The president of the United Arab Emirates named his Crown Prince
Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi
The President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, named his eldest son, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, the richest of the seven emirates of the federation, on Wednesday, as reported by the state media. The sovereign of Abu Dhabi is traditionally the president of the federation since its foundation in 1971, a fact for which the new crown prince Khaled bin Mohmaed bin Zayed will, in the future, become the leader of the Emirates. Their current leader, Mohamed bin Zayed, also known as “MBZ”, was named crown prince upon his father’s death in November 2004, when his half-brother, Sheikh Khalifa, became president of the Emirates and leader of Abu Dhabi. Following a stroke in 2014, Sheikh Khalifa retained his official titles, but both the emirate and the federation continued to be de facto led by MBZ, who eventually became the president of the UAE and sovereign of Abu Dhabi upon the death of Sheikh Khalifa in May 2022.
MBZ appointed several of its brothers to key positions. One of them, the owner of the Manchester City football club, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan (52 years old), was appointed vice president of the UAE, a position he holds jointly with the ruler of Dubai and the prime minister of the federation, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Tahnoun bin Zayed, national security adviser and chairman of the sovereign wealth fund ADQ, was also appointed vice-sovereign of Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, along with Hazza bin Zayed, another brother of the president. The UAE, a rich oil state with about 10 million inhabitants, has seen in recent years an important diplomatic and military rise that places them at the center of Middle East geopolitics. Allied with Saudi Arabia and the USA, the Emirates, under the leadership of MBZ,” became in 2020 the first country in the Gulf to normalize its relations with Israel. The current president also sent Emirati soldiers to Yemen in 2015 as part of a coalition led by Saudi Arabia against the Houthi rebels. Considered hostile to the popular protest movement “Arab Spring” since 2011, MBZ can count on the wealth of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, which holds 90% of the federation’s oil reserves, to assert its power at the regional level and show its support for certain regimes, such as that of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sissi.
By Cora Sulleyman
