europe and India. In October 2019 Abu Dhabi founded the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, a graduate research university devoted to AI, and the federal government's AI strategy aims to make the UAE a world leader in artificial intelligence by 2031.

Expo 2020 Dubai, delayed a year by the Covid-19 pandemic, opened on 30 September 2021 with more than 190 participating countries on a 438-hectare site. By its close at the end of March 2022, it had recorded 24,102,967 visits, just short of its goal of 25 million. The World Bank shows how the pandemic hit and the recovery followed: the economy shrank by 8.7% in 2020, grew by 7.5% in 2022 and by 4.0% in 2024, when output reached about $552 billion, or roughly $50,000 per person.

Missiles over Abu Dhabi

On 17 January 2022, the Houthis claimed a drone and missile attack on Abu Dhabi that killed at least three people, a reminder that the Yemen war could reach the UAE itself.

A new president

Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed died on 13 May 2022, aged 73. The next day the Federal Supreme Council elected Mohamed bin Zayed, then 61 and long the real power in the country, as president. MBZ had backed Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman during his rise to power, and the two men led the Gulf's most activist foreign policies. But he also showed he would act independently: the UAE abstained from a UN Security Council vote condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and declined Western calls to pump more oil.

Sudan

The most damaging accusations against the UAE in these years concerned Sudan, where the army has been at war since 2023 with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Human Rights Watch reported "a growing body of evidence" that the UAE had supported the RSF, which it accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity: investigations by HRW and France 24 found the RSF using munitions previously acquired by the UAE military, and Reuters and the New York Times reported that an airbase in eastern Chad was being used to funnel weapons to the RSF. The UAE has rejected the accusations. Sudan took the UAE to the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention; on 5 May 2025 the Court rejected Sudan's request for emergency measures and ordered the case removed from its list.

Part 10 — The UAE in 2026

War in the Gulf

The year began with the UAE's long rivalry with Iran turning into direct attack. After the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on 28 February 2026, Iran retaliated with missiles and drones against Gulf states that host American forces. On 29 March Iran's Revolutionary Guard claimed attacks on aluminium plants in Bahrain and the UAE; Emirates Global Aluminium said one of its sites in Abu Dhabi had suffered significant damage and six people were injured. The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage off the UAE's northern coast, was effectively blocked to tankers.

The break with Saudi Arabia

The partnership with Saudi Arabia, already strained, broke into the open. In December 2025 the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council seized much of Hadramawt and al-Mahra in eastern Yemen. On 30 December the Saudi-led coalition struck what it said was a UAE weapons shipment at the port of Mukalla; Saudi Arabia accused the UAE of pressing the separatists to attack, which the UAE denied. The UAE then announced that it would withdraw its remaining forces from Yemen. In January 2026 Saudi-backed forces took Aden and the STC's leader fled. In January 2026 Somalia cancelled all its agreements with the UAE, including port, security and defence deals, accusing it of undermining its unity, amid reports that the UAE had helped bring about Israel's recognition of the breakaway region of Somaliland, where the Emirati company DP World runs the port of Berbera.

Leaving OPEC

Then came the OPEC decision. The UAE had long resented quotas that limited it to 3 to 3.5 million barrels a day while it invested heavily in extra capacity. Wanting to use the capacity it had built, it announced on 28 April 2026 that it would leave. For the first time since 1967, Abu Dhabi will decide alone how much oil to pump.

Still building

Through all of this, the UAE pressed on with the projects that define its self-image: artificial intelligence, space, tourism, finance and culture. In January 2026 it ratified the ILO's Forced Labour Protocol; later that year UNESCO inscribed Wadi Wurayah as a natural World Heritage site, a year after Faya. The country's leaders present it as an island of stability and tolerance in a dangerous region; its critics see a skilful authoritarian state whose influence abroad, from Yemen to Sudan, has made the region more dangerous. In 2026 both views were being tested at once.

Part 11 — How to understand the UAE today

Key dates

Who's who

Five ideas that unlock the country

1. It is a federation of families. The UAE is seven monarchies that agreed to share a flag, an army and a foreign policy while keeping their own rulers and much of their own law. Abu Dhabi's oil and Dubai's commerce are the two pillars; the smaller emirates depend on both. To understand any Emirati decision, ask what Abu Dhabi wants and whether Dubai agrees.

2. Luck and timing made the state, and planning kept it. Oil arrived just a few years before Britain left. If the British had stayed, or the oil had come later, there might be no UAE, or a much poorer one. What the rulers did with the luck, Zayed's spending on the smaller emirates, Dubai's ports and airline, Abu Dhabi's investment funds, explains why it lasted.

3. The country is a hub by design. From the pearl merchants who sold to Bombay to the free zones, airlines, ports and AI campuses of today, the Emirates have made their living by being the place where other people's trade, money and talent meet. That requires openness to the world, and it explains both the country's tolerance of foreigners' private lives and its intolerance of anything that might threaten stability.

4. Citizens are a minority in their own country. Around one resident in ten is a citizen. This shapes everything: the generous welfare state for Emiratis, the strict separation between citizenship and residence, the kafala debate, the investment in national identity, and the government's insistence that political dissent is a danger the country cannot afford.

