The UAE Is Secretly Helping Ansarallah Fight Saudi Arabia in YemenIn an extraordinary move, the UAE has been covertly sharing targeting assistance with the Iranian-aligned Ansarallah in its conflict against Saudi-backed forces inside Yemen.
Drop Site is a reader-funded, independent news outlet. Without your support, we can’t operate. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber or making a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible donation today. The United Arab Emirates, a key American and Israeli ally in the Gulf, has been quietly assisting Ansarallah in its conflict against Saudi-backed forces inside Yemen, four sources with knowledge of the situation told Drop Site News. Specifically, various UAE-aligned Yemeni forces have been providing targeting assistance to Ansarallah in their battle against Saudi-backed government forces in Yemen while Abu Dhabi has looked the other way, the sources said. According to two sources with knowledge of the covert arrangement, the UAE’s assistance has also included direct sharing of intelligence by the UAE itself to Ansarallah for the purpose of targeting Saudi-backed forces. A Yemeni source familiar with the Ansarallah backchannel confirmed that “the UAE has passed a significant amount of intelligence to the Sana’a-based government; the line of communication between the two sides remains open.” The Yemeni source told Drop Site that Ansarallah “established their own channels of communication internally with military commanders” who remain loyal to the UAE. The sources required anonymity as they are not authorized to speak publicly about the arrangement. That the UAE is directly aiding one of its chief regional opponents is extraordinary. The UAE and Ansarallah are fierce ideological enemies with geopolitical goals that are in direct opposition to one another. The UAE is a close ally of Israel and the United States while Ansarallah is a close ally of Iran. However, when it comes to Yemen, their interests have come to overlap to some extent, producing a classic enemy-of-my enemy situation. The UAE was sidelined in Yemen earlier this year by Saudi Arabia, and stands to regain a strategic foothold in Yemen in the current conflict. The assistance to Ansarallah from the UAE, some of the sources said, does not include help with intelligence and targeting inside Saudi Arabia, but is limited to help with targeting and intelligence inside Yemen. Ansarallah’s attacks on Saudi Arabia included strikes on Saudi’s main airport, one of which killed 12 people and wounded more than 300 others—and led to the cancellation of the Future Investment Initiative conference, otherwise known as the “Davos in the Desert.” Recently, according to one source, a senior American official warned the Emirates that the U.S. had learned of the covert assistance being provided and urged that it be ended. Sources indicated the intelligence assistance was ongoing. UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba did not respond to requests for comment. Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Ansarallah official, denied that the UAE was assisting Ansarallah but insisted the Emirates were committed to neutrality. “The UAE has not provided any form of support to Yemen—neither against Saudi Arabia nor against its proxies within Yemen,” he told Drop Site. “According to our information, the UAE remains committed to neutrality and has refused to become re-involved in the aggression against Yemen alongside Saudi Arabia, despite persistent efforts by [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed] bin Salman to persuade it to join.” Last month, the Iran-backed Ansarallah, also known as the Houthis, launched a blitz to the Red Sea coast that stunned the region, routed Saudi-backed forces, and left Ansarallah in control of the Bab Al-Mandab Strait, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and an important alternative to the blockaded Strait of Hormuz. Saudi efforts to regain territory have largely been repelled. Since then, Saudi Arabia has increasingly bombed Sana’a and other Ansarallah-controlled areas, while Ansarallah have conducted multiple strikes on Saudi Arabia. Beginning in 2015, the Emirates were allied with Saudi Arabia as part of a coalition backing the Yemeni government, after Ansarallah swept south from its stronghold in the northern highlands and took over Sana’a in 2014. The Yemeni government is commonly referred to as the internationally recognized government, or IRG, and it remains largely based in Riyadh. But, early in the conflict, the UAE’s aims and ambitions were at odds with the Saudis, causing division in the anti-Ansarallah side. In December of last year, that friction resulted in clashes between UAE-backed forces and Saudi-backed military units in the south and the UAE was effectively expelled from Yemen by force. Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that the UAE was re-entering the Yemeni conflict on the side of Saudi Arabia by agreeing to resume some payments to some of the forces it had backed. That backing would most likely come through supporting the Giants “Al Amaliqah” Brigades, a predominantly Salafi militia ideologically opposed to the Houthis with an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 largely southern fighters. The Southern Giants are currently battling for control of the Kahboub mountain range overlooking the Bab al-Mandab. This potential support has not been reflected on the battlefield, the Yemeni source said. Many commanders within the Giants Brigades have deceived the Saudi-backed forces, the source said, repeatedly abandoning their positions without any engagement or confrontation. The source also told Drop Site that military unit commanders affiliated with the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) have refrained from fighting the Houthis, effectively stalling battlefronts—particularly in the southern governorates of Al-Dhale, and Lahj—bordering Taiz governorate, and frequently withdraw from their positions. A UAE-based senior official categorically stated to Drop Site that “the STC has no channels of communication with the Houthis” and denied that STC were refusing to fight Ansarallah in the south. “The STC has publicly and consistently maintained that the Southern Armed Forces will not participate in military operations in the North,” Amr al-Beidh, special representative of the president of the STC, told Drop Site. “This should not be confused with an unwillingness to confront the Houthis. Quite the opposite. Any Houthi advance towards the South will be met with resistance.” “It is important to distinguish between our policy of not engaging in military operations in the north and our firm commitment to defending the South against the Houthis,” he added. The White House and a spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition did not respond to requests for comment. Drop Site News is reader-supported. Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. More than 250,000 people have been displaced by the escalating violence since August 1, according to the International Organization for Migration. Almost half of those have fled Taiz governorate, which encompasses some of Yemen’s highest mountains and a large stretch of the western Red Sea coastal plain approaching the Bab al-Mandab, including the strategic port of Mokha. Aid agencies cannot reach more than 600,000 people in Taiz—where the capital city is currently besieged by Ansarallah—who depend on humanitarian assistance, according to the UN’s World Food Program (WFP), including more than 200,000 women and children. READ MORE: Encircled by War, Yemen’s Taiz Residents Brace for Fighting and a Renewed Siege A Web of WarThe UAE is Israel’s closest ally in the Gulf, and was previously allied with Saudi Arabia in its war against Ansarallah in Yemen. But the UAE’s interests in Yemen diverge from both Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s. As early as 2015 it became apparent that the Emirates’ priority in Yemen was to counter the perceived threat from the Muslim Brotherhood over and above the conflict with Ansarallah. The Islah Party—Yemen’s political Islamist party that includes factions of the Muslim Brotherhood—emerged as the UAE’s primary target despite their role within the IRG. In 2015, UAE forces and Yemeni fighters it trained and funded pushed Houthi forces—that at the time included loyalists of Yemen’s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh—out of the southern city of Aden. The UAE went on to consolidate its gains, establishing an array of fighting groups that they both funded and directed. The STC represented the aspiration for renewed southern independence and animosity in the region toward being ruled by northern elites since the unification of Yemen in 1990. Unification resulted in land theft and the economic benefits of the south’s natural resources being captured by Saleh and his cronies. Islah was also viewed by southerners as part of this exploitative northern rule. The UAE capitalized on this animosity and desire for self-determination, supporting the creation in May 2017 of the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) led by Aidarous al-Zubaidi. Islah was a common enemy. Between 2015 and 2018 at least 160 assassinations were carried out in southern Yemen. The majority of those assassinated were members of Islah, many of them were imams, creating a climate of fear and paranoia in Aden and across the south. Widely held suspicion that the UAE was behind the deaths was confirmed in 2018 when American mercenaries told a BuzzFeed journalist (and, later, the BBC) that they had carried out assassinations on behalf of the UAE and trained Yemeni forces to carry on the killings. Ansaf Ali Mayo, an Islah parliamentarian, survived an attempt on his life by the American assassins. Earlier this year he filed a lawsuit against the two former U.S. special forces operators in a federal court in San Diego along with the Israeli-Hungarian founder of the private security firm Spear Operations Group that hired them. The UAE’s hiring of foreign mercenaries didn’t stop at U.S. veterans. Thousands of Sudanese Rapid Support Force (RSF) were brought in by the UAE between 2015 and 2018 to help fight Ansarallah as the UAE-backed forces made gains up Yemen’s western Red Sea coast into the governorate of Hodeidah, home to Yemen’s second largest port and controlled by Ansarallah. The rift between UAE-backed forces and those of the Saudi-backed IRG has not only considerably weakened efforts against the Houthis but, on several occasions over the past decade, spilled into direct infighting. In August 2019, UAE fighter jets carried out up to 24 airstrikes against IRG and Islah-aligned