The UAE has exited OPEC. Most discussion has revolved around three takeaways. While relevant, they are not sufficient to understand the UAE’s long-term trajectory, which is significant for its partners, New Delhi being an important one.
So, what are these three commonly cited points?
First, this decision has been a long time in the making. The UAE has repeatedly signalled divergence from OPEC’s production quotas— both cuts and increases. Abu Dhabi joined the cartel in 1967, seven years after its formation. More broadly, OPEC itself has never been static; its membership has expanded and shrunk over time. And this is not just about the less formal OPEC+. Even within the formal core of OPEC players, membership has been fluid.
Ecuador left in 1992, rejoined in 2007, and then quit again in 2020; Gabon left in 1995 and returned in 2016; Indonesia left in 2009, rejoined briefly in 2016, and exited the same year again. Qatar became the first Middle Eastern country to leave in 2019 (to prioritise LNG and political differences with Saudis), with the UAE now second to do so.
Second, the move makes economic sense. Exiting cartel constraints allows the UAE to maximise its production capacity. Under OPEC quotas, its output remained around 3 million barrels per day, despite a capacity closer to, or even exceeding, 5 million.
This is rational actor behaviour: if global oil demand is expected to peak and eventually decline within the next decade, producers have an incentive to monetise reserves while the sun shines.
Beyond that, the UAE is right to see diminishing returns in collective cartel bargaining to set oil prices, when its breakeven price is much lower than Saudi Arabia’s, and greater value in flexibility — pursuing a more agile oil strategy, expanding into Mediterranean and North African markets without requiring consensus from the cartel.
Third, the exit reflects a deepening competitive dynamic within the Gulf—something akin to a “cold war” between UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) and Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). This is not merely personal but now structural, driven by competing ambitions and statecraft increasingly getting irreconcilable.
A longer discussion on the Emirati trajectory is very much the need of the hour.
Also Read: UAE’s exit from OPEC means a Gulf energy system that’s more responsive to Asian demand
All the kingdoms of Arabia
It is true that the Gulf, like any other geopolitical region, is not a monolith. Tribal affinities, historical experiences, and geopolitical pressures have created asymmetries across the region and among regional players. Yet, what distinguishes the UAE is the alacrity of its ambition and the coherence of its economic and geopolitical model.
Recent chaos during the wider Iran war may have delayed—but has not derailed— its push toward greater strategic autonomy.
The Iran war has, for now, fogged up internal divisions within the GCC. But beneath this fog, a distinct Emirati project has kept itself alive: a steady move away from weak states, fragile governments, and now even weak cartels.
Abu Dhabi has been building profitable sub-entities—networks of influence via connectivity, strategic investments, and logistical stakes. To work, this model requires a baseline of regional stability to ensure maximum returns to scale. But it also requires agility to exploit the opportunities thrown up by geopolitical twists.
It is this combination—eating the cake and having it too—that makes the Emirati approach so radically different and, dare I say, superior.
So where does one begin?
Meaningful analysis requires a meaningful framing, a plausible vantage point. In my view, it lies in the response of the Gulf states in managing the commotion from the 2011 Arab Spring.
That first wave of uprisings shook the region, threatening the stability of wealthy Gulf monarchies—systems built first on oil wealth, then humongous sovereign funds, and finally on adaptive, opportunistic statecraft.
Over decades, this combination has produced what we see today: stable, prosperous states governed by technocratic efficiency, tightly controlled under monarchical authority, where populations are disincentivised from revolt through prosperity.
Arab Spring: the beginning of the end
It was in the Saudi-Emirati response to those uprisings that the seeds of their divergence were sown—turning into a regional order now marked by competition and rivalry rather than coordination. Backing rival proxies in Yemen was one manifestation; exiting OPEC is another. More will follow.
The Arab Spring unleashed a wave of uprisings that threatened to overthrow powerful monarchies and replace them with ideological, often Islamist governments. While reminiscent of earlier revolutions, mainly the Iranian one, its intellectual and organisational roots lay in the Muslim Brotherhood. Founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood had, by the late 20th century, re-emerged as a transnational ideology. The Arab Spring gave it momentum and legitimacy—making it the single greatest threat to Gulf monarchies built on stability, prosperity, and political quiescence.
