Oil could pass 2008 record of $147.50 a barrel as damage and field closures risk compounding supply shock caused by Iran war

About 20 miles off the coast of Iran lies the source of the petrostate’s economic lifeblood and the latest target of US military aggression: an 8 sq mile coral island through which nine in every 10 barrels of Iranian crude passes each day.

The US president’s decision to launch a weekend attack on Kharg Island, the home of Iran’s processing hub and the heart of its economy, is an unsurprising counterstrike to the Iranian regime’s ongoing chokehold on the oil market’s trade artery.

Closure of strait of Hormuz puts pressure on region’s economies amid growing resentment about conflict started by US and Israel

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An eerie quiet hangs over Ras Al Khaimah’s industrial port. Usually a thriving maritime hub of the United Arab Emirates, now ships stand docked and silent. Not far out along the hazy horizon, a backlog of hundreds of tankers have lined up in recent days, halted along a waterway flooded with danger.

Any vessel heading past Ras Al Khaimah out to the Arabian Sea must traverse the world’s most treacherous strip of water for shipping today: the strait of Hormuz. Just over 20 nautical miles from Ras Al Khaimah, two oil tankers heading for the strait were attacked by Iranian missiles this week, one catching fire.

High-net-worth residents of UAE heading to Ireland and France to wait out missile attacks before tax year ends

Wealthy UK nationals fleeing war in the Gulf are seeking sanctuary in countries such as Ireland and France to avoid hefty tax bills back home.

In the face of possible demands from HM Revenue and Customs, high-net-worth individuals who had been living in the United Arab Emirates and neighbouring countries are hoping to wait out the missile and drone attacks elsewhere rather than return to the UK.

UAE cybercrime law means sharing images or footage of war can bring jail, prison time and deportation

A British man is among 20 people who have been charged in the United Arab Emirates under cybercrime laws in connection with filming and posting material related to Iranian attacks on the country.

The 60-year-old man, understood to be a tourist who was visiting Dubai, was charged under a law that prohibits sharing material that could disturb public security.

Tens of thousands of residents and tourists have left UAE since the US and Israel started bombing Iran two weeks ago, leaving beach bars, malls and hotels eerily empty

In the playground of the rich, nobody wanted this war. For decades, Dubai built itself up as a sanctuary of unadulterated consumerism visited by tourists the world over.

But now, the city in the United Arab Emirates faces an existential threat, as the war between the US and Israel and Iran has shaken the foundations of the “Dubai dream” that so many foreigners had bought into.

Recent attack on plants led to fears of escalating strikes, but Iran knows drought has left it equally vulnerable

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In 1983, the CIA determined that the most crucial commodity in the Gulf was its desalinated potable water.

Although the loss of a single plant could be handled, “successful attacks on several plants in the most dependent countries could generate a national crisis that could lead to panic flights from the country and civil unrest”. And the greatest threat to the region’s water supply? “Iran.”

President reassures Republicans that conflict is intended to be short lived but also says ‘we haven’t won enough’

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Donald Trump has said that the war in Iran is “very complete, pretty much”, as the economic toll of the joint US-Israeli operation has risen, disrupting global oil trade and threatening to engulf the Middle East in a regional war.

Trump made the comments before a speech and press conference in Florida where he sought to emphasise that the US military campaign would be ending soon amid concerns from Republican allies that the US was being dragged into another long-term conflict in the region.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE are finding their carefully projected image of stability has been blown away

There is a tendency to think of the Gulf powers as static and unchanging. They are, after all, fortified by massive wealth and absolute monarchical rule, and secured with deep economic and military relationships with the US. The past week of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran, and Iran’s retaliations, have brought into focus what these countries export (oil and gas) and what they import (tax avoiders and labour). But beyond thinking about energy-supply challenges to the global economy and engaging in the cheap and popular sport of smirking at influencers in war zones, we must remember that the current conflagration will have profound consequences for the entire region. This is not just about the US, Israel and Iran; it is about a complex, overlapping political order in the Middle East that is much more fragile than it looks.

Amid all the ways the region has been changing over the past few years, the low-key evolution of three Gulf countries in particular has been the most significant. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have been rapidly making changes, the effects of which have been felt from Libya to Palestine. The 7 October attacks, which arguably set off the chain of events that led to this moment, were partly inspired by Hamas’s desire to stop the normalisation process that Saudi Arabia was undertaking with Israel; this was following the UAE and others signing the 2020 Abraham accords with Israel. The three countries have been pursuing in different ways, often at odds with each other, ambitious global and regional agendas. And they are also much more unsteady than their decades-long familial rule suggests.

Iran’s targeting of commercial datacentres in the UAE and Bahrain signals a new frontier in asymmetric warfare

It is believed to be a first: the deliberate targeting of a commercial datacentre by the armed forces of a country at war.

At 4.30am on Sunday morning, an Iranian Shahed 136 drone struck an Amazon Web Services datacentre in the United Arab Emirates, setting off a devastating fire and forcing a shutdown of the power supply. Further damage was inflicted as attempts were made to suppress the flames with water.

Restart of operations will be a relief to those stranded but may not dispel doubts raised by past week about key transit hub

After nearly a week of uncertainty, airspace closures and very limited flights, news that hundreds of thousands of passengers around the world were hanging on for emerged: the Gulf-based carrier Emirates was restarting operations in earnest despite the US-Israel war on Iran.

Those relieved by the restart will include the UK’s Foreign Office, after its travails in organising delayed rescue flights out of neighbouring Oman.

