It is little surprise that US vice-president Joe Biden’s undiplomatic 2 October comments to students at Harvard University infuriated the leadership of the UAE. Biden, speaking at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, responded to a question about the war in Syria by saying, “our biggest problem is our allies”. He went on to explain that the Turks, Saudis and Emiratis were all so determined to take down Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and “essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war”, that they “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad”, thus inadvertently supplying money and weapons to Jabhat Al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda and other extremists.