Giant mix up here. When I read "Emirate" I thought that was a Arabic word for state. My bad.

A lot of Arabic discourse I seen relates to the legitimacy of certain Arab countries. Kind of like the Balkans. There's a belief that Qatar, Kuwait and even Palestine aren't real countries.

https://share.google/zU2WrcLx0AbnRrkH6

Yeah, it's a bit complicated. They retain some level of sovereignty within the UAE as I understand it, unlike Califonia, which since the civil war has basically been just a subnational division.