TEHRAN - When Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber took the screen at CERAWeek in Houston on March 23, 2026, he chose his words carefully. The Managing Director and Group CEO of ADNOC, speaking by video link because war had closed the skies, called any disruption of the Strait of Hormuz “weaponizing” energy and “economic terrorism against every nation.”

He warned that “twenty-one miles wide, twenty million barrels a day” was now squeezed, that oil prices had already risen by 50 percent, and that “no country should be allowed to hold Hormuz hostage. Not now. Not ever.” He invited American capital into ADNOC, XRG and AI ventures, and promised ADIPEC in November as proof that the UAE could keep energy flowing.

Eight months later, that Houston speech reads less as analysis and more as confession. The UAE was not describing a crisis. It was announcing its role in it.

From the first bombs, the war moved to Hormuz

From the first hours of the American-Israeli war against Iran on February 28, 2026, it was clear the fate of this war would be decided not in the air over Tehran or Isfahan, but in the waters of the Persian Gulf. Its focal point was inevitable: the Strait of Hormuz.

Washington and Tel Aviv began with a massive air campaign against nuclear sites in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, military bases and commanders. Tehran answered where it is strongest. It did not chase American stealth fighters across the sky. It closed the strait.

That single decision reversed the initiative. The aggressors had planned a short, “decisive” air war to force capitulation. Iran turned it into a long war of attrition on energy, insurance, shipping and global inflation – fields where the United States and its Persian Gulf partners are profoundly vulnerable.

20M barrels a day: The artery no pipeline can replace

To understand why, one needs only the numbers. In 2025, according to the International Energy Agency, an average of nearly 20 million barrels per day of crude and petroleum products transited Hormuz, about 25 percent of the world’s seaborne oil trade, plus about 19 percent of global LNG trade. At its narrowest, the strait is only 22 nautical miles wide, split between Iranian and Omani territorial waters. There is no maritime substitute of equal capacity, flexibility and economy.

Only Saudi Arabia and the UAE possess pipelines that can partially bypass it, with combined spare capacity estimated by Washington at 3.5 to 5.5 million barrels per day. In other words, even at full tilt, bypasses can carry barely a quarter of normal Hormuz flows. Whoever controls the strait controls the pulse of the world economy.

Iran’s closure did exactly that. Within weeks, nearly one billion barrels were drained from global inventories, diesel stocks in some markets fell to their lowest seasonal level in 35 years, and some buyers faced a 600 billion cubic feet LNG supply gap. Logistics costs, once less than 5 percent of the price of a barrel, surged to over 30 percent. Tanker war-risk premiums jumped from 1-3 percent of hull value to 7.5-10 percent. Fuel rationing returned in parts of Asia and Europe, and central banks warned of a new inflationary wave driven not by demand, but by war.

This was not collateral damage. It was deterrence. Tehran made clear that if its oil cannot be exported safely and its sovereignty is attacked, no hostile power will enjoy cheap, secure energy.

Islamabad promise, then night smuggling in the southern corridor

Diplomacy briefly offered an exit. On June 17, 2026, after weeks of indirect contacts, U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding. It declared removal of the U.S. naval blockade and committed Iran to “make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge, for 60 days only,” with the future administration of the strait to be determined by Iran in consultation with Oman and other Persian Gulf states.

In Tehran’s reading, the message was historic: management of the strait “will never return to the way it was before the war,” as Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf later put it. In May, Iran had already established the Persian Gulf Strait Authority and announced that no vessel could pass without its permit. The Islamabad formula recognized reality – security in Hormuz cannot be imposed by distant fleets, but must be arranged by the littoral states, above all Iran in the north and Oman in the south.

Washington, however, used the 60-day window not to build shared security but to neutralize it. Instead of cooperating with Iranian-Omani arrangements, U.S. Central Command forced shipping into an artificial “southern corridor” hugging the Omani and Emirati coasts, far from Iran’s legal traffic separation scheme. Ship operators were told to register with the U.S. military, switch off AIS transponders and telephones, assemble at night in single-file convoys of 15 to 20 tankers, and run dark under American fighter cover. Empty tankers were rushed in, loaded in Persian Gulf ports, and rushed out.

By August, CENTCOM boasted of 1,300 transits since May and 660 million barrels moved, rising to 5-7 million barrels per day in July – about 40-50 percent of pre-war levels. The Wall Street Journal, embedded aboard the carrier George Washington, described nightly launches of F-35C and F/A-18 jets, jamming aircraft, anti-submarine helicopters and more than a dozen destroyers shielding oil in transit. It was presented as “freedom of navigation.” In practice, it was state-organized smuggling to bypass the coastal state.

It is here that the position of the Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, becomes decisive. From the start, he defined Hormuz not as a mere waterway but as an inseparable part of Iran’s sovereignty, strategic depth and legitimate leverage against aggression.

On October 31, in a meeting with Army Commander Major General Amir Hatami, IRGC Commander Major General Ahmad Vahidi, Chief of Staff Major General Ali Abdollahi and other senior commanders, he ordered “smart combat readiness for a powerful response, maximum deterrence, and an immediate and effective response with no geographical limitation,” tasking the armed forces with updating both material and non-material target banks of the U.S. and Israel and declaring that the timing and conditions for ending aggression will be set by Iran. The doctrine is clear: aggression that begins with strikes on Fordow and Natanz will not end in Washington, and control of Hormuz will not be surrendered to those who bombed Iran.

