DUBAI: The United States has approved a possible $4.5 billion sale of an advanced missile defence system to the United Arab Emirates, the State Department said on Thursday.

In a statement, the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs said the deal includes a powerful long-range radar and the THAAD system, which is designed to shoot down incoming missiles before they hit their targets.

Officials described the radar as a highly advanced system that can detect threats from far distances, including ballistic missiles and drones.

“The proposed sale will improve the UAE’s ability to meet current and future threats,” the statement said, adding that it would help protect the country from attacks coming from all directions.

The State Department said the sale was approved on an emergency basis, allowing the administration to bypass the usual congressional review process due to national security concerns.

Washington said the UAE is an “important regional partner” and that the deal would support stability in the Middle East.

The agreement includes five years of training, technical support and maintenance services to ensure the system operates effectively.

The main contractor for the deal is Lockheed Martin Corporation, a leading American defence company known for producing advanced missile and radar systems.

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has identified Pakistan among countries posing a growing strategic concern, warning that Islamabad’s evolving long-range missile capabilities could potentially bring the American homeland within range.

Presenting the 2026 Annual Threat Assessment before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Gabbard also named Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea as nations actively developing new missile delivery systems, including both nuclear and conventional warheads, which put the US within range.

“The US secure nuclear deterrent continues to ensure safety in the homeland against strategic threats. However, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Pakistan have been researching and developing an array of novel, advanced, or traditional missile delivery systems with nuclear and conventional payloads that put our homeland within range,” Gabbard said.

She noted that Pakistan’s ballistic missile development “potentially could include intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)” capable of reaching the US homeland.

Gabbard also warned that the number of missile threats facing the US was expected to rise sharply, with the intelligence community projecting that global missile inventories could exceed 16,000 by 2035, up from more than 3,000 currently.

She added that the countries identified in the report would likely seek to understand US missile defence plans in order to shape their own development programmes and assess Washington’s deterrence posture.

Reacting to the remarks, former Pakistani ambassador to the US Jalil Abbas Jilani rejected the claim that Pakistan posed a direct missile threat to the American homeland.

In a statement, Jilani said Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine was India-centric and aimed at deterrence, not global power projection, adding that Islamabad’s strategic posture was focused on regional security dynamics.

Meanwhile, Turkish analyst Shaqeq-ud-Din questioned the assessment, arguing that Pakistan did not possess intercontinental ballistic missiles, while raising concerns about India’s growing ICBM capabilities, which he said were expanding with external support.

He termed the classification of threats selective, questioning whether similar scrutiny was being applied uniformly to all countries.

South Asia threat assessment

The threat assessment report noted that South Asia remained a source of “enduring security challenges”, particularly the relations between Pakistan and India, for the US.

“Pakistan-India relations remain a risk for nuclear conflict given past conflicts where these two nuclear states squared off, creating the danger of escalation,” it stated. It also mentioned the Pahalgam attack that triggered a war between the two neighbours.

“President Trump’s intervention deescalated the most recent nuclear tensions, and we assess that neither country seeks to return to open conflict, but that conditions exist for terrorist actors to continue to create catalysts for crises,” it stated.

The report also highlighted tensions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, stating: “Relations between Pakistan and the Taliban have been tense, with intermittent cross-border clashes, as Islamabad has become increasingly frustrated with anti-Pakistan terrorist groups’ presence in Afghanistan while Islamabad faces growing terrorist violence.”

“Pakistan’s army chief warned this month that lasting peace requires the Taliban to sever ties with militants targeting Pakistan.

The Taliban’s public posture has been to call for dialogue, but it has denied harbouring anti-Pakistani militants,” it said, while referring to the ongoing war between the two states.

In a supermarket in Bahrain, Mahmoud Ali fills his cart as usual. The shelves remain stocked despite the war in the Middle East, but the blockade of the main shipping routes into the Gulf is now being felt at checkout.

“There’s no shortage”, but over the past few days “there has been a noticeable increase in the price of certain food products”, the father of four said.

The price of meat in particular has almost doubled, he added.

Like most of its neighbours in this arid region, the small Gulf monarchy depends heavily on imports, especially for its food supply.

But the war, triggered on February 28 by Israeli-US strikes against Iran, has severely disrupted the transport of goods through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, which is effectively closed.

“Most major ports in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain have suspended or heavily reduced cargo processing,” said economist Frederic Schneider, from the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.

Air transport, another logistical pillar of the region, is also running below capacity because of daily Iranian drone and missile attacks, he added.

With the main gateways to the Gulf — the ports of Abu Dhabi, Jebel Ali in Dubai and Dammam in eastern Saudi Arabia — almost inaccessible, ships are turning to others located south of the strait in Oman and the Emirates.

Saudi Arabia has also positioned itself as a key supply hub at the heart of the Gulf region, as its airspace remains open and maritime traffic to its Red Sea ports continues.

To address the disruption of traffic in the ports along the Gulf coast, the kingdom has launched a new initiative to strengthen its transport networks by adding logistics routes and operational corridors to handle containers and cargo diverted from the country’s eastern ports, according to officials in the transport sector.

AFP journalists recently saw a stream of heavy trucks crossing the border with Qatar.

Other land-based alternatives exist, including road corridors linking to the Mediterranean through Syria or Jordan.

But these overland routes are too congested, expensive and insufficient to make up for the paralysis of traditional routes, Schneider said.

Fresh products, most of which are imported from Asia and cannot be stored for long, are the first to be affected.

‘Tangible risk’

Faced with this situation, the Gulf states are not on equal footing.

Saudi Arabia has direct access to the Red Sea. The United Arab Emirates claims to have four to six months of stock. And Qatar has invested heavily in its strategic reserves, following the three-year blockade imposed by its neighbours in 2017.

Bahrain and Kuwait, on the other hand, are already seeing consumers paying the price for the conflict.

After a rush on supermarkets in the first days of the war, Kuwaiti authorities froze the prices of certain basic products and subsidised meat imports.

“Overall, prices have remained stable,” an official from the Kuwaiti commerce ministry told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“But an increase of more than 30% was recorded for meat and fish,” which were affected by the suspension of fishing in the Gulf and the halt of imports from Iran, India and Pakistan, he said.

The private sector is also trying to contain the impact of the blockade.

The Lulu retail chain, which has 280 supermarkets in the region, said it maintains four to six months of reserve stock of non-perishables and has chartered special flights to fly in fruit, vegetables, meat, seafood and poultry.

So far, “37 special chartered flights have brought in more than 6,000 tons of fresh produce”, its communications director V Nandakumar told AFP, adding that the additional cost was “not going to be passed on to the consumer as of now”.

According to Schneider, “there is a certain level of preparedness and prices are elevated but under control for the moment”.

However, “as the war does not seem to end soon, there is a tangible risk of a price spiral on imported goods, in particular food”, he added.