A terse but significant exchange played out on X this week between two prominent Arab voices on Gulf foreign policy. Omani academic Abdullah Baabood (@abaabood) posted what he framed as a caution — warning that the UAE’s posture in the Abraham Accords reflected “excessive ambition” and urging a return to “what is right.” The response from Dr. ابتسام الكتبي — Ebtesam Al-Ketbi (@ekitbi) was swift, structured, and unsparing: a point-by-point dismantling of what she characterised as a logic that punishes success and mistakes restraint for wisdom.

Ambition as Achievement, Not Liability

Al-Ketbi opened by rejecting the framing outright. The “excessive ambition” Baabood alluded to, she wrote, is “precisely what has made the UAE a state that carries global weight, while other countries and slogans have drowned in chaos, dependency, and collapse.” The contrast she drew was pointed: one model built on strategic diversification, economic openness, and sovereign decision-making; another content with slogans and emotional outbursts that produced neither stability nor influence.

Dr. Al-Ketbi is the founder and president of the Emirates Policy Center, one of the Gulf region’s leading think tanks, and a professor of political science. Her response drew on that institutional weight, framing the debate not as a social media skirmish but as a substantive clash of strategic philosophies.

The Dangerous Inversion

The sharpest part of Al-Ketbi’s argument was her identification of what she called a “dangerous” logical inversion at the core of Baabood’s position. She described a pattern in which insinuation becomes blame — “directed at the victim rather than the aggressor.” The implied demand, as she read it: that the UAE lower “the ceiling of its ambitions, alliances, and sovereignty so as not to be targeted.”

She described this as a position that, taken to its conclusion, means: “if a state succeeds too much, or possesses its own decisions and alliances, then it should expect punishment, and then stay silent to preserve the peace.” That, she argued, is not counsel — it is a demand for subservience dressed in the language of prudence.

Targeted for Its Model, Not Its Mistakes

Al-Ketbi then made a substantive empirical claim: the UAE has not been targeted because of strategic errors, but because of strategic successes. “It was targeted because it is a stable state amid chaos, a rising economy amid collapse, and a real center of influence built on achievement.” The Emirates, she argued, constructed its standing through “diversifying alliances, openness, the economy, technology, peace, and protecting its national interests” — not through the “bidding speeches and emotional outbursts” that have characterised less effective actors in the region.

On Silence and Sovereignty

Al-Ketbi was equally direct on the question of how states should respond when they face external pressure or attack. Characterising self-defence as “stubbornness,” she wrote, “is a perversion of the facts.” She rejected the notion that any respectable state should absorb attacks and remain silent “so as not to disturb the ‘general atmosphere,'” arguing that sovereignty loses meaning the moment self-control becomes “implicit acceptance of violation.”

Her closing argument shifted from the UAE specifically to the collective Gulf. The logic of “justifying threats,” she warned, will not protect Gulf states — nor will “demanding that successful states bow their heads so as not to be targeted.” Protection comes only when any aggression against a Gulf state is treated as a collective red line, not as an opportunity for individual states to issue lectures while quietly maintaining their own interests.

The Abrahamic Vision: Faith, Freedom, and Flourishing

For readers of Faith & Freedom News, the Abraham Accords carry a significance that transcends geopolitics. The name itself is a theological declaration: that the children of Abraham — Muslim, Jewish, and Christian — can share a region, trade with one another, visit one another’s holy sites, and build futures together.

Since the Accords were signed, Muslim visitors from the UAE and other Gulf states have been able to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on direct flights. Jewish communities in the Gulf have practised their faith openly in ways previously unthinkable. Christian communities throughout the region have watched as a framework emerged that treats coexistence not as a concession but as a strategic and moral good.

The Abraham Accords did not solve every injustice — no single agreement could. But they created a living infrastructure of peace: embassies, airlines, trade routes, academic exchanges, and — most importantly — the daily normalcy of people from previously hostile states encountering one another as neighbours rather than enemies. That infrastructure is precious. It should be defended, expanded, and deepened — not abandoned in deference to a consensus that produced nothing but suffering.