Mike Baker

It's Tuesday, the 12th of May.

Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin.

I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage.

All right, let's get briefed.

First up, new reporting claims that the United Arab Emirates, the UAE, secretly joined the fight against Iran, launching direct strikes on Iranian territory as the Gulf conflict quietly widened behind the scenes.

Later in the show, new reporting suggests Pakistan may have been quietly helping Iran protect military aircraft from possible U.S.

strikes, even as Islamabad attempted to broker diplomacy behind the scenes.

But first, today's afternoon spotlight.

The United Arab Emirates has reportedly been secretly carrying out military strikes against Iran, a major development that could mark one of the biggest shifts in Gulf politics in decades.

According to new reporting from The Wall Street Journal, the UAE has quietly emerged as an active combatant in the war against Tehran, conducting direct attacks on Iranian targets, even while publicly trying to project an image of restraint and regional stability.

One of those strikes reportedly hit a major oil refinery on Iran's Levan Island back in early April.

That attack sparked a massive fire and knocked much of the facility offline for months.

And that's significant because Levan isn't just some remote island in the Persian Gulf.

It's one of Iran's key oil export hubs, sitting along critical shipping lanes near the Strait of Hormuz and helping handle a sizable portion of the country's energy infrastructure and crude exports.

That refinery strike reportedly happened right around the same time that President Trump was publicly announcing a ceasefire after the five-week air campaign against Iran.

In other words, while the world believed the conflict was beginning to cool down, one of America's closest Gulf allies was apparently still launching attacks inside Iranian territory.

Now, this won't surprise you, but publicly, the Emiratis are staying quiet.

The UAE foreign ministry declined to comment directly on the reports, but notably, they also didn't deny them.

Instead, officials pointed back to earlier statements asserting the country's right to respond militarily to hostile acts.

And from the sound of it, Washington isn't exactly upset.