5. A small state with big ambitions has to choose its fights. Since 2011 the UAE has acted more boldly than any other small state in the region: Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Qatar, Israel, Sudan, Somalia. Its leaders see a hard-headed strategy to contain Islamists and Iran and to protect a fragile neighbourhood. Its critics see a country that exports the instability it says it fears. 2026, with Iranian missiles overhead and a rupture with Saudi Arabia, is the most serious test yet of which view is closer to the truth.

In 1960 the people of this coast lived much as their ancestors had for centuries. Two generations later their country sits at the junction of the world's flight paths, data cables and oil routes. Few places on Earth have travelled so far so quickly.

The takeaway

The coast that is now the UAE was settled for many thousands of years; in the Bronze Age it was most likely part of Magan, the copper land of Mesopotamian texts, and Iron Age farmers built some of the oldest known falaj water channels. In the 18th century the maritime Qawasim and the inland Banu Yas, with the Al Nahyan at Abu Dhabi and later the Al Maktoum at Dubai, became the region's leading powers. After defeating the Qawasim in 1819, Britain bound the sheikhdoms by treaties from 1820 to 1892, creating the Trucial States, whose pearl economy collapsed in the 1920s and 1930s. Oil, found off Abu Dhabi in 1958, and Britain's departure in 1971 led Zayed bin Sultan and Rashid bin Saeed to found the UAE on 2 December 1971, with Ras al-Khaimah joining in 1972. Since then the federation has grown from fewer than 300,000 people to more than 11 million, most of them migrant workers, has turned Dubai into a global hub, survived the 2009 debt crisis, cracked down on dissent, intervened across the region, normalised relations with Israel and, in 2026, faced Iranian attacks, a break with Saudi Arabia and its own exit from OPEC.

Try this: pick one ordinary object in your home that was probably shipped from abroad: a phone, a shirt, a bag of rice. Find out (from the label or a quick search) where it was made, and sketch the likely route it took to reach you. There is a good chance that route passed through the Gulf, by sea past the Strait of Hormuz or through a port such as Jebel Ali, or by air through Dubai or Abu Dhabi. Then write two sentences: one on why a small desert country chose to make its living this way, and one on who does the work that keeps those routes running.

Sources & Further Reading

Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, "United Arab Emirates" (history and foreign affairs sections by Jill Ann Crystal and J.E. Peterson, updated December 2025 and January 2026), and articles "Abu Dhabi (emirate)", "Abu Dhabi (city)", "Dubai (emirate)", "Dubai (city)" by Christopher Davidson, "Ras al-Khaimah", "Abu Musa", "Burj Khalifa", "Dilmun", "Sargon of Akkad", accessed via the Internet Archive, October 2026.
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre listings: Cultural Sites of Al Ain (1343), Faya Palaeolandscape (1735), Wadi Wurayah National Park (1724).
- UAE Government Portal (u.ae): "Population and demographic mix" (updated October 2022); "Public holidays" (National Day, 2024); "Artificial intelligence in government policies" (2025). Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, "About" (2024).
- International Labour Organization: country page for the United Arab Emirates; United Arab Emirates: Regulatory framework governing migrant workers (updated December 2023); news release on the UAE's ratification of the Protocol to Convention No. 29 (January 2026).
- Human Rights Watch, World Report 2026, United Arab Emirates chapter.
- World Bank, World Development Indicators (data updated 8 October 2026); OPEC, "Brief History".
- BBC News: Israel–UAE deal (13 August 2020); Hope probe (9 February 2021); Expo 2020 opening (30 September 2021); Qatar embargo ends (7 January 2021); Mukalla strike and UAE withdrawal (30 December 2025); UAE leaves OPEC (Faisal Islam, April 2026). The National, Expo 2020 visitor total (2 April 2022).
- Al Jazeera: Houthi attack on Abu Dhabi (17 January 2022); profile of Mohamed bin Zayed (14 May 2022); STC leader flees Aden (7 January 2026); Somalia–Saudi defence agreement and Somalia's cancellation of UAE agreements (10 February 2026); IRGC attacks on aluminium plants (29 March 2026).
- US Department of State, "The Abraham Accords" (texts signed 15 September 2020); International Court of Justice, Sudan v. United Arab Emirates, order of 5 May 2025.

Go deeper
- 📘 From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates — Frauke Heard-Bey (1982, later editions; the classic history of the coast's society and politics before and after federation)
- 📘 City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism — Jim Krane (2009; a journalist's lively account of how Dubai was built, and at what cost)
- 📘 The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf — Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi (the Emirati counter-history of the British "pirate coast")
- 🌐 UNESCO: Cultural Sites of Al Ain (Hafit, Hili and Bida Bint Saud: tombs, towers and aflaj)
- 🌐 ILO: the United Arab Emirates (the labour organisation's country page, with its briefs on migrant-worker law)
- 🌐 Human Rights Watch: United Arab Emirates, World Report 2026 (the critics' case, dated and sourced)
- 🌐 Related pieces in this library: A Brief History of Saudi Arabia and A Brief History of Iran (this series); Islam: From Mecca to Two Billion People; If I Was Born in Saudi Arabia (daily life next door)