Under normal circumstances, the Gulf monarchies are at pains to project an image of calm, cohesion and predictability. Disputes are managed quietly and disagreements smoothed over with summitry and ritual declarations of unity. But the latest escalation between the UAE and Saudi Arabia over Yemen suggests that those conventions are breaking down. Long-standing points of friction are now out in the open – and in an unprecedented way. 

The immediate flashpoint was a burst of reporting by Saudi state media after journalists were granted access to detention facilities on former UAE military bases in Yemen. The access was facilitated by the Yemeni government, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition. It brought renewed attention to allegations that Emirati forces ran a network of secret prisons during Yemen’s decade-long civil war. Abu Dhabi has categorically denied the claims. What mattered politically was not just the reporting but the decision to allow it. 

It seems that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are now prepared to use the media as leverage. The co-ordinated nature of the coverage marked a clear break from the Gulf’s traditional instinct to keep disagreements behind closed doors. It also deepened one of the region’s sharpest rifts, raising the prospect of a fallout with consequences well beyond Yemen.

This is not really about detention centres. It is about power, primacy and diverging visions for the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are both engaged in ambitious national projects, each determined to set the pace for the region’s economic, political and security future. As their interests have become less parallel – in Yemen, Sudan, trade policy and influence – so too has their tolerance for quiet compromise. 

Media has become the chosen battleground because it is effective and deniable. It allows pressure to be applied without the risks of economic retaliation or military escalation. Carefully curated access, selective amplification and strategic silence now sit alongside diplomacy as tools of the trade. The messaging is no longer subtle.  

The rivalry is also being exported. Both countries are shoring up alliances outside the Gulf, pulling external powers into what increasingly resembles a broader strategic contest. Saudi Arabia has strengthened defence and security ties with Pakistan – a nuclear-armed state – as well as with Turkey, a regional power with its own ambitions. The UAE, meanwhile, has leaned into a growing axis with India and Israel, focusing on technology, intelligence-sharing and defence co-operation. 

These partnerships are not virtue signalling – they are insurance policies. As the US recalibrates its role in the Middle East, Gulf states are seeking autonomy, leverage and deterrence. That these alliances now align so neatly along Gulf faultlines suggests that the rivalry between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi is no longer contained. It is shaping relationships from South Asia to the eastern Mediterranean.

There is a final irony. Even as the two Gulf heavyweights trade blows through media exposure and diplomatic manoeuvring, both are positioning themselves as responsible custodians of regional stability. Nowhere is this more striking than in Gaza, where Saudi Arabia and the UAE are expected to sit on international boards shaping postwar governance and reconstruction. The contrast is hard to ignore: advocates of peace abroad, while relations at home remain brittle and unresolved. This is a new phase in Gulf politics – one that is more exposed, more competitive and less carefully choreographed. The age of quiet co-ordination appears to be over.

Inzamam Rashid is Monocle’s Gulf correspondent. Read his take on how the year will shape up in the region here. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

With 10 days to go until the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina, the Lombard capital is getting competition-ready (writes Ed Stocker). There might be frantic round-the-clock construction work at David Chipperfield’s Santa Giulia arena to get it over the finish line but one element of the global event is already raring to go: the associated cultural calendar. Tomorrow the White Out: The Future of Winter Sports exhibition opens at Milan’s Triennale. Sweeping architecture, design and technology, it has a focus on how our warming planet is changing the nature of winter sports, affecting everything from how we protect our skin to the equipment used.

The exhibition, which runs until 15 March and features everything from fashion to furniture, is curated by German industrial designer Konstantin Grcic and the director of Triennale’s Museum of Italian Design, Marco Sammicheli. “The cultural Olympics during the Games to me are important, not just because I am a museum director,” Sammicheli tells The Monocle Minute. “It’s also because, together with sport, they represent a set of values that remind the audience how important it is to live together in friendship and harmony, giving importance to knowledge, innovation, technology and good design.”

Listen out for Monocle Radio at the Winter Olympics, live from the Allianz Tower in Milan. Want more from Milan? Check out our highlights of the recent menswear fashion week.

In these uncertain times, it can be comforting to lean on an old, reliable friend (writes Claudia Jacob). Enter the French bistro: a reassuring mainstay and part of a campaign led by Emmanuel Macron to add the culinary institution to Unesco’s intangible cultural heritage list. The bistro could do with a boost: where a century ago France boasted about 500,000 bistros, now only some 40,000 remain.

Despite rising produce costs and changing eating habits, a new generation of restaurateurs is quietly revitalising the establishment. “In turbulent times, the bistro is a tonic,” says Colombian entrepreneur and restaurateur Carina Soto Velásquez, who runs Paris’s A La Renaissance with US business partner Josh Fontaine.

Hungry for more? Read the full article here.