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Sheikh Mohammed, 61, worked behind the scenes as de facto leader for years, changing United Arab Emirates The military’s emergence as a high-tech force, coupled with its oil wealth and commercial hub status, has expanded the UAE’s international reach.
Mohammed came to power amid illnesses that included his half-brother, President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, who died on Friday, including a stroke in 2014.
According to Barbara Leaf, the former US envoy to the UAE, MbZ is driven by “some kind of fatalistic thinking” that Gulf Arab rulers can no longer rely on their main backer, the US, especially after Washington abandons after the rule of Egypt. Hosni Mubarak during the 2011 Arab Spring.
From his power base in the capital Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed issued a “calm and grim” warning to then-President Barack Obama against supporting an uprising that could spread and endanger the rule of the Gulf dynasty, according to Obama’s memoir, which described MbZ. For the “savviest” Gulf leader.
A U.S. State Department official in the Biden administration, which has had tensions with the UAE in recent months, described him as a strategist who brings a historical perspective to the discussion.
“He’s not just talking about the present, but looking back years, decades, and in some cases, trends over time,” the official said.
MbZ backed the 2013 military ousting of Egypt’s elected Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Mursi, and championed Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman as he rose to power in a 2017 palace coup, touting him as a man Washington could deal with and the only one able to open upper kingdom.
Buoyed by friendly relations with then-US President Donald Trump, the two Gulf hawks lobbied Washington for Iranboycotting neighboring Qatar for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and waging a costly war to try to break the hold of Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis.
The UAE has also been embroiled in conflicts from Somalia to Libya and Sudan, before forging links with Israel and Bahrain in 2020 in a US-brokered deal known as the Abraham Accords, which drew Palestinian anger and upended Arab numbers. Decade of consensus.
A diplomat said the deals were driven by shared concerns about Iran, but were also seen as a benefit to the UAE economy and fatigue for a Palestinian leadership that “doesn’t listen.”
tactical thinker
While diplomats and analysts see alliances with Riyadh and Washington as a pillar of the UAE’s strategy, MbZ does not hesitate to act independently when interests or economic reasons dictate.
The crisis in Ukraine exposed tensions with Washington when the UAE abstained in a UN Security Council vote condemning the Russian invasion.As an OPEC producer, apart from oil
Riyadh in the United Arab Emirates has also rejected Western calls to increase production.
Abu Dhabi ignored other U.S. concerns by arming and supporting Libya’s Khalifa Haft against an internationally recognized government and engaging with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.
In Riyadh, the biggest divide comes over the UAE’s largely withdrawal from Yemen, as the unpopular war has left more than 100 Emiratis dead in a military stalemate.
Abu Dhabi orchestrated a coup against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 2019 when he broke his promise to abandon his Islamist allies.
Stability comes first
Although he said he was drawn to their Islamic ideology at a young age, MbZ sees the Muslim Brotherhood as one of the most serious threats to stability in the Middle East.
Like Saudi Arabia, the UAE has accused the Brotherhood of betrayal after sheltering persecuted members in Egypt in the 1960s, only to see them work for change in the host country.
“I’m Arab, I’m Muslim, I pray. In the 1970s and early 1980s, I was one of them. I believe these people had an agenda,” MbZ said in a 2007 meeting with U.S. officials, according to Wikipedia Decrypt.
Sheikh Mohammed, who was educated at the Military Academy in the United Arab Emirates and Sandhurst, UK, saw distrust of Islamists intensify after 2001, when two of his compatriots were among 19 hijackers who attacked the US on September 11. .
“He looked around and saw that many of the younger generations in the region were very fond of Osama bin Laden’s anti-Western slogans,” another diplomat said. “As he once said to me: ‘If they can You do it, they can do it to us.'”
Despite years of hostility, MbZ chose to engage with Iran and Turkey as COVID-19 and growing economic competition with Saudi Arabia shifted focus to development, pushing for further liberalisation in the UAE while limiting political dissent.
Seen by many diplomats as a modernizer at home and the son of a charismatic people, MbZ has doggedly propelled the previously low-key Abu Dhabi, home to the UAE’s oil wealth, by stimulating energy, infrastructure and technology development.​​​ .
As deputy supreme commander of the armed forces, he is credited with turning the Emirati army into one of the most effective in the Arab world, according to experts, who say he instituted military service to instill nationalism rather than rights among wealthy populations .
“He doesn’t beat around the bush…he wants to know what’s bad, not just what’s working,” said a source with access to Sheikh Mohammed.
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