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Gargash warns: neither war nor peace

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Anwar Gargash, the UAE president's diplomatic adviser, wrote on X on 11 August that the region cannot remain trapped between war and peace. Abu Dhabi had helped call off an American strike nine days earlier.

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Key takeaway

Abu Dhabi's senior diplomat says the region cannot stay stuck between war and peace.

Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), wrote on X on Tuesday 11 August, warning that the region cannot remain trapped between "neither war nor peace" ¹. Gargash is Abu Dhabi's most senior public voice on foreign policy, and the UAE is not a bystander in this war. On 2 August Donald Trump called off a planned strike at the request of Riyadh, Doha and Abu Dhabi . Six days after that, the Emirates said an Iranian missile had targeted a vessel belonging to the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) in the Strait of Hormuz .

Gargash is describing that position from the inside. Abu Dhabi spent political capital to stop the bombing, and its own shipping is being fired on regardless. A Gulf state can lobby Washington out of a strike in an afternoon; it cannot lobby a war-risk underwriter, and it has no lever at all over what leaves an Iranian launcher. Hence the complaint, from a government that has run out of things to ask for.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Anwar Gargash, a senior adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates, posted on X that the region cannot stay stuck between 'neither war nor peace', meaning fighting has slowed without any real peace deal in place. The UAE is one of the Gulf countries that has been trying to stop the war between the US and Iran from getting worse, including helping persuade President Trump to cancel a planned strike on Iran earlier this month.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

No enforceable ceasefire mechanism exists between Iran and the US-Gulf coalition. Every halt in fighting so far has come from an individual intervention: Caine's 26 July warning to Trump over munitions stockpiles, then the Gulf states' 2 August request that called off a planned strike .

Neither halt rests on a negotiated framework, which is why Gargash describes the current state as 'neither war nor peace' rather than a ceasefire: no document exists that would make it one.

What could happen next?

Risk
Gargash's warning signals Gulf frustration that the current lull rests on individual interventions rather than a negotiated ceasefire, raising the chance a single incident, such as the disputed 8 August ADNOC vessel strike (ID:5650), could tip the region back toward open fighting.

Source Landscape

This story draws on centre-left-leaning sources from United Kingdom

United Kingdom

Primary parallel: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's personal intervention with Trump on 2 August (ID:5537), arguing Iranian retaliation on Gulf states would reach the global economy, achieved the same goal Gargash's statement now seeks, keeping the region short of full-scale war, through direct Gulf leverage over Washington rather than any bilateral Iran-Gulf channel.

Counter-parallel: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkiye signed a mutual-defence pact in Mecca on 7 August treating an attack on one as an attack on all three, though no signatory has published the text. That points the opposite way, toward formal military alignment rather than diplomatic appeal, suggesting Gulf states are hedging with collective defence commitments even while publicly calling for peace.

Consensus view: Middle East Eye reported on 11 August that US-Iranian talks remain stalled and both sides warn fighting could resume, the same framing Gargash's statement echoes. The UAE was one of three governments, alongside Qatar and Saudi Arabia, that persuaded Trump to call off a planned 2 August strike on Iran , giving Gargash's own government a direct stake in keeping that pause from collapsing.

Counter-view: The UAE was itself targeted on 8 August, when an Iranian missile reportedly hit an ADNOC-owned vessel in the Strait of Hormuz , an incident whose identity remains unresolved. That undercuts any reading of Gargash's appeal as coming from a bystander asking for calm from safety; the state he describes already includes attacks on Emirati-linked assets.

Key tension: Whether the Gulf pressure that halted the 2 August strike can hold given continuing Iranian pressure on Emirati interests, or whether 'neither war nor peace' is a fragile pause on the way back to open conflict rather than a stable middle state.

Sources:Middle East Eye

Mentions:Anwar Gargash →Riyadh →Qatar →Doha →Middle East Eye →Washington →Strait of Hormuz →Iran →Abu Dhabi →ADNOC →Emirates →Mecca →Pakistan →Saudi Arabia →Mohammed bin Salman →Donald Trump →United Arab Emirates (UAE) →

First Reported In

Update #169 · The war moved from the air to the water

Middle East Eye· 12 Aug 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

Gargash warns: neither war nor peace

A Gulf capital that helped halt an American strike is now saying the halt has settled nothing.

Led to

Abu Dhabi cuts Iran's payment channel

Gargash's warning that the region cannot survive between war and peace preceded the UAE's unilateral halt.

Occurred 17 Aug 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

Shipping and insurance market

Twelve P&I clubs cancelled war-risk extensions after reinsurers pulled back on 18 August and rebought cover within three days, Lloyd's List reported, while S&P Global logged one Hormuz crossing on 16 August against Kpler's five for the same day. The market is pricing a route it cannot independently count, against an Iranian insurer that has not stopped operating.

Oman

Oman co-administers the Strait of Hormuz's insurance and toll regime alongside Iran under the Islamabad MOU, and was separately named as the target of a bombing threat Axios attributed to Trump on 19 August. No Omani government statement on either matter is on the record.

United States

Axios reported on 19 August that Donald Trump posted a map labelling the Strait of Hormuz as US territory and separately threatened to bomb Oman if it obstructed US objectives. Neither claim carries an order or a deployment behind it, so the map reads as posture rather than a tasked military instruction.

France

Paris expelled two Iranian embassy agents on 18 August under the one power that requires it to publish no evidence, citing a July incident it now calls a premeditated assault on its own staff. Iran's rival account, of a secret meeting Paris had weeks of warning about, has not been answered by the Quai d'Orsay.

United Arab Emirates

Abu Dhabi halted all trade, commercial exchange and financial transactions with Iran on 18 August, closing the dirham channel Tehran has used to absorb sanctions pressure. Iran's foreign ministry called the missile allegation behind the move baseless on 19 August, but the UAE has not answered that denial with any further statement or reversal.

Iran

Iran's foreign ministry says it declared two French embassy staff persona non grata on 19 August, a day after France, for conduct it says breached the Vienna Convention. Majlis security committee chair Ebrahim Azizi cast the dispute as one more entry in a French ledger running back to contaminated blood, INSTEX and snapback.