Why the UAE’s Opec exit spells the beginning of the end of Gulf unity

Dr Asad Ullah is a postdoctoral researcher in international politics at Shandong University, specialising in Middle East conflict, diplomacy and geopolitical strategy.On April 28, the United Arab Emirates informed the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) it was leaving. Three days’ notice. No call to Riyadh beforehand, apparently. The grievance about production quotas was years old: Abu Dhabi had threatened to quit in 2021. What’s changed has nothing to do with the barrel count. It is about who underwrites Abu Dhabi’s security when it acts on a decision Riyadh opposes.After Iran struck UAE infrastructure, Abu Dhabi sent only a foreign minister to the Gulf Cooperation Council’s emergency session. Instead, it leaned on the US-Israel axis built quietly since the Abraham Accords. That realignment produced a moment without precedent: Israel deployed an Iron Dome system to defend Emirati airspace, a first for a foreign nation that is not the United States. It rendered obsolete the assumption that Gulf producers share a threat environment that makes collective discipline rational. They no longer do.The Opec exit made visible what the shift had made possible. Security architecture, not quota arithmetic, is what holds a cartel together.