Why Saudi Arabia and the UAE may sit out new US-led Red Sea initiative

BEIRUT — When the US announced a new, multi-national effort to secure shipping lanes in the Red Sea, dubbed Operation Prosperity Guardian, it listed several nations that the Pentagon said would be participating. Notably absent from the list were two major regional players and US partners: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

While the two monarchies have not commented publicly on the new initiative, analysts told Breaking Defense their apparent decision to not publicly back it is not unexpected due to some delicate geopolitical realities in the region, but also could be the latest signal of a growing rift between the Gulf nations and Washington.

“Contemporary US foreign policy and its recent defense coalitions and initiatives have placed the national security interests of major historical Gulf allies like KSA and the UAE at a lower priority in favor of regional rivals and their proxies,” Bahraini strategic analyst Yusuf Mubarak told Breaking Defense. “[As such] recent Houthi aggression against the global maritime movement is an expected outcome.”

When it was first announced on Dec. 18, the US Defense Department said 10 countries would be participating in Prosperity Guardian: the US, the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain. Three days later, Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder said as many as 20 nations had said they would back the initiative, though some of the original nations, like Spain and Italy, later put out public statements that appeared to distance themselves from it. (The Combined Maritime Forces, under which the new effort falls, is made up of 39 international partners, including KSA and the UAE.)

Speaking to the geopolitical situation, Mick Mulroy, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and a former senior Pentagon official, told Breaking Defense that KSA and the UAE were probably concerned about public perception related to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

“I believe that politics does have some impact,” he said. “The US is trying to characterize this effort as one tied to defending international trade and the rights to use international waterways, not about supporting Israel in Gaza.”

The Saudis and the Emiratis may have an obvious interest in secure shipping lanes themselves, Mulroy said, “but [they] do not want to be seen as supporting Israel.”

Representatives for the Saudi and Emirati defense and foreign ministries did not immediately respond to Breaking Defense’s requests for comment for this report.

Mubarak said the Gulf nations likely also felt “shunned” by the US when they’d previously tried to raise the alarm about Houthi rebels, the Yemen-based group responsible for attacking the shipping lanes with drones and missiles recently but which has been in conflict with KSA and the UAE for years. So the two “might as well leave this escalated phase [Prosperity Guardian] to those who refused to nip it in the bud,” Mubarak said.

That view was shared by fellow Bahrain-based strategic expert and political researcher Abdullah Al Junaid.

“American policies are shrouded in a lot of ambiguity regarding how to deal with sources of threat to the security of the region when those sources are either Iranian or an Iranian arms in the region such as the Houthis,” Al Junaid said.

In May, reportedly frustrated by lack of US response to Iranian threats, the UAE said it was no longer participating in the Combined Maritime Force partnership, though it’s still listed as a member.

Al Junaid also said Saudi Arabia may feel it doesn’t need a new multi-national effort to protect its interests.

“The Saudi fleet has secured all waters with operational depth, both at sea and on land. The Saudi air defense system also played an advanced role in intercepting many Houthi drones,” he said. “Thus, it is capable of dealing with any emergency, and it will not want to give up part of its sovereign decision over the work of its Western fleet to any allied party…, ” Al Junaid told Breaking Defense.

As for Bahrain’s public participation amid its neighbor’s cold shoulders, several analysts agreed that, too, was unsurprising, as Bahrain home to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet and Combined Task Force 153, which is spearheading Prosperity Guardian.

Regardless of the geopolitics of Prosperity Guardian, the analysts said they also noted what appeared to be a more aggressive stance by US forces in the Red Sea, evidenced by the killing of suspected Houthi combatants at sea on Dec. 31.

A US defense official told Breaking Defense that US forces have a long-standing inherent right of self-defense.

“CTF-153 is responsible for maritime security in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb, and the Gulf of Aden. The Houthi small boats engaged on Dec. 31 fired on the U.S. Navy helicopters and the crews aboard those helicopters returned fire in self-defense,” he added.

Mulroy said he suspects that the White House “has decided, with the urging of the Pentagon, that they needed to do more than deflect attacks on commercial vessels and Naval vessels; they needed to militarily respond to the origin of the attacks and the storage of these significant weapons systems provided largely by Iran.”

Mark Cancian, senior adviser at the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, also said the US appeared “to be taking a more aggressive approach against Houthi attacks as those attacks continue and damaged ships. I would not be surprised if the United States struck shore installations.”

Today the White House released a “joint statement” from Washington and several of its partners and allies condemning Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Bahrain was among the group who put the statement out; Saudi Arabia and the UAE were not.

Breaking Defense’s Ashley Roque contributed to this report.