Just hours after the United Arab Emirates’ top energy leader declared the country had “emerged stronger” from months of regional conflict, and as thousands of delegates gathered in Abu Dhabi for an economic summit aimed at reviving investor confidence, emergency missile alert notifications blared across smartphones nationwide.
The Monday strikes — the first to hit the UAE since a shaky truce took effect last month — delivered a brutal wake-up call to a nation that had already begun rebuilding its sense of normalcy. While Iran issued a categorical denial of involvement on Tuesday, the incident has shredded fragile hopes for a swift return to pre-conflict stability and laid bare the extreme fragility of the current ceasefire across the Gulf.
Within hours of the attacks, schools across the UAE suspended in-person instruction just two weeks after welcoming students back to classrooms. In the preceding weeks, life had slowly crept back to routine: foreign residents, who make up 90% of the country’s population, had begun returning after earlier departures, crowds flocked back to Dubai’s iconic man-made Palm Jumeirah beaches, and restaurants across the emirate had restored full service.
One anonymous food and beverage industry executive shared their experience with AFP, describing a sudden shift in tone during a meeting where leaders were preparing to reverse war-era pay cuts. “We literally just slammed our faces into our hands and sat in silence for a solid minute,” they said. “There was an overall feeling of… exhaustion, of disbelief that this might start again.”
Throughout the ongoing regional conflict, the UAE has borne the brunt of more Iranian-aligned attacks than any other country. Strikes have targeted U.S. interests, critical energy infrastructure, civilian sites, and major tourist landmarks. Even with the UAE’s high rate of interception of incoming drones and missiles, the attacks shattered the Gulf’s long-held reputation as a haven of stability, driving away international tourists at the height of the peak travel season.
Now, the persistent threat of renewed violence hangs over the entire Gulf economy, not just the UAE’s core oil and gas sector, putting long-term economic diversification plans across the region at serious risk. Data from S&P Global Market Intelligence already reflects growing strain: “The UAE non-oil private sector signalled a further loss of momentum in April, with operating conditions showing their weakest performance for more than five years,” noted senior economist David Owen.
For weeks, Gulf nations have remained stuck in a limbo between war and peace, with diplomatic talks stalled and the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supplies pass — remains effectively closed to most commercial traffic. For many residents and business leaders, intermittent security alerts may be the new normal. “This might become a new reality where every now and then we have a few alerts,” the F&B executive said, adding that the UAE’s economy is uniquely dependent on both tangible stability and public perception of safety.
Emirati political scientist Abdulkhaleq Abdulla framed the dynamic simply: “Whenever they are angry against America or Israel or anything, they could, they will shoot at us and probably we are their prime target.”
Middle East security expert HA Hellyer, of the London-based Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, outlined three core reasons the UAE remains Iran’s top target. First, it is a leading U.S. ally in the Arab world and one of the few Arab states to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, putting it firmly in Iran’s crosshairs. Second, its status as a diversified global business and tourism hub means any attack carries outsized regional and international ripple effects. Third, its geographic proximity to Iran makes it a far easier target for drone and missile strikes than more distant Israel.
Hellyer added that Iran may also be targeting the UAE to deepen existing divides among Gulf Cooperation Council states, compounding a public rift between the UAE and Saudi Arabia that emerged in December over Yemen policy. Today, the Gulf’s two largest economies remain divided over both the ongoing regional conflict and approach to Iran: the UAE has taken a far more hawkish stance, demanding maximalist concessions in any potential peace deal, while Saudi Arabia has backed diplomatic mediation efforts led by Pakistan.
The latest attacks, blamed on Iran by the UAE, carry new risks of escalation, Hellyer warned: Abu Dhabi has already signaled it will deepen its security and diplomatic ties with both the U.S. and Israel. This puts further distance between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which has shifted its perspective on regional security since normalization talks with Israel collapsed after the outbreak of the Gaza war. Unlike the UAE, which has faced far more frequent Iranian attacks, Riyadh has concluded “the risks of action as being greater than the risks of inaction and the Emiratis view it in the opposite direction,” Hellyer explained.