government military units and positions in Aden, Abyan, and Marib in support of the STC as the competing factions vied for control. Al-Zubaidi was summoned to the Saudi capital and in November 2019, an agreement was signed between the Saudi-backed IRG and the STC. The power-sharing deal, known as the Riyadh Agreement, should have meant an integration of STC forces into the IRG military in exchange for southern representation in a unity government. But implementation stalled. The situation came to a head in December 2025 when STC forces swept east from their stronghold in Aden to take two large governorates bordering Saudi Arabia and Oman. Saudi Arabia responded by launching airstrikes targeting a large shipment of Emirati military equipment at the port of Mukalla and giving the UAE 24 hours to leave and end its “military or financial support to any party within Yemen.” The UAE heeded the warnings and STC forces were quickly routed by Yemeni government military units backed by Saudi air cover. “Saudi Arabia was the one that forced the UAE out of the coalition waging war on Yemen in a humiliating manner, effectively shooting itself in the foot,” said al-Bukhaiti. “Given this experience, it is only natural that the UAE would refuse to rejoin the Saudi-led coalition in its aggression against Yemen [Ansarallah], despite pressure from Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Israel, particularly after Yemen demonstrated its remarkable ability to defend itself and impose a principle of blockade for blockade and escalation for escalation.” Since this latest fissure between Saudi Arabia and the UAE in Yemen, not all of the formerly UAE-aligned forces have been fully integrated into the IRG military and security apparatus, partially because this process was disrupted due to the renewed fighting with Ansarallah. STC loyalists remain in the mountains of Al Dhale, the homeland of Al-Zubaidi who fled to the UAE in January. For months after the Saudi pushback in December 2025, surveillance drones were a constant presence and Saudi airstrikes killed at least six civilians in Al Dhale in January. A Yemeni source familiar with the STC-Ansarallah communications told Drop Site that channels were being facilitated by a senior STC figure in Al-Dhale. In an indication of both how the UAE operates in Yemen and sentiment in the south towards the Saudi-backed IRG, when asked by Drop Site which of the fighting groups formerly funded and commanded by the UAE would likely provide intelligence to the Houthis for targeting IRG forces, an individual close to the STC quipped, “probably all of them.” Ansarallah, in recent months, has been remarkably effective at targeting commanders among the Saudi-backed fighters and in anticipating the movements of their forces. Two rounds of precision strikes on October 2 and 7 at the coalition military base west of Aden put this on display. One hit the doorway to the office of the Saudi commander, though he was not present. Another hit brand new military vehicles that were brought to the base a few hours earlier. The UAE has advanced intelligence gathering capabilities. Established in 2009, the UAE’s cybersurveillance Project Raven surveilled alleged militants while also monitoring foreign governments, human rights activists and those critical of the Emirati monarchy. Former U.S. intelligence operatives including former NSA employees were heavily involved in aiding and training the Emiratis, according to an investigation by Reuters. By 2013, Reuters reported, the majority of Raven’s workforce were Americans. Beginning in 2016, the team used the spying platform Karam to hack into the iPhones of foreign leaders including Turkey’s Defense Minister, the Emir of Qatar and Yemeni Nobel Prize-winning political activist Tawakkol Karman. The UAE is also known to have deployed sophisticated Israeli spyware. In 2021 Amnesty’s Pegasus Project investigation determined that the UAE had begun using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to target members of the Saudi-backed internationally recognized government for surveillance. Bukhaiti said that the alignment of interests does not mean there is an official alliance between Ansarallah and the UAE. “However, this does not mean that an alliance exists between the UAE and Yemen out of spite toward Saudi Arabia or as a means of settling scores with it. As for reports circulating about an attempt by the UAE to contact us to form an alliance against Saudi Arabia, they are entirely baseless,” he said. “Saudi Arabia does not need to beg countries around the world to defend it, nor does it need to worry about the possibility of a future Yemeni-Emirati alliance against it. All it needs to do is agree to end the war and lift the blockade on both sides. This is the only genuine way out of this conflict.” Al-Bukhaiti’s reference to “the possibility of a future Yemeni-Emirati alliance” contains a thinly veiled suggestion: Saudi Arabia, he said, need not worry about such an alliance, as long as they end the war and lift the blockade. If they do not do so, however, the potential of such an alliance hangs over the conflict. Wait! Don’t go just yet, one more thing:If you’re glad the story you just read exists, thank yourself for it, because it wouldn’t have been possible without paying subscribers like you. 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