Balancing act: How Pakistan is navigating the Saudi-UAE rift

As tensions sharpen between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Pakistan is treading cautiously to preserve its ties with both Gulf powerhouses.

A rivalry that long simmered under the surface has lately spilt into the open over Yemen’s war, exposing deeper divergences in Riyadh’s and Abu Dhabi’s competing visions for the regional order.

At the same time, Pakistan’s deepening economic and defence footprint in the Gulf is drawing it directly into the orbit of this contest, with Islamabad seeking to cultivate each partnership while avoiding the appearance of favouring either side.

Comparing Saudi-UAE ties with Pakistan

In Pakistan, Abu Dhabi’s footprint extends across ports, logistics, real estate, banking, telecoms, agriculture, aviation, and energy sectors, and it has frequently provided financial assistance during Pakistan’s balance-of-payments crises.

After China and the US, the UAE is Pakistan’s third-largest trading partner, and a major source of foreign investment, valued at around $10 billion. In addition, at least 1.9 million Pakistani expatriates live in the UAE, contributing remittances in excess of $7 billion in 2025, a crucial source of foreign exchange for Pakistan’s economy.

Over the years, Islamabad and Abu Dhabi have also expanded their defence ties with regular joint training exercises, while Pakistan has provided foundational training to the UAE Armed Forces and, most notably, the Air Force, whose first five Chiefs of Air Staff were Pakistani officers.

In addition, Pakistan helped set up Emirates, the Emirati national airline, and Abu Dhabi has shown interest in Pakistan’s JF-17 jets, which were combat tested in a conflict with India last year and are attracting a growing list of international buyers.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, hosts the largest Pakistani diaspora population abroad at around 2.23 million. Riyadh has plans to invest around $10 billion in Pakistan and would like to acquire a 15% stake in Reko Diq, one of the largest copper and gold reserves in the world, along with other mining interests, agriculture, and energy.

However, Saudi-Pakistan ties have also evolved into a more multi-dimensional strategic partnership. One of the first capitals to recognise Pakistan, Riyadh has helped Islamabad throughout the decades, from financing its nuclear plans and helping it survive sanctions to supporting it during economic crises.

In turn, Pakistan has provided joint army training, annual military exercises, arms production, and the permanent deployment of Pakistan army contingents within the Kingdom.

Months before Saudi-UAE ties soured, Pakistan also signed a watershed defence pact with the Kingdom, making Islamabad’s balancing act between the Gulf capitals even more complex.

The Saudi-Pakistan defence pact

Strategically tilting towards Riyadh with a NATO-style defence pact in September 2025, Islamabad now faces the delicate task of reassuring Abu Dhabi.

The Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SMDA) was formalised amid an evolving global and regional security landscape and Riyadh’s need to diversify its defence. The agreement has no binding clause for either party to act, and no nuclear angle.

But since Pakistan is a nuclear state, the pact carries weight, notwithstanding its ambiguity.

Though more of an acknowledgement of decades-long security arrangements between the Kingdom and Pakistan, which had been managed discreetly, the landmark agreement rewired Gulf security by exemplifying a trend of security diversification and deterrence.

Shifting defence ties

Acting as a catalyst, the Saudi-Pakistan defence pact changed the regional security calculus, forcing key players to explore parallel alignments amid a shifting landscape.

On 19 January 2026, UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) paid a visit to India, with Abu Dhabi and New Delhi announcing a ‘letter of intent’ to establish a strategic defence partnership, along with major economic and energy agreements.

“Within the context of intra-Gulf dynamics, the UAE relationship with Pakistan and India has grown, and it will have necessary relationships with both capitals when necessary,” Dr Theodore Karasik, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, told The New Arab.

“Now it’s a fascinating time to watch how the relationships are developed and changed or coordinated with Saudi Arabia.”

With the UAE India’s third largest trading partner, and Abu Dhabi considered a strategic partner in West Asia, it makes sense for them to “attempt a defence deal, as some of their interests seem to converge,” Ayesha Ijaz Khan, a columnist and lawyer based in London, told TNA.

Yet so far, Khan noted, all they have “managed to do is sign a letter of intent, which is significantly less robust than the pact that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have signed”.

Earlier in January, reports indicated that Turkey was in advanced negotiations to join the Saudi-Pakistan defence pact. More recently, however, Saudi sources have said that the pact will remain an exclusively bilateral deal.

Karasik noted that only the Turkish president can “clarify the nature and the expense of a security arrangement between these countries” and how it forms a group, “as some are going so far as to call it a Muslim NATO”.

Pakistan's Gulf policy

Though the Saudi defence pact can provide enhanced strategic leverage for Pakistan, it will also bring more responsibility. Having valuable ties with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi carries the risk of becoming entangled in internal regional dynamics, or possibly even having to make a choice at some point between both sides.

Zeeshan Shah, an analyst based in Washington, told TNA that after frequent high-level visits to Saudi Arabia by the Pakistani PM and Field Marshal in 2025-26, and the recent visit to Pakistan by MBZ before he visited India, “President Zardari also undertook a state visit to the UAE this week, and this underscores that Pakistan values its relations with the UAE, especially in the economic sphere”.

Essentially, according to Shah, Islamabad has been trying to dispel “rumours of tensions” surfacing in the Pakistan-UAE relationship by reinforcing the “optics that all is well with its relations with the UAE”.

For example, media reports surfaced recently about the UAE dropping an airport management project in Islamabad, just weeks after Saudi-UAE ties began publicly deteriorating, though no lease or agreement had been signed yet by either party.

But Shah added, if relations between the Saudis and UAE were “ever to come to a head, Pakistan would be forced to choose between the two, and in that case it would obviously side with the Saudis”.

Could Pakistan mediate Saudi-UAE tensions?

Until relations between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi improve, Islamabad cannot escape the risk of taking sides between its two most important economic and security partners.

With little margin for error, siding too closely with either capital could estrange the other, undermining Pakistan’s Gulf strategy and reducing its limited room for manoeuvre.

Focused mediation, however, could be one way out of this conundrum. Discussing this possibility with TNA, Ayesha Ijaz Khan said that a “widening schism” is emerging between Saudi Arabia and the UAE on their approach to “both regional issues and their world views in general”.

She pointed out that Pakistan has close ties with both countries, and a large expatriate population in both places, but “while ties with the UAE are connected to commercial interests, relations with Saudi Arabia have a strong religious and civilisational dimension”.

Moreover, she said that if any broader regional coalition is created after the Saudi-Pakistan mutual defence pact, it is unclear whether the UAE would “share this goal”.

In this scenario, it “seems unlikely that Pakistan would be able to mediate issues between Saudi Arabia and the UAE,” Khan added.

Sabena Siddiqui is a foreign affairs journalist, lawyer, and geopolitical analyst specialising in modern China, the Belt and Road Initiative, the Middle East, and South Asia

Follow her on X: @sabena_siddiqi

Edited by Charlie Hoyle