Gulf Allies Strike Iran as Israel Confirms Iron Dome Deployment to UAE

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia each carried out covert strikes against Iran during the ongoing war, according to the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, marking the first time Gulf monarchies are known to have attacked Iranian territory directly.

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee confirms for the first time that Israel is supplying Iron Dome and operating personnel to the UAE pic.twitter.com/wit3I5FZGK

— ME24 – Middle East 24 (@MiddleEast_24) May 13, 2026

UAE forces struck an oil refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf on April 8, the Wall Street Journal reported. The attack disabled a significant portion of the facility’s production capacity. Iran attributed the strike to “enemy” forces and responded with missile and drone salvos against the UAE and Kuwait. Abu Dhabi has not publicly acknowledged the operation.

Saudi Arabia’s air force launched retaliatory strikes against Iran in late March, two Western officials and two Iranian officials told Reuters. One official described them as “tit-for-tat strikes in retaliation for when Saudi Arabia was hit.” A senior Saudi foreign ministry official did not address whether the attacks occurred.

Washington welcomed the UAE’s involvement and encouraged other Gulf states to join the conflict, an American official told the Wall Street Journal.

Open-source intelligence analysts had flagged possible Gulf offensive operations as early as April 2, when wreckage displayed by Iran from a drone downed over Shiraz appeared to match a Chinese-made Wing Loong II, a platform in Saudi and Emirati service, rather than the U.S. MQ-9 Reaper Tehran initially said it had shot down.

Map of CAIG Wing Loong II operators.

Any other options for this (Pakistani drone over Iran, China sending Wing Loongs to Iran) are far more unlikely pic.twitter.com/p0MRZfjY8h

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) April 2, 2026

If the identification holds, the incident would represent the earliest publicly documented evidence of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) offensive operations inside Iranian airspace during the war.