The Iran war and the shifting Gulf dynamics

The UAE and Saudi Arabia appear to be doubling down on US and Israel's war against Iran

- Barkha Dutt

UAE's minister of industry and advanced technology has accused Iran of "economic terrorism" for choking the Strait of Hormuz

(REUTERS)

I have just been as close as I could get to the nerve-centre of the US-Israel war against Iran — the very edge of the Strait of Hormuz. This was in a fishing village called Al Jeer, which is in the northernmost part of the Ras Al Khaimah Emirate, next to the Musandam Peninsula, on Oman’s border with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Musandam Peninsula’s cliffs form the south wall of the Strait of Hormuz and, in the words of a mariner who accompanied me, where we stood was “the tip of Hormuz, as near to it as possible”.

We were tens of kilometres from Hormuz Island. Right in front of me, visible to the naked eye, was line of ships stacked up along the horizon, stranded like thousands of others in the Persian Gulf. I also travelled and stayed at the eastern coast of the UAE in Fujairah and Dibba, no more than 70 nautical miles from the Strait of Hormuz.

“This is the lifeline of the world,” captain Pradeep Singh, a leading businessman with Master Mariner certification, said to me as we walked through the jagged sand of the shoreline. We were the only people there for miles on end. “And anyone thinking this is a regional conflict, think again, this is now a global war,” he said grimly, pointing out that the stranded seafarers ducking missiles and drones were no less than war heroes.