The Albanese Government’s rush to give “defensive military support” to the dictatorial United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the Persian Gulf, during the barbarous US and Israeli war on Iran, may appear to have come out of nowhere.
However, Australian government, capital and military have been putting down a footprint in the UAE for years.
On 8 March, on the ABC’s Insiders program, when asked to which country would Australia send “military assistance”, Nine journalist Peter Hartcher, responded, “I think the most likely candidate is the UAE because the Australia-UAE relationship has very quietly involved military co-operation for a very long time.
“The Al Minhad airbase, which was hit by an Iranian missile a couple of days ago, is where the Australian Air Force operates from in the Middle East.”
Indeed six days earlier, Defence Minister Richard Marles was pressed by journalists to admit that Iranian drones had hit the Al Minhad Air Base (AMAB) and that there were no casualties.
The UAE owns the base but currently hosts the Australian and British military.
Marles said, “We’ve got north of 100 serving personnel across the Middle East in a range of countries, but most are in the UAE and that base is very important to us.”
Since 2003, the ADF has had a military presence in AMAB, outside Dubai.
The Nightly reported that the Defence Department said, “Since the 2021 withdrawal of coalition forces from Afghanistan, Australia has maintained a smaller force at AMAB of 50 core ADF personnel and a total of 70 to 80 staff, which is focused on ‘strategic access and regional crisis response’.”
According to the ADF, “AMAB supports 12 current operations” and “the base remains Australia’s only forward-deployed headquarters and maintains strategic relationships within the region, particularly with the UAE”.
Australia’s military presence has been hiding in plain sight for years. It’s taken the US-Israeli war to expose the nature of the Australian base in, and depth of links with, the UAE.
Strategic partner
The Albanese government’s deployment of a spy plane, service personnel and missiles to the UAE builds upon years of Australia building capital and military ties there.
Last October, Albanese visited the capital of the UAE, Abu Dhabi, to sign the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). This signing coincided with the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a Canberra defence think-tank, wrote that the CEPA saw “the elevation of the UAE–Australia relationship to a strategic partner”. “In 2024, Australia’s non-oil trade with the UAE reached US$4.2 billion.”
It continued, “Meanwhile, two-way investment stock stood at $US16 billion by the end of 2024, with $US3 billion of direct investment in Australia from the UAE.”
The UAE buys arms and ammunition from Australia as it seeks to become a sub-imperial power in the Middle East. Last November, The Guardian reported, “The UAE is, by far, Australia’s biggest weapons export market … in arms and ammunition being shipped there in the past five years” with total sales of almost $274.5 million.
In a distant second place in Australian arms sales is Poland with $95 million while Australian sales to Israel are in 12th place at $6.5 million.
War-torn Sudan
The UAE’s military purchases from Australia are being used to vie for control in war-torn Sudan. In Sudan, Russia is on the UAE’s side, while a range of sub-imperial Middle East powers are lined against it, such as Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye.
In 2015, the UAE had lined up with Saudi Arabia to carve up Yemen. But by late 2025 they had fallen out with each other.
In December, a French news service revealed that the UAE was the previously “unidentified” country with which Israel’s Elbit Systems had sealed a $US2.3billion arms deal, spread over eight years.
While Australian companies like Chemist Warehouse and Boost Juice invest in the UAE, the UAE’s DP World has become Australia’s second biggest stevedore in the ports of Brisbane, Fremantle, Melbourne and Sydney, with 35 per cent share of the market.
The head of DP World in the UAE turned up in the Epstein files and was sacked in February. Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem had shared a “torture video” with Epstein.
The UAE is among the corrupt Arab ruling classes circling Gaza as part of the Trump’s ghoulish “Board of Peace”.
By Tom Orsag
