Resilience is about the network, not any single thread

The Strait of Hormuz is closed – and everyone is switching gears. UAE-based entrepreneur Badr Jafar believes this crisis will ultimately strengthen his country.
DIE ZEIT: One of your portfolio companies, Gulftainer, operates a container terminal in Khor Fakkan on the east coast of the Emirates. What is it like for transport, oil, and gas companies when the region’s lifeline is blocked?
Badr Jafar: The port lies outside the Strait of Hormuz, overlooking the Gulf of Oman. We still have a lot of shipping traffic…

DIE ZEIT: So you can’t see the Strait of Hormuz from your office window?
Badr Jafar: No, but anyone with a phone can stay completely up-to-date on the situation there. It can’t be stressed enough: we are experiencing a very serious moment for the world. Trade is a global public good, and so are these vital international waterways. No single actor should be allowed to hold them hostage. From the International Maritime Organization to the United Nations, everyone has made it very clear that this is a very dangerous precedent. Now we must hope for the best and be prepared for the worst.

DIE ZEIT: The Emirates, in particular, have always been considered a stable, economically open country in an otherwise highly volatile region. Can this status still be maintained after missile and drone attacks, after the blockade of Hormuz?
Badr Jafar: The UAE has just proven that it can remain open, liquid, and functional – even under a serious stress test. I believe that will be a major competitive advantage in the long run. There were short-term disruptions, yes. But in the longer term, capital concentrates precisely where resilience has been demonstrated.

DIE ZEIT: What makes the Emirates so resilient in your view?
Badr Jafar: First, there are the geographical advantages: an extensive coastline that lies outside the current bottleneck. But beyond that, the UAE has truly planned decades in advance. Around two and a half trillion US dollars have been set aside in sovereign wealth funds, equivalent to five times our gross domestic product. Over 300 billion US dollars in foreign exchange reserves, one and a half trillion US dollars in bank deposits. These are crisis buffers that few nations possess.

DIE ZEIT: And yet there is one major dependency: on shipping, on oil.
Badr Jafar: The UAE has invested heavily in its infrastructure – not only on land, at sea, and in the air, but also through diversification into new sectors and industries. Today, 77 percent of our GDP is already generated outside the oil and gas sector. In addition, we are making strategic investments with partners in many countries; the UAE is thus building not only resilient partnerships but also footholds beyond the region. What concerns us more are the vulnerable regions of the world that do not have these opportunities and lack such buffers. Many countries, home to some of the world’s most vulnerable people, currently depend on goods that would have to cross the Strait of Hormuz to reach them – this is and remains a major concern for the global economy and for the most vulnerable.

DIE ZEIT: If the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, will the situation quickly return to normal – and will the global economy find its way back to its usual routine?
Badr Jafar: I believe the crucial shift is moving away from pure efficiency toward something I call “optionality.” For years, everyone optimized their supply chains for cost and speed, and that worked—in a relatively stable world. But this crisis has shown that no economy can seriously rely on a single route, a single supplier, or a single bottleneck. Solving the Hormuz issue remains essential, but redundancy and contingency planning are now being built in parallel. Infrastructure should be judged not only on how efficiently it functions in normal times, but also on how reliably it adapts in exceptional circumstances.

DIE ZEIT: What is the situation in the Gulf?
Jafar: We’re seeing this adaptation in real time. Ports like Khor Fakkan on the UAE’s east coast are handling many times the volume we had on February 28th. We’re seeing eight times the cross-border flow of goods within the Gulf. Companies like Etihad Rail are handling six times their normal volume.
Contingency planning is no longer an administrative task for us, but a matter of national security. This isn’t simply a Gulf problem, or even just a UAE problem, or a Middle Eastern problem. It’s a global problem. The Strait of Hormuz isn’t the only international waterway that’s vulnerable [https://www.zeit.d
e/wirtschaft/2026-05/knotenpunkte-welthandel-handelsrouten-suezkanal-panamakanal-strasse-von-hormus] . How this plays out will set an important precedent for other critically important waterways [https://www.zeit.de/2026/22/seewege-welthandel-strasse-von-hormus-panamakanal] on which billions of people ultimately depend.

