Australia pulls families from UAE as Russia calls for calm

SYDNEY – Australia has asked the family members and dependants of diplomatic officials in the United Arab Emirates to leave the country, following an escalation in the conflict in the Middle East as several Gulf cities came under Iranian bombardment.

US President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he was not seeking negotiations to end the US-Israeli military strikes against Iran, which have driven up global energy prices, disrupted business and snarled air travel.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the security situation in the region had deteriorated.

“Our travel advice has been updated to reflect that direction. We continue to advise Australians not to travel to the UAE,” Wong said in a post on X on Sunday night.

More than 1,700 Australians have arrived in Australia so far on commercial flights from the UAE, Wong said, while about 115,000 Australians were in the Middle East when the conflict began ten days ago.

Australia, a close US ally, has said it would not deploy troops to the Middle East if the conflict escalates, but suggested on Sunday it was considering requests to help protect countries from Iranian drones and missiles.

In a parallel diplomatic development, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his counterpart from the United Arab Emirates called on Sunday for an end to all attacks on both Iran and Gulf states and said renewed diplomacy was needed to ensure long-term regional security.

“Attention focused on the necessity of stopping attacks that lead to casualties among the civilian population and cause damage to civilian infrastructure both in the Arab countries of the Gulf and in Iran,” Russia’s foreign ministry said of Lavrov’s telephone conversation with Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed.

The UAE has maintained good relations with both Russia and Ukraine during their four-year-old war and has acted as an intermediary in holding talks and arranging exchanges of prisoners of war.