The mercenaries are PAF (Pakistan Air Force) pilots.
BTW what's the point of posting an oversized UAE roundel?
I wanted to post it, but couldn't decide whether to shrink it or not.
Exactly. So why should Pakistani pilots sacrifice themselves for the Arabs Emirates versus Iran? Nice pay checks? One can't run a real army with a bunch of hired foreigners.
Arab militaries (especially conventional ones) are a joke, even with material superiority. Israel (more than once) and Iran (vs. Iraq's increasingly materially superior army) proved it. And these wars were against REAL Arab armies with something remotely like esprit de corps and patriotism.
The UAE has neither. It's the most faux place I have ever been to. A tiny, dense clan of tribalist Arabs who lucked it out by sitting on oil and selling themselves to Britain for 100 years. Too lazy and incompetent to run even a construction site. Now they have a foreign population of over 80-90 % (no UAE citizens) which are either slave labor from South/SE Asia or European/Lebanese/American white collar workers in their offices.
It's a question of mettle and mentality. Not material and money. The UAE may have the money for technology to face Iranian threats, but they don't have the mettle or mentality to do it.
The Golf Club Arabs won't take unneccesairy risks. Bad for their bank accounts.
They will secretly beg us and Israel to save their rears from the naughty Ajam Iranians.
After Israel takes out the nukes, we (ideally) should make sure that there is sooner or later a regime change in Iran. And drill here, drill now. Then the Golf Club Arabs can pound sand our built hotels out of it.