DIE ZEIT: Can you tell us about some of the decisions you had to make in recent weeks to steer things towards stability?
Badr Jafar: Right now, it’s all hands on deck for us. When push comes to shove, that’s when you see who really delivers. We’re seeing now, despite the difficult circumstances, that different economic sectors are working together more effectively. The private sector is collaborating more seamlessly with government and policymakers. Civil society is stepping up to provide a safety net for the most vulnerable. And we’re seeing many new investment opportunities arising from the development of resilient infrastructure [https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2026-04/parag-khanna-geostratege-strasse-von-hormus-welthandel] . Not only are companies from the region watching with great interest, but also a significant number from outside – financing partners, infrastructure funds, private equity investors. They’re already inquiring about what the next phase of growth will look like. We’re entering this new phase of growth wiser and with a renewed blend of humility and optimism.

DIE ZEIT: You speak of the convergence of state and business, but wasn’t that essentially always the Emirati model? You even personally embody much of it: on the one hand, CEO and partner in large companies, on the other, active in philanthropy and working as a diplomat for the Foreign Ministry. How do you manage to reconcile all of that?
Badr Jafar: I grew up in the private sector, where I’ve spent most of my career over the past 30 years. I recently received an additional mandate as the UAE Special Envoy of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Business and Philanthropy. I see this role as a bridge-building function. It connects business leaders and philanthropists with public priorities and helps mobilize capital for shared challenges. The UAE created this role because diplomacy today is no longer just about governments talking to governments. It’s increasingly shaped by trade, investment, technology, and human and social capital. Business brings the ability to scale things up quickly and the power to implement them. Philanthropy brings patient, flexible, risk-tolerant capital—hence the term catalytic capital. And the government creates the enabling environment in which all of this can flourish.

DIE ZEIT: Catalytic capital – do you mean the money from foundations and large private donors?
Badr Jafar: Philanthropic capital now flows at a rate of over two trillion dollars annually worldwide. This is many times the total amount of humanitarian and development aid worldwide. The catalytic effect is that this type of capital can precede new projects, reduce risks, and then attract economic capital.
Countries are now using philanthropic capital very strategically, as an integral part of their overall capital toolkit, to create more resilient systems.

DIE ZEIT: Can you give an example?
Badr Jafar: In the middle of Ramadan, the Prime Minister of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, launched a campaign to feed the world’s most vulnerable and hungry children. His goal was to raise money through a campaign to reach at least five million children on the brink of starvation or malnutrition in 13 of the worst-affected countries, many in Africa, but also countries like Haiti. What we did: Through the Prime Minister’s office and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives organization, we brought together a group of business leaders who, in turn, work alongside family trusts, family offices, and major global foundations. In the end, we raised over one billion dirhams in a single evening.
One billion dirhams, around 272 million US dollars. A record sum for charity, and this at a time when missiles and drones were flying over the skies of the UAE. At the moment when our community felt most threatened, we didn’t retreat, but stood up and looked at how we could help some of the most vulnerable people on this planet. They are suffering more from the current situation than we are. There are no starving children in the UAE.

DIE ZEIT: You keep coming back to the advantages of cooperation: between different sectors of society and internationally. But we now have two major superpowers that sometimes try to divide the world. That’s also the underlying reason why the Strait of Hormuz is now closed. Will this become a bigger problem, also for the UAE?
Badr Jafar: The UAE is forging partnership agreements across Asia and around the world. Europe, of course, remains indispensable for technology, industry, and capital. But the underlying logic of our 36 economic partnership agreements, and counting, is this: diversified partnerships, no longer dependent on a single market or route. Resilience comes from the network, not from a single thread. And consider this: we are planning for generations to come. When the UAE considers key partnerships and investments, we are thinking about the intergenerational implications. Even if there is short-term turbulence, or in the current case, a crisis, that doesn’t change our long-term perspective.

DIE ZEIT: And are you confident that this will continue to work with China and the USA – even though both are trying to win over their respective partners and away from other allies?
Badr Jafar: We don’t have to decide whose side we’re on. The UAE’s role is to provide a trusted, neutral platform where partners from every region can do business. We offer connectivity and reliability – and that’s exactly what a fragmented world needs right now. We want to be a place that stays connected to everyone.

Source: Zeit