After the collapse of the Islamabad understanding in early August and the U.S. re-imposition of its blockade, Washington has tried to keep the strait “half-open” by night smuggling through that southern route. It cannot do so alone. The operation requires a forward base, a bypass pipeline, a storage hub outside the strait, and someone to pay. That someone is the United Arab Emirates.

Fujairah pays, Al Dhafra hosts: The UAE’s four-dimensional role

The UAE’s role is pivotal and four-dimensional – logistical, financial, military and political.

Logistically, Fujairah is the heart of the detour. The 406-km Habshan-Fujairah pipeline, ADCOP, with capacity of about 1.8 million barrels per day, is the only Emirati route that loads crude directly onto the Gulf of Oman, 130 km south of Hormuz, without entering the strait. Since March 10 it has run at maximum. Exports from Fujairah jumped from 1.17 million barrels per day in February to 1.62 million in March, up 38 percent, according to Kpler. ADNOC, on direct orders from Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed on May 15, is fast-tracking a second $3-billion West-East pipeline to add another 1.2-1.5 million barrels per day by 2027, for a combined 3.3 million, plus a planned products pipeline for diesel, gasoline and jet fuel.

Fujairah itself has been transformed from a bunkering port into a war hub: over 10 million cubic meters of commercial storage, 42 million barrels of underground caverns, the world’s third-largest storage center, ship-to-ship transfer anchorages off Fujairah and Sohar that handled over 70 percent of crude still crossing the strait in August, and new terminals built by DP World at Fujairah, Dibba and Khor Fakkan. Small dark tankers that slip out of the southern corridor discharge to VLCCs waiting in the Gulf of Oman. Without Fujairah, the southern corridor has no exit.

Financially, Abu Dhabi has underwritten this artificial corridor in full. It kept Jebel Ali alive at a cost of about $100 million a month to allow 48-hour resumption, absorbs soaring overland costs 4-5 times normal shipping, offers Murban crude loaded at Fujairah at a premium for “delivery certainty,” and signed a May strategic storage deal allowing India to hold reserves in Fujairah while ADNOC can store up to 30 million barrels in India. Coupled with the U.S. Development Finance Corporation’s political-risk insurance imposed by Trump on March 3, Emirati money bridges the gap between an uneconomic route and a war necessity. Analysts at Rystad estimate 6-7 million barrels per day now move via the southern route plus 2 million via Fujairah – 8 million of 15 million lost. The other 7 million remain missing, and the 8 million that move do so at war prices paid ultimately by consumers, but advanced by Abu Dhabi.

Militarily, the UAE is the only Persian Gulf state alongside Bahrain to join the 22-nation U.S.-led coalition declared March 21 to reopen Hormuz. On March 18 it was first to signal willingness; on April 5 it formally backed a U.S. military operation to take control of the strait. Six Baynunah-class corvettes armed with 180-km Exocet Block 3 and ESSM missiles now do escort and patrol at the strait’s approaches. Two Gowind corvettes, Bani Yas and Al Emarat, add surveillance. Al Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi hosts U.S. Patriots, F-15Es, F-35s and tankers that fly nightly combat air patrols against Shahed drones and anti-ship cruise missiles. French Rafales from Base 104 in the UAE fly alongside. By May 10, the UAE claimed 551 ballistic missiles, 2,265 drones and 29 cruise missiles intercepted by its layered THAAD, Patriot, Barak-8 and Pantsir shield – a shield without which Fujairah, Ruwais and Habshan could not function after at least seven direct Iranian strikes on Fujairah’s tanks and loading arms.

Politically, Abu Dhabi provided legal cover for violating Iranian-Omani arrangements by proposing a so-called “Hormuz Security Force” and signing condemnations of Iran’s “de facto closure.”

Bet on the losing horse

Nor can this be separated from the UAE-Israeli nexus. Since the Abraham Accords, Abu Dhabi’s overt and covert ties with Tel Aviv – intelligence sharing, radar integration, technology, and the scrambling of Emirati Mirage 2000s during the war and the alleged use of Emirati soil in attacks on Iran, which Abu Dhabi denies – have made the UAE in Iranian eyes not a neutral logistics provider but a party to the aggression. When Fujairah refuels ships that break Iran’s declared permit regime, when Al Dhafra launches cover for convoys that defy the Strait Authority, and when Emirati funds insure what American guns escort, neutrality is fiction.

The conclusion is unavoidable. The UAE has entered a dangerous gamble and bet on the losing horse. The southern corridor it bankrolls is artificial, costly and high-risk.

Iran, by contrast, has shown it can absorb strikes, degrade the enemy’s radar and surveillance, adapt with fast boats and residual sensors, and keep the strait’s administration in its hands. The world has learned that Hormuz cannot be secured against Iran, only with Iran and Oman.

Continued Emirati adventurism offers Abu Dhabi nothing but exorbitant bills: billions for pipelines that remain targets, hundreds of millions monthly to keep ports on life support, reputational ruin as Israel’s quartermaster in the Persian Gulf, and the transformation of Fujairah, Jebel Ali, Ruwais and Al Dhafra from economic assets into legitimate targets in any next round. The horse it backed – an American-Israeli order that bombs nuclear facilities and then demands free shipping – has already lost control of the strait. Doubling the bet will not win the race.