It took long enough. Algeria has decided to sever diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates. The announcement was made by state television on Thursday, September 10, capping several years of mounting tensions and obsessive diatribes during which Algiers repeatedly accused Abu Dhabi of interfering in its affairs. It is a radical decision, taken, according to the official account relayed by state media, “after exhausting all means capable of preserving bilateral relations.” Behind this veneer of justification, however, lies yet another fit of rage from a political system accustomed to diplomatic flights forward.
For several years, the occupant of El Mouradia Palace has made the United Arab Emirates one of his favorite scapegoats, with little regard for even the most elementary diplomatic conventions. There has been no shortage of occasions on which Abdelmadjid Tebboune has publicly lashed out at Abu Dhabi, illustrating the drift of an Algerian diplomacy trapped in its own paranoia.
Already at the center of repeated geopolitical jabs, the Algerian president clearly crossed a line on October 12, 2025, during a media appearance in which he leveled serious accusations against the Emirates, accusing the country of interfering in matters “in which even the great powers have been forbidden to meddle.”
The president’s ire reached its peak on February 9, 2026, when Abdelmadjid Tebboune openly described the United Arab Emirates as a “micro-state” meddling in every corner of Algerian sovereignty, delivering surreal warnings such as: “Don’t make me regret the day I met you,” and: “The person who can humiliate Algeria has not yet been born.”
A Pathological Campaign
The hostility displayed at the highest level of the state immediately translated into a full-blown pathological campaign orchestrated by the regime’s media machinery. The official press and mouthpieces of the Algerian establishment relentlessly circulated outlandish accusations, variously describing Abu Dhabi as an “artificial state” or a collection of geopolitical “dwarfs.” Obsessed with the notion of a permanent conspiracy, the Algerian regime saturated the domestic media landscape with conspiratorial narratives, blaming the Emirates for all its domestic and diplomatic failures.
This saga of diplomatic hysteria has also featured farcical episodes, such as the chaotic announcement of the UAE ambassador’s departure, swiftly contradicted by improvised backtracking.
As far back as the middle of the night on Tuesday, June 20, 2023, a tweet from the Ennahar media outlet, citing an authorized source, announced that “Algeria has asked the UAE ambassador to leave the national territory. He has been given 48 hours to leave Algeria.”
Naturally, “this expulsion decision follows the arrest of four Emirati nationals who were spying on behalf of the Mossad services of the Israeli occupier. These spies attempted to gain access to secrets and information about Algeria.” That was just before panic broke out at the Algerian presidency, which sacrificed a minister, followed almost immediately and simultaneously by a denial from the Foreign Ministry and then the “disappearance” of Ennahar’s tweet barely an hour after it was published. A striking illustration of a government pulling in every direction at once.
The rupture with Abu Dhabi is part of a long litany of episodic outbursts by the Algerian regime. One recalls the successive crises and belligerent postures it has adopted in the past toward Spain, France and other international partners, each trumpeted with great nationalist fanfare as a historic victory before fizzling out and ending with a resounding “pfft.” Trapped by its own contradictions and growing isolation, the Algerian regime, true to form after losing its battles, will inevitably end up making itself very small. There is little doubt that, in yet another reversal, a reconciliation will eventually bring this sterile crisis—manufactured from start to finish by a regime adrift—to an end.
