Iran’s Ayatollahs Attack the Idea of the U.A.E.

In the United Arab Emirates, Iranian missiles and drones have hit airports, seaports, apartment buildings, hotels and data centers. Tehran claims its targets are U.S. military assets. But the geography of the damage tells a different story. What Iran is attacking is an idea: that an open economy can flourish in one of the world’s most contested regions. That idea matters—and not only
to the U.A.E.

Consider the strategic stakes. The U.A.E. hosts upward of 2,000 U.S. companies, according to the U.S. Consulate in Dubai. Around 65,000 U.S. citizens have been living and working in the Emirates. The U.A.E.’s ports process more than $1.4 trillion in trade annually. The Port of Jebel Ali is not only the U.A.E.’s main gateway to the world but a major artery of the global order the U.S. built and depends on. Iran is targeting the U.A.E. because of its openness and ambition.

The attacks have caused real disruption. Eight people have died and more than 150 have been wounded. Stock markets suspended trading for two days shortly after the war began. Major international businesses—banks and consulting firms among them—evacuated office staff as a precaution. The pain is real.

But alarm isn’t analysis. A sober reading of the U.A.E.’s structural position reveals a story of resilience, not decline. Since 1980—through the Iran-Iraq war and its tanker battles in the Gulf, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the 1998 oil-price collapse, the 2003 Iraq war, the global financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and the Covid pandemic—Emirati gross domestic product has grown from roughly $40 billion to more than $500 billion. Each crisis produced its share of breathless predictions. Each time, the U.A.E. absorbed the shock, adapted and accelerated. That resilience was the product of
structural choices.

Non-oil activities account for more than 77% of the Emirates’ GDP, with the economy growing 5.1% in 2025. Foreign direct investment reached $45.6 billion in 2024, a near 50% increase that placed the
U.A.E. 10th globally. Thirty-five comprehensive trade agreements span markets from India and Kenya to the Eurasian Economic Union. The
country’s sovereign wealth funds hold an estimated $2 trillion in assets—close to four times GDP—a fiscal buffer most Group of Seven governments would envy.

The critics questioning Abu Dhabi’s and Dubai’s status as global hubs are conflating the security of the moment with structural dynamism and resilience over time. Every major international center has its moment of acute vulnerability. New York on 9/11. London in 2005. Paris in 2015. None ceased to be world cities. What matters isn’t whether a place can avoid all risk, but whether it has the institutional depth, policy agility and economic diversification to recover quickly. On all three measures, the U.A.E.’s track record is among the strongest of any economy.

The physical infrastructure is robust. Emirati ports handle well over 20 million containers a year and connect to more than 180 ports across six continents. Its Port of Fujairah and Khor Fakkan container port sit entirely outside the Strait of Hormuz. Dubai International Airport served 95 million passengers in 2025, the busiest in the world for international passenger traffic. These aren’t mere amenities. They’re infrastructure for which the world has no easy substitute.

Consider what’s happening on the ground today. Stock markets have reopened. Critical infrastructure has been threatened but not disrupted. The U.A.E.’s air defenses have intercepted better than 90% of 1,700 or so drones and more than 300 ballistic missiles detected since the attacks began. The state is fully functional.

This is a war the U.A.E. didn’t seek and actively lobbied to prevent. The question for the global business community is whether the fundamental case for working and investing in this country has changed. It hasn’t. That case rests not on the absence of risk but on a demonstrated history of resilience, a uniquely diversified economic base, and an unmatched set of physical and financial assets that serve not only the Gulf but Asia, Africa and Europe alike.

President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on March 6 visited those injured in the attacks in the hospital. Speaking to Abu Dhabi TV, he said something that speaks to the country’s deeper identity and its extraordinary social fabric, woven from more than 200 nationalities: “Everyone is Emirati through their love for this land and their contributions to it.” That’s the best possible answer
to those who see only damage and miss the foundations beneath.

Iran set out to destroy an idea. It has only made the case for it stronger.

Source: Wall Street Journal