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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a covert visit to the United Arab Emirates for talks with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed, a meeting that Netanyahu's office subsequently acknowledged produced what it called a "historic breakthrough in relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates."
The visit, first reported by CBS News, comes as the two countries have deepened security cooperation to levels that would have been unimaginable before their 2020 diplomatic normalization. Spokespeople for the UAE had not publicly commented on the trip.
The visit followed U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee's public confirmation Tuesday that Israel has sent Iron Dome air-defense batteries and military personnel to the UAE, the first known deployment of the system outside Israel and the United States.
Huckabee, speaking at an event in Tel Aviv, attributed the move to what he called an "extraordinary relationship" between the two countries forged by the Abraham Accords. Sources confirmed that the UAE received the defense systems.
The Iron Dome battery was deployed after Netanyahu spoke directly with bin Zayed, reflecting the speed and intimacy of the two governments' wartime coordination.
The system is widely regarded as one of Israel's most consequential military technologies, having intercepted thousands of rockets and missiles since its operational introduction more than a decade ago.
The secret visit came on the heels of a Wall Street Journal report that the UAE carried out military strikes on Iran, an action the Emirati government has not publicly acknowledged. If confirmed, it would make the UAE one of a very small number of countries to have taken direct military action against Iran. The disclosure underscores the extent to which the Israel-Iran conflict has drawn Gulf Arab states into roles their leaderships have been reluctant to discuss openly.
A U.S. official said Netanyahu had previously traveled to the UAE in 2018, also in secret, for a meeting with bin Zayed, suggesting that discreet high-level contact between the two leaders predates the formal normalization of ties.
The UAE was the first country to sign the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords in September 2020, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and four Arab nations, including Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.
The accords, negotiated during President Donald Trump's first term, were widely described at the time as a diplomatic realignment driven in large part by shared concern over Iranian regional ambitions.
The current depth of military cooperation, extending to the deployment of Israeli troops on Emirati soil and coordinated action against Iran, comes amid the strategic logic underlying those agreements has accelerated sharply under wartime conditions.
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