From Tunisia to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain—and through astonishing unrest across Morocco, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, and Sudan—the upheaval was quite unprecedented. For Gulf rulers, it posed an existential challenge.
The initial response was suppression. By the mid-2010s, the first wave had largely been contained, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain formally banning the Muslim Brotherhood. But suppression alone was not enough, for it brought an interregnum—a vacuum of sorts that required regional re-shaping if such a challenge was to be pre-empted in the future.
It is here that the Emirati approach started to diverge sharply.
The UAE under MBZ moved proactively to reshape the regional order. Qatar briefly attempted to fill this vacuum by backing Islamist movements, but lacked the bandwidth and endurance to sustain such a strategy, eventually reverting to its familiar playbook centred on influence through media outlets such as Al Jazeera and selective backing of Hamas.
The UAE, by contrast, went way beyond. It built a network of state and non-state actors—that geopolitical analyst Andreas Krieg has called an “axis of secessionists”—to shape favourable outcomes across multiple theatres. In Egypt, it backed the state via investments, but in Libya, Sudan, and Yemen, it backed proxies and local actors.
Note that it is not the same Iran’s “axis of resistance”, despite structural similarity its blending formal and informal instruments of power projection.
What enabled the Emirati manoeuvres was geopolitical context.
Qatar had stepped back, and Saudi Arabia was still consolidating under the inexperienced Mohammed bin Salman. Mohammed bin Zayed effectively became both mentor and strategic guide for MBS. The fallout from the Jamal Khashoggi murder in 2018 ostracised Riyadh and strained its ties with Washington, which enhanced Abu Dhabi’s relative influence.
The United States itself had reduced emphatic Middle Eastern statecraft through successive administrations from Obama to Trump-1 to Biden.
Abu Dhabi filled in, chased its interests with aplomb, often at the cost of its allies, and created what was to become an exclusive Emirati project of regional order.
The sun sets on the golden couple
The UAE-Saudi divergence is increasingly visible across regions. Since the Abraham Accords in 2020, the UAE, the first to normalise ties, has deepened its alignment with Israel. It has created a new axis that is more agile and operationally coherent in pursuing common interests.
It has already manifested in breakaway Somaliland, where Emirati and Israeli positions have converged on dominating the Red Sea from the direction of the Horn of Africa, even as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar have vehemently opposed it.
This competition has intensified, and the trend is upward in the larger Horn of Africa and Red Sea as well. The UAE has integrated countries like Ethiopia into its aerial and maritime networks, reportedly providing military and technological support. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has acted to counterbalance this expanding influence, but to less avail.
Yemen is another example. The Emiratis weren’t limiting themselves to the war against the Houthis, but creating their own enclave in the south of Yemen by backing the STC (Southern Transitional Council), which eventually explains the Saudi strikes on Mukalla in December 2025.
More tension is to follow in Sudan, which is very much a part of the UAE vision of the regional order. The result is a new theatre of rivalry layered on top of an already complex regional order.
Exiting OPEC, then, is very much a part of this vision, not a departure from it.
Also Read: UAE exit from OPEC isn’t about oil. Iran War making Gulf states seek new shelters
‘Hub and spoke’
At the core of this strategy lies what may be best described as an Emirati “hub-and-spoke” model: Abu Dhabi in the centre, connected to a web of state and non-state partners that derive benefits from the network but remain subordinate to it. This model thrives in a fragmented MENA region because it is not anchored in ideology or identity, but in interests defined as power maximisation— a classic Morgenthauian principle of “politics among nations”, where states pursue power over idealism.
The UAE’s ability to pursue its interests is unmatched. It maintains deep ties with the US even as its financial centres have helped actors like Russia navigate sanctions. It cooperates deeply with Turkey on defence despite Ankara’s deepening alignment with Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It will likely be back to engage Iran, whatever the outcome of the war may be.
In short, bloc politics doesn’t limit the Emirati model, but offers it crevices that it knows how to exploit.
I have long argued that India’s multi-alignment is neither evenly distributed nor neutral when operationalised. Nowhere is this clearer than in New Delhi’s Middle East policy, a textbook case of balancing ties across Arabia, within the Arab world, and with Iran.
Yet, even within this framework, the UAE stands out as first among equals—a position it is likely to retain for the foreseeable future.
Swasti Rao is a Consulting Editor (International and Strategic Affairs) at ThePrint. She tweets @swasrao. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)