A woman walks along Dubai's Creek Harbour, with the Burj Khalifa visible in the background.FADEL SENNA/AFP/Getty Images
By day, you might not notice that Dubai is a city at war. Neon-coloured supercars still race around the streets, construction workers scramble to complete wild-looking high-rises and well-dressed people relax on restaurant patios under the desert sun.
Overnight, there’s a different mood. On three occasions between 1:30 and 6 a.m. Monday, smartphones across the city jolted people awake with emergency alerts instructing everyone to “immediately seek a safe place in the closest secure building”: Missiles and drones had been detected heading across the Persian Gulf toward the city.
On that night alone, Emirati air-defence systems intercepted 12 ballistic missiles, two cruise missiles and 19 drones. Since the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began on Feb. 28, the military has shot down at least 519 ballistic missiles and 2,210 drones. Thirteen people have been killed, all but two of them foreign labourers. A number of buildings have been damaged, and a major petrochemical factory in Abu Dhabi remains shut down and partially ablaze after it was struck multiple times Saturday.
Five weeks into the war, the United Arab Emirates remains the Arab country most heavily targeted by Iran, which is firing constant barrages, ostensibly targeting U.S. military bases and key aspects of the UAE’s energy and economic infrastructure.
With a U.S. deadline approaching, the United States and Iran received the framework of a plan to end their five‑week-old conflict, though Tehran rejected any immediate move to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. President Donald Trump has threatened to rain 'hell' on Tehran if it did not make a deal by the end of Tuesday that would allow traffic to start moving again through the vital route for global energy supplies.
Reuters
The country finds itself in a painful position: It has chosen to be a non-participant in this war, expending significant military resources in self-defence but refusing to retaliate directly. It’s not clear how much longer the monarchy can stay out of the fray.
If it were to strike back as part of a coalition, the UAE has a military not much larger than Canada’s, with a more modern air force, somewhat more naval capacity and about 70,000 troops.
The more serious damage has been caused not by the projectiles or the interceptors but by the effect all the kinetic violence is having on this ultraconnected city’s ability to remain tied into the global economy.
A long row of enormous, double-decker Airbus A380 jets sit motionless on the tarmac of Dubai airport, usually the world’s busiest for international traffic but today sparsely populated. The Emirati jumbo fleet is grounded − not for safety reasons but because few are buying airfares to, or through, Dubai. Gulf airlines are operating at about half their normal passenger levels.
Even with the UAE under attack, most expats feel safe, say they’re not leaving
As a consequence, the city’s hotels are largely empty, its Uber drivers say they’re getting only a couple of rides a day, and there have been mass layoffs and pay cuts for hundreds of thousands of workers in tourism and travel-related industries. Most are labourers from India, Africa or East Asia who lack any safety net.
Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has also had an uncanny effect here. Hulking cruise ships have been docked for weeks, carrying only skeleton crews. The Jebel Ali container port in the city’s south, normally one of the busiest in the world, appears to be all but unoccupied, its scores of huge yellow gantry cranes poised over still water.
Electronic billboards and TV announcements remind citizens that the UAE has a six-month reserve of food for the entire country and enough munitions to shoot down projectiles for a long but unspecified time. Privately, officials say that another four weeks of war at this scale would exact a serious and lasting economic cost.
Nevertheless, government officials insist that any retaliatory military action would only make matters worse, turning the UAE from a victim into a participant and exposing it to potentially existential danger.
Gulf allies privately urge Trump to continue war until Iran is decisively defeated
“Our message is clear: The Iranian attacks are not justified, and the military solution will only lead to further crises,” Reem Al Hashimy, the Minister of State for International Cooperation, told reporters last week.
“We do not seek to expand the circle of confrontation and we do not believe that military solutions create permanent stability,” she added. “Our region does not need this escalation. Returning to the negotiating table is the only rational way forward.”
Over the weekend, the government sent signals that it would be willing to participate in a military action to reopen the Strait of Hormuz − if that action were led by the United States or an international coalition.
“We’re not ready to act as a maritime force but we will join any American-led effort, any international effort, to secure navigation in the Strait of Hormuz,” said Anwar Gargash, who as diplomatic adviser to UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan is considered a voice of the country’s foreign policy.
Oman grapples with its national identity as a neutral mediator after Iran’s attacks
“We are ready to play our part,” Mr. Gargash told reporters in a briefing Saturday. “This is extremely important for the global economy and global trade. It is an issue that is extremely important for everybody.”
He noted, significantly, that Iran’s Islamic leaders should realize that their conduct in the war has actually pushed Gulf Arab states closer to Israel and the United States. That may not be true of all the UAE’s neighbours – Oman, in particular, has expressed public anger at the U.S. and especially Israel – but it does reflect a material reality: Persian Gulf countries will be relying on the air-defence munitions that only those countries can supply in sizable numbers.
Mr. Gargash suggested an additional reason for the UAE’s refusal to retaliate: The past 35 years of Middle Eastern history have shown that massive revenge strikes are, in the long term, a display of desperation rather than strength.
“Thousands of missiles and drones targeting infrastructure, civilians, even mediators, is not strength − it is hubris and strategic failure,” he said. “The Arab world has seen this before: Destruction peddled as victory. Such narratives no longer hold.”