Dr Anwar Gargash, Diplomatic Adviser to the UAE President, called on Monday for a Gargash political solution to the Hormuz crisis, warning that the region’s state of “neither war nor peace” could not continue as the UAE Air Force responded to a drone detected over the country’s territorial waters approaching from Iran.
The UAE Ministry of Defence confirmed the intercept and said the Armed Forces remained on a high state of readiness. In a separate statement, the ministry denied media reports that Al Menhad Air Base had been targeted by missiles.
What Gargash said
Writing on X, Gargash said realistic and sustainable political solutions were now essential. ‘What is needed today are realistic and sustainable political solutions that address the political and economic dimensions of the crisis, beginning with moving beyond escalation and restoring navigation in the Strait of Hormuz to normal, and leading to a more realistic approach that moves beyond the memorandum of understanding, which failed to chart a practical and acceptable roadmap,’ he wrote.
He added that targeting Gulf states and Jordan had ‘proven to be a failure’. His remarks build on a position he outlined last week, when he described Iran’s attacks on Gulf countries as a strategic miscalculation that had increased Tehran’s isolation and weakened its position.
The latest comments came a day after US forces struck Iranian missile launchers on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz, the first US military action against Iran in about a month. Iran subsequently launched ballistic missiles at US forces in Jordan.
Scale of attacks on the UAE
The context for Gargash’s call is the sustained scale of the campaign against the UAE. According to the Emirates News Agency (WAM), the UAE had by 3 March 2026 been subjected to more than 1,000 attacks, a number exceeding the total faced by all other targeted countries combined, all of which were intercepted.
The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated on 8 March 2026 that Iran had launched more than 1,400 ballistic missiles and drones targeting UAE infrastructure and civilian sites, which the UAE described as a flagrant violation of international law and the UN Charter.
By 12 March 2026, UAE air defences had intercepted a cumulative total of 268 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles and 1,514 UAVs launched from Iran, according to WAM. The attacks resulted in six fatalities, among Emirati, Pakistani, Nepali and Bangladeshi nationals, and 131 minor to moderate injuries among nationals of 28 countries.
The UAE reaffirmed on 3 March 2026 that it had not permitted the use of its territory, territorial waters or airspace for any attack against Iran, consistent with its stated policy of good neighbourliness and de-escalation.
Experts: dialogue needs enforceable guarantees
Dr Mohammed Ibrahim Al Dhaheri, Deputy Director-General of the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, said the region could not remain trapped in a perpetual state of neither war nor peace. ‘Dialogue serves a purpose only when it produces measurable compliance,’ he said. ‘The mistake of the past was to treat the existence of dialogue as progress in itself.’
Al Dhaheri said any lasting security framework would have to anchor commitments in ‘hard, enforceable and audited standards’, backed by independent verification, and that freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz was ‘entirely non-negotiable’. He said a meaningful diplomatic reset would require Iran to halt direct and proxy attacks, restore unrestricted maritime movement and accept binding, independently audited security arrangements.
Fatmah Alzeyoudi, a researcher in Iranian and Middle East affairs at the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, said Tehran’s calculation in targeting the UAE had failed. ‘Diplomatic dialogue will continue as a regional necessity,’ she said. ‘However, dialogue alone is no longer sufficient and must be accompanied by credible security arrangements and tangible guarantees from Iran.’
Bahrain reported a similar picture. The Bahrain Defence Force announced as of 5 March 2026 that its air defence systems had destroyed 74 Iranian missiles and 117 drones targeting the kingdom since the onset of attacks.
The UAE Air Force’s intercept of the drone detected on Monday, reported by the Ministry of Defence via WAM, will test whether Gargash’s call for a political solution to the Hormuz crisis gains traction with any of the parties involved.
