The United Arab Emirates and India moved on Monday to deepen their defence and trade ties, signing a series of agreements during a brief visit to New Delhi by the UAE's president.
Under the deals, the UAE will supply India with $3 billion worth of gas and take part in a "mega partnership" to develop an investment zone in the western Indian state of Gujarat.
The agreements were finalised during talks attended by UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who was accompanied by the country’s foreign and defence ministers.
The two sides also agreed to explore joint development of nuclear technologies and signed a letter of intent aimed at establishing a strategic defence partnership.
The framework would expand military cooperation, including collaboration on joint weapons production and advanced technologies, India's foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, said.
The agreements form part of a broader effort to double bilateral trade to $200 billion by 2032.
The two countries have made efforts to strengthen economic ties in recent years and have become key trading and investment partners.
The UAE is one of India's foreign investors and is among its largest export destinations.
The two countries held joint military exercises in Abu Dhabi in December.
Intensifying rivalry
The agreements come amid rising tensions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, with diverging economic and geopolitical interests increasingly spilling into open rivalry.
The two Gulf states are competing for influence in Yemen and the Horn of Africa, while also backing opposing sides in Sudan’s civil war.
Riyadh has responded to Abu Dhabi’s growing influence in the Red Sea and Africa by forging a defensive alliance with nuclear-armed Pakistan, with Turkey reportedly close to joining the arrangement.
Saudi Arabia is also said to be considering a second military coalition focused on the Red Sea, potentially involving Egypt.
"Abu Dhabi’s defence arrangement with New Delhi looks more like strategic hedging," geopolitical analyst Sabena Siddiqui told The New Arab. "It appears the UAE is trying to show that it, too, has a major military power on its side."
The partnership stops short of the mutual defence pact agreed between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which declared that "any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both".
Misri was keen to emphasise that it does not mean that India will take military action in the Middle East.
"Our involvement on the defence and security front with a country from the region does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that we will get involved in particular ways in the conflicts of the region," he told reporters.
Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College London’s School of Security Studies, said the agreements allow Abu Dhabi to diversify its strategic ties without becoming entangled in India’s disputes.
"Abu Dhabi wants the strategic signalling benefits of proximity to India without importing the liabilities of India’s regional disputes or forcing a binary choice between rival blocs," he told The New Arab.
"The net effect is to widen the UAE’s strategic options and complicate Saudi Arabia’s ability to shape South Asian alignments through Pakistan alone, without necessarily pushing the Gulf into a hardened two-camp structure."
Alex Jalil, a Gulf analyst, said closer ties with India are part of Abu Dhabi's strategy to secure its position in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.
"The UAE is building overlapping security alignments with Israel, Ethiopia, and now India that reinforce its influence from the Horn of Africa to the Indo-Pacific, particularly as South Yemen and maritime access points remain contested," he said.