Trump officials urged UAE to seize Iranian Lavan Island, Telegraph reports

Senior officials in the Trump administration urged the United Arab Emirates to take a more direct role in the campaign against Iran and to seize the Iranian-held island of Lavan in the Persian Gulf, according to a Telegraph report relayed by Middle East Eye on Friday.

The Telegraph reported that figures close to the president pressed Emirati counterparts to move on Lavan Island, a small Iranian-administered outcrop roughly 80 miles off Iran’s southern coast that hosts oil-export infrastructure and a sensitive stretch of Gulf airspace. The Telegraph said the island had previously been targeted in covert Emirati strikes in early April. One senior official was quoted, per the report, telling the UAE: “Go take them!”

Neither the White House nor the UAE government has publicly confirmed the account, and the chain of attribution runs through the Telegraph’s sourcing to Middle East Eye. America Strikes has not independently verified the underlying conversations described in the report.

If accurate, the disclosure would mark the most explicit American push yet for a Gulf partner to act unilaterally against Iranian territory during the current crisis — a war that has so far been waged by US and Israeli forces directly, with Gulf states largely confined to logistical, diplomatic and basing roles.

What the report alleges

According to the Telegraph account summarized by Middle East Eye, the pressure on Abu Dhabi came from officials within Trump’s inner circle rather than through formal Pentagon or State Department channels. The report frames the encouragement as an effort to widen the operational front against Tehran without committing additional American forces, by leveraging an Arab partner that already maintains one of the region’s most capable air forces and has fielded F-16 Block 60s, Mirage 2000-9s and a growing fleet of armed drones.

Lavan itself is not a major military installation, but it is strategically wired into Iran’s southern energy export network. Seizing or holding it would deliver a symbolic blow to Tehran’s claim over the central Gulf and could complicate Iranian tanker movements in the same waters where Washington and Tehran have already traded threats over the Strait of Hormuz. America Strikes covered the broader Hormuz contest earlier this week in its report on the China-Iran pushback against a US-drafted UN resolution on the strait and on the partial reopening signals coming out of Tehran.

The UAE has, on the public record, repeatedly called for de-escalation and offered to host backchannel talks. Emirati officials did not comment for the Telegraph report.

Iran hardens its public posture

The reported pressure on Abu Dhabi lands as Tehran sharpens its own rhetoric. Al Jazeera reported on Friday that senior Iranian officials warned the country is prepared for an extended war and is bracing the population for further economic costs, after the latest round of indirect talks with Washington failed to produce a breakthrough.

Iranian officials cited in that report described the talks as stalled rather than collapsed, but said Iran would not negotiate “under bombardment” and was preparing contingency steps to keep oil revenue flowing despite tightened US sanctions enforcement. The warnings echo the framing President Trump and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi exchanged earlier in the week, which America Strikes covered in its account of the Hormuz-and-economy public messaging duel.

A Pakistani backchannel, and a Russian call

While the alleged American pressure on the UAE was running in private, two parallel diplomatic tracks surfaced publicly on the same day.

Middle East Eye, citing Al Arabiya sources, reported that Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi was in Tehran seeking “understandings” from Iranian officials that Islamabad could relay to Washington. The same report said some progress had been made on Hormuz-related issues during the talks, though it did not detail specific commitments. Pakistan has positioned itself as a quiet conduit between the two sides since the conflict’s opening weeks, leveraging its own security ties to both Tehran and the Gulf monarchies.

Separately, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan about the conflict. According to a Kremlin readout summarized by Middle East Eye, the two leaders discussed the US-Israeli campaign against Iran and “the importance of securing peace” in the region. The Kremlin did not say what specific proposals were exchanged.

Taken together, the three threads place the UAE at the center of competing pressures: a reported American push to escalate, a Russian call urging restraint, and a Pakistani shuttle attempting to translate Tehran’s red lines into something Washington can act on.

Why the UAE angle matters

Abu Dhabi has spent the past two years quietly hardening its energy infrastructure against a Gulf shooting war, a posture America Strikes detailed last week in its report on the ADNOC–India pipeline and storage build-out designed to bypass Hormuz. That hedging strategy assumed the UAE could keep its exports flowing through a regional crisis without becoming a frontline combatant.

A move on Lavan, if it ever materialized, would tear up that assumption. It would expose UAE-flagged tankers, Emirati ports and the country’s tourism-dependent economy to direct Iranian retaliation — including from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval forces that operate in the same waters. Gulf analysts cited in past Telegraph and Reuters reporting have consistently described any Emirati seizure of Iranian territory as a step Abu Dhabi would resist absent an explicit American security guarantee.

For now, what is on the record is a single sourced report, denied by silence on both sides. Whether the alleged conversation reflects formal US policy, freelancing by individual officials, or pressure that Abu Dhabi has already rejected is unclear. America Strikes will update this story as the White House, the UAE foreign ministry or Iranian officials respond.