ABSTRACT
The beginning of the "tanker war" between Iran and Iraq in early 1984, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been relatively unaffected by the attacks against the commercial shipping of the Gulf states. First, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were the focus of Iranian ire — due to their substantial assistance to the Iraqi economy. Second, the UAE preserved a special trading relationship with Iran, chiefly through the Dubai Emirate. On 25 November, unidentified aircraft attacked the Abu al-Bukush offshore oil platform 100 miles northwest of Abu Dhabi — within its territorial waters. The general effect of these was to push the UAE toward a state of greater military preparedness, and closer coordination with its GCC partners as well as its potential allies outside the Gulf. A source in the UAE Ministry of the Interior reported that a bomb had exploded on 16 January in an Abu Dhabi commercial office building.
