Overview
- Israel’s prime minister’s office says Benjamin Netanyahu made a secret trip to the UAE in March to meet President Mohammed bin Zayed, but the UAE foreign ministry calls the claim baseless.
- Emirati political scholar Abdulkhaleq Abdulla denounced Netanyahu as a war criminal and said the reported visit was a fabrication meant to serve Israeli politics.
- Open-source flight posts and a Haaretz editor’s note reported two Israeli business jets flew to Al-Ain and returned the same night, which supporters of the claim cite as circumstantial evidence.
- U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee publicly confirmed that Israel sent Iron Dome air-defense batteries and Israeli personnel to operate them in the UAE, and the UAE has not denied that deployment.
- The dispute unfolds after large Iranian missile and drone strikes on the UAE damaged energy sites like the Habshan gas plant, a scale of attacks that has driven tighter Israel–UAE security cooperation under the Abraham Accords.