Korea-UAE defense ties complicate Seoul's post-war Middle East strategy

Lee Seo-ho

As Iranian ballistic missiles and drones crossed the Arabian Gulf in their hundreds following the U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran, a South Korean missile system was among the first to respond. The Cheongung-II batteries the United Arab Emirates earlier purchased from Seoul as part of a bilateral defense export agreement were quietly integrated into Abu Dhabi's air-defense network, intercepting incoming threats at a reported 96 percent success rate. The UAE’s adoption was not surprising given how its bilateral relations with Korea have deepened over the years.

The UAE’s 1,000-dirham banknote features the Korea-built Barakah Nuclear Power Plant on the back, one of symbols of their close ties. Seoul quietly opened a rather unusual regional office for the Agency for Defense Development in Abu Dhabi in 2022, and the two countries signed a $35 billion MOU on defense cooperation just a few days before the conflict. And while Seoul has denied linkage, many suspect the UAE’s decision to supply 24 million barrels of crude oil to South Korea as the “No.1 priority” was driven by deepened security cooperation between the two countries.

Mohammed Soliman's “West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East,” published a few days before the war, could not have arrived at a more clarifying moment. The book's central argument is forceful: the Middle East is an outdated term and strategically disabling for American power because it doesn't capture the realities of today’s geopolitics. Soliman replaces the Middle East with West Asia, which he defines as an interconnected system stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, and in doing so, gives America a strategy for transitioning to offshore balancing, building interlinked coalitions and restoring a favorable balance of power without the costs of the post-Iraq interventionist era. The prize, if Washington can discipline itself to claim it, is the pivot to Asia that it has been promising and deferring for two decades.

Reading the book from Seoul, one question sharpens into focus above all others: where does Korea fit in this West Asia architecture? Soliman’s answer is that Korea is already a player in West Asia, as exemplified in its ever-growing ties with the UAE.

Consider the evidence. Korea and the UAE are eyeing further collaboration on small modular reactors. Defense exports to the region more than tripled between 2019 and 2024, from $241 million to $747 million: the $3.5 billion KM-SAM sale to the UAE, a $3.2 billion air-defense deal with Saudi Arabia and K9 howitzers for Egypt. The Korea Special Warfare Unit in the UAE — the Akh Unit — was visited by all five South Korean presidents since 2011. The Cheongung-II deployment is the kinetic expression of a decade of strategic positioning and Korea’s entry point into what Soliman calls the “Asia-minus-China” system: a network of overlapping networks across Eurasia linking Korea and Japan through India, the Arabian Gulf and Egypt to Europe that bypasses overdependence on Beijing and runs directly through Korean nuclear, industrial and defense capacities.

Soliman’s most useful provocation for Korean readers concerns what comes after the current Iran war. He suggests coalition architecture has been already unfolding with capable partners with geographic proximity, techno-industrial capacity and incentive, acting through bilateral arrangements rather than waiting for formal multilateral consensus. Gulf energy powers the global economy, and Tehran's demonstrated willingness to weaponize the Gulf's geoeconomic centrality is bad news from Busan to Rotterdam. Korea's export-dependent economy, its acute sensitivity to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and Indian Ocean shipping lanes and its emerging role as a premier arms exporter all create structural stakes in West Asian stability that no amount of traditional non-alignment rhetoric can paper over.

Reflecting on this reality, Korea was among the few countries called on by U.S. President Donald Trump to send ships to secure the Strait of Hormuz. When the U.S. made a similar request in 2020, Korea avoided direct participation by having its naval unit based in the Gulf of Aden expand its operation area to the vicinity of the Strait of Hormuz. The current war is fundamentally different in its scale, and concerns over implementation of the Strategic Trade and Investment Deal with the U.S. and redeployment of U.S. defense assets in Korea to the Middle East are other factors Korea might be forced to consider to play a greater role.

Unlike in the past, Korea at least no longer struggles to carefully balance between its economic and energy interests in Iran and supporting international sanctions and actions on Iran. In 2011, Korea’s trade volume with Iran reached its peak at 17.4 billion dollars, dropping to 167 million dollars in 2024 after sanctions were reinstated. Iranian crude oil has been replaced with oil from Gulf states, but the war forces Korea to seek alternative resources at least for the near future. This is especially challenging for Korea as others are also seeking alternatives and the Korean won is depreciating drastically.

Korea’s successful Middle East policy originally stemmed from reactive concerns over the Oil Crisis in 1973 and North Korea’s active outreach in the region. Starting from President Park Chung-hee, the country's policy toward the region has been largely coherent regardless of who was in the Blue House and has successfully grown its commercial and security ties. Despite its earlier successes, Seoul can no longer react but should actively participate in shaping the new regional order in West Asia and, in doing so, help shape Asia as a whole. It is a daunting task but a challenge Korea needs to overcome to establish itself as a true global middle power.

Lee Seo-ho is a global strategy adviser at McLarty Associates. He previously served in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.