Informative · Diplomacy

The UAE just held secret Iran talks with Israel during the war

2 days ago · 29 September 2026Share

Benjamin Netanyahu and UAE officials at the Abraham Accords signing ceremony. — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and UAE officials attended the signing ceremony of agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates as part of the Abraham Accords on October 20, 2020. File photo. U.S. Embassy Jerusalem · CC BY 2.0

Benjamin Netanyahu just made a secret trip to the UAE.

It happened two days ago. He met Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's President, in Abu Dhabi.

Both governments sat on it. They only confirmed it a day later.

So what actually happened in that room? Three senior Israeli officials say the meeting ran six hours. And it was all about Iran.

A separate Israeli source told CNN the same thing. The talks were dominated by Iran. That's the arena where Israel and the UAE have been quietly working closer together, all through the current Iran war.

But in public, both sides went vague.

WAM, the UAE's state news agency, said only that the two sides says quote "discussed bilateral relations between the UAE and Israel and ways to strengthen and develop them".

Benjamin Netanyahu's office said the visit was about strengthening relations and regional challenges.

So the official language is careful. The private briefings to Israeli media are not.

Here's some background. Israel and the UAE have had formal relations since 2020, under the Abraham Accords. America brokered that deal. But a visit this high up is still rare. And this one was hidden completely until it was already over.

Here's why that matters. The UAE has been under Iranian attack during this war. And it has responded by pulling closer to Israel and the United States. Mike Huckabee, the US Ambassador to Israel, said back in May that Israel had sent Iron Dome air defence batteries and troops to the UAE, to help defend it against Iran.

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Contains satellite imagery of Abu Dhabi from the International Space Station in March 2003. — Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center · Public domain

And look at who Netanyahu brought with him. His wife. The head of Israel's National Security Council. The head of Mossad. A military secretary. A political adviser.

That's a security delegation. Not a trade one.

The trip came four days after Netanyahu spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York.

Now here's the twist. This isn't the first secret visit.

Netanyahu's office said in May that he had already secretly travelled to the UAE back in March. He called it a historic breakthrough. At the time, the UAE denied it flat out. Completely unfounded, it said.

But a source familiar with that earlier meeting says it really happened. Netanyahu and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan met in Al-Ain, an oasis city on the border with Oman, on 26 March.

So the UAE has a pattern here. Deny the meeting. Then later, let it be confirmed.

This latest visit only came out because Israel's Channel 12 reported it first. Israel's Shin Bet, the domestic security agency, was not happy. It filed a complaint with the military censor, saying the report put the Prime Minister at risk and exposed how the agency operates.

And the timing is not an accident. This lands about a month before Israel's Knesset elections, due on 27 October. Netanyahu is trailing in the polls right now, against Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief and his biggest rival.

What was really said about Iran, beyond "dominated by discussion"? And whether other Gulf states were involved in any of it?

Right now, only the people in that room know.

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The UAE just held secret Iran talks with Israel during the war

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