The city was portrayed as an aspirational place to live, but now those who moved there are realising the precarity that comes with being an economic migrant

To be fooled by a mirage, you needn’t be lost in the desert. Sometimes, the illusion is strongest just when you thought you were safely home, posting from the pool about your teenage daughter’s spa party and your own glittering life in a city where “the possibilities are endless”, as they tend to be for billionaires’ daughters living in tax havens. Only then does the fantasy explode in a puff of intercepted missile smoke, leaving just another woman in her pyjamas telling Instagram (as Petra Ecclestone did at the weekend) that she moved to Dubai “to feel safe” and war was never mentioned in the small print.

Who could have guessed that living a few hundred miles as the drone flies from Tehran might have risks? Certainly not the anonymous hedge funder who fumed to the Financial Times that “the trade was not that you were getting exposed to geopolitics”.

My family is in Tehran; I am in Abu Dhabi. Across the region, ordinary people are paying the price for these attacks

Since Saturday, my mind has been torn between the place I live, Abu Dhabi, and Tehran, which has been the focus of my work and research for more than 15 years, and where I still have family. When I saw that Israel and the US had attacked Iran, I started worrying for family, thinking about potential consequences. But I barely had time to consider that before Donald Trump announced that this was about regime change. At that moment, I knew this was going to be big – worse than last June – and that it would lead into a regional schism. Predictably, Iran’s response started shortly after: first against Israel, then against states across the Gulf region, including the United Arab Emirates. It all followed the worst-case escalation scenarios we had been outlining since June, and especially since January, when – in the midst of protests – Donald Trump said “help” was on its way.

I kept on trying to reach family when the internet there was working, which is, at best, for a few minutes a day. Each conversation is short, practical: are you OK? Is your area affected?

Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi is an associate fellow at the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa programme and senior analyst at Control Risks

Amid schadenfreude back home as UK nationals express their fears, others say they are not leaving anytime soon

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It is not always seen as a positive when the ruling family of a dictatorship makes a public show of mingling among the people.

On Monday, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the royal who is both president of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Abu Dhabi, joined Dubai’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, for a stroll around Dubai’s mall, before settling down alongside awkward looking officials on the banquette-style seating at one of its most visible cafes.

Stockpiles of the most advanced US-made weapons are limited – while few know how large Iran’s arsenal is

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• The war in the Middle East in maps, video and photos

The outcome and duration of the war in the Middle East may be decided by a grim calculus based on the size of Iran’s drone and missile stocks v vital air defence munitions held by the US, Israel and Gulf states, analysts and officials say.

Since Saturday, Iran and its proxies have sought to counter the intensive joint US and Israeli offensive with more than 1,000 strikes against targets across almost a dozen countries spread over 1,200 miles. With its antiquated air force unable to compete with those of Israel and the US, Tehran has relied on its arsenal of missiles and drones.

Iranian drones hit US embassy in Riyadh as Israel bombs Tehran and sends troops into southern Lebanon

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Iran continued its bombardment the Gulf and Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for further Israeli-US airstrikes, as Donald Trump said it was too late for dialogue with Tehran.

“Their air defense, Air Force, Navy and Leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said ‘Too Late!’,” the US president wrote on his Truth Social platform, rejecting what he claimed was an attempt by Tehran to restart negotiations. He said the US was prepared “to go far longer” than a four to five-week war against Iran.

Some repatriation flights depart as governments around the world work to extract their citizens from the conflict-hit region

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The biggest Middle East carriers have ruled out resuming scheduled flights until at least Thursday as the US-Israeli war on Iran continues, denting hopes of a swift return to normal air travel after the first repatriation flights left the United Arab Emirates.

Etihad, based in Abu Dhabi, said its commercial services were suspended until 2pm local time on Thursday 5 March, with Emirates ruling out scheduled flights until midnight on Wednesday.

Hundreds of thousands of passengers have found themselves stranded in the middle of a conflict between Iran and its Gulf neighbours

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Holidaymakers on the first flights out of Abu Dhabi since Saturday have described their experiences up close as conflict erupted between Iran and its Gulf neighbours.

With thousands of flights cancelled across the Middle East, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded, the UK has begun forming evacuation plans for some of the estimated 300,000 Britons in the region.

People drive to Oman and Saudi in hope of a flight, while most tourists stay stuck in hotels and on cruise ships

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Iranian attacks on Dubai and the closure of its airport have triggered a scramble among the wealthy to leave the emirates via alternative routes on private jets.

The normally glitzy city – a playground for billionaires, influencers and millions of international visitors – has been on edge since drones and missiles fired in response to US and Israel strikes on Iran damaged the airport and struck several high-profile hotels and landmarks.

Meeting of six-country cooperation council says option to respond to attacks by Tehran remains on the table

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Gulf states, encouraged by Donald Trump, are on the verge of ending their neutrality in the war against Iran in reprisal for Tehran’s repeated “reckless and indiscriminate attacks” on their territory and infrastructure.

The calls, led by the United Arab Emirates from inside the six-country Gulf Cooperation Council, are for the Arab states to act in self-defence against Iran, but it would be a huge step for Gulf leaders in effect to side with Israel in a war that will determine the future shape of the Middle East, probably to the advantage of Israel.

• Fifa regulations vague on issue of replacing any teams

• Withdrawal would be first since France and India in 1950

Iraq and the United Arab Emirates are viewed as the most likely beneficiaries should Iran withdraw from the World Cup. Fifa’s general secretary, Mattias Grafström, said on Saturday that “our focus is to have a safe World Cup with everybody participating”, but the president of the Iranian Football Federation, Mehdi Taj, has raised doubts over his country’s participation by saying: “After this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope.”

Fifa has not commented since Grafström spoke and remains determined to ensure the World Cup, thats starts on 11 June, goes ahead as planned, but several sources have said that if its hand were forced by Iran’s withdrawal the replacement will probably come from the Asian Football Confederation.