On April 1, Iranian drones struck a fuel storage facility at Kuwait International Airport, causing a major fire. The same day, Iran fired three ballistic missiles at Qatar — two were intercepted, one struck a QatarEnergy-registered oil tanker. A Bangladeshi national was killed by shrapnel during a drone interception in Fujairah, in the UAE.
The Gulf — the region that many of my clients chose as their primary base specifically because of its stability, its distance from European political dysfunction, and its zero personal income tax — is now under active Iranian attack.
I want to write about this clearly, because the temptation either to panic or to dismiss it is both wrong.
What Is Actually Happening
Iran, following the February 28 US-Israeli strikes that killed Khamenei and degraded its nuclear infrastructure, has been conducting a sustained campaign of missile and drone attacks against US allies and US-adjacent infrastructure across the Gulf region. The logic is escalation pressure — make the economic cost of the war high enough that the US and Israel are forced into negotiations.
The targets have been selected with a certain precision: fuel infrastructure, tanker traffic, airports. The goal is not mass civilian casualties — that would unify international opinion against Iran even further. The goal is economic disruption, energy supply uncertainty, and the demonstration that nowhere in the Gulf is genuinely outside Iran's reach.
That last point is the one that matters for my clients.
What This Means for UAE Residents and Those Considering the UAE
Let me be honest, because that is what I always try to be.
The UAE's missile defence systems have been performing well. Interceptions over Fujairah and elsewhere have largely worked. The UAE government has maintained extraordinary calm in its public communications. Dubai International Airport has not closed. Business has continued.
But a shrapnel death in Fujairah is not an abstraction. A drone intercepted over your city is not nothing. And the fundamental question — is the UAE a stable base for your family and your business — deserves an honest answer that acknowledges that the regional environment has changed materially in the past six weeks.
My answer, honestly, is: yes, with caveats that were not there before February 28.
The UAE's political relationships — its deliberate neutrality, its channels with Iran, its US security guarantee through the Abraham Accords framework — give it more protection than other Gulf states. Dubai has been through disruptions before and has demonstrated remarkable resilience.
But this is also the moment that validates everything I say about the importance of not having your entire financial and personal life in a single jurisdiction. The clients who have a genuine Plan B — another residency, another banking relationship, another place their family can go — are watching this with concern but without panic. The clients who went all-in on Dubai and nothing else are more anxious than they should need to be.
Build the redundancy before you need it. Not after.
Work with Sebastian
If the Gulf crisis has prompted you to review whether your UAE positioning has adequate backup and diversification, this is exactly the conversation to have now rather than later. Book a consultation.