Dubai has only ten days of fresh food left after the closure of the Straits of Hormuz has cut the United Arab Emirates (UAE) off from all its imports, including food. In Abu Dhabi, with the prospect of the region becoming unliveable, real estate prices are also collapsing.
As bne IntelliNews reported, the Hormuz chokepoint could kill Dubai, a hub of investment and business in the region. The Gulf countries don’t have any water and don’t produce much food for their combined population of around 60mn people. Fresh products in particular like vegetables and fruit are almost all imported. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) closed the Straits of Hormuz to oil exports on March 2, but the embargo also effectively blocked all food imports at the same time.
The Emirates imports between 80% and 90% of its food, with roughly 70% of food shipments to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries normally passing through the Strait of Hormuz on the 100- odd ships that traversed the Straits until a week ago.
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Then they shouldn’t allow US bases that get them embroiled in unprovoked conflicts.
All the Andrew Tate bro types are going to FAFO.
There are roads between the eastern side of the strait and Dubai and there is a cool technology called “trucks” that can be used to transport produce. Yes, it’s more expensive than boats but I read somewhere that Dubai is very rich.
If your infrastructure is all geared around getting everything in by port, it might not be possible to switch to getting it all in by truck.
There might not be enough trucks, or enough truck drivers. If they can get enough trucks and drivers, the roads may not be able to support that much traffic. And, that’s assuming they even have enough ports, and the right kinds of ports to unload any ships that come in on that side.
See the problem there is, that they don’t have the oil /s
No for real they don’t have the trucks they would need and to acquire them takes time
be dubai
build city in the middle of the desert
literally nothing grows here
we import all our stuff
trade blockade
gonna starve
mfwAlso how did people historically live there? Before desalination plants
Most of the Arab peninsula was inhabited by nomadic tribes that continuously moved with their cattle and tents, with the exception of a few scattered cities that thrived on trade and light agriculture (dates).
Obviously far fewer people lived there. They probably got their fresh water from a wadi or an oasis.
They’re not going to starve because they have a reserve of canned and frozen foods (as it says in the article), but they won’t get fresh food for a while. And, if you live in a modern city, you also import all your food, often from across an ocean.
The problem we’re seeing a lot in the modern world is that everything has been ultra optimized. Lots of just-in-time delivery, as little warehousing as possible. Products are bought for the lowest possible cost, even if that means they’re shipped from the other side of the planet. When it works, that’s fine. But, when there’s a disruption it’s deadly. I remember at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, the price of bread in Egypt skyrocketed since all the grain they used came from Ukraine.
UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, etc. are in a bad geographic situation. They have ports on the sea but to get anything into their countries it has to pass by the Strait of Hormuz. Iran can mess with that traffic any time it wants, and Iran isn’t exactly friendly with those countries, or particularly stable. I wonder if those countries have backup plans to ship things in via say Oman.
In XVIII they lived from fishery and hunting clams. In XX they lived from port and trade. In second half of XX they lived from petroleum. Now they live from youtubers who are testing rooms and food there.
It should also be mentioned that considerably fewer people lived there back then.
Yes
Damn, one of my co-workers just left to go visit there. He had some serious reservations about going home for a couple weeks. I hope he makes it back okay…
Good.
Maybe one of those vanity projects could have been a greenhouse or something, but I guess it’s too late for that.
With what water?
With the amount of money and access to tech that’s available over there you could build an advanced hydroponics greenhouse that would recapture at least 95% of your water (some obviously leaves the system inside the plants). Build that and fill your reserve tanks during the times you’re not under blockade and you could function for a long time. It might not be enough to feed your entire population a full serving of fresh fruits and veggies every day but it would minimize the impact in situations like this.
It’s a desert. Solar powered desalination plants might have been a good idea.
That’s a nice soft target there. Would be a shame if something, oh iran bombed one already.
water.fanack.com/desalination-plants-water-weapon-gulf/
The American Israeli coalition directly and intentionally destroyed a desalination plant in Iran. Barhain’s desalination plant was damaged by debris from a drone strike on another target. Those are very different statements and very different levels of destruction.
But yes, they’re soft targets if the people attacking you are complete degenerates willing to commit way crimes!
I’ve had a look at their bank balances, they could afford a few backups
Shouldn’t have been an ally of the US and Israel.
Why not? It’s not like the true “Allies”, the billionares of Dubai, will be affected by the food shortage. They will just fly off and abandon every worker and tenant (if any?) in dubai.
It’s imoral, but the scumbags lose nothing.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
If nothing happens that society and its practices will never change and the pain will continue.
If the whole castle of cards collapses due to this, whilst it’s a small consolation for the current slaves given the pain they’ll endure, it’s way more pain spared for would be future slaves.
Further, the scumbags will definitelly lose if the whole slave-using realestate-bubble empire whose value supports their wealth collapses back to nomads camel fucking in the desert.
They’re not allies of the US nor Israel but just try to play being allies of everyone, just like Qatar, Turkey or India
If you’re hosting some other country’s military bases you’re either its Ally or its Vassal.
I can understand why they do it, but none the less there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
i hope nobody starves but fuck Dubai
Oh don’t worry. The modern day slaves - the Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepali, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, and Filipino workers will absolutely suffer.
Now would be a great time for these overworked and underpaid masses to do the funny thing to the besieged city of millionaires.
Except that they wouldn’t be obtaining the land they toil on to feed their children because the land there is a fucking desert, and their land and families are an Emirates’ long haul flight away.
Pile of rolexes (blood rinsed off) would fund a plane ticket home and some home improvements back in Bangladesh.
I was thinking more they’d do it to get what food remains or they’d starve.
The starving have nothing to lose, slave or not.
Oh, that great, I almost worried anyone important might have to skip their favorite breakfast. /s
The families responsible for why everything is unaffordable will be fine.
lol It’s Dusell now I guess.
In a city of billionaires, 10 days of food is about enough for 1 days of food for one of them.
Spec Ops: The Line was a very good game.
Never finished it and won’t.
Game directly tells you you can stop killing Civilians at any time by just not playing.
That’s kind of silly. I get where you’re coming from, but since it’s a video game that’s telling a story with a beginning, middle, and end, and since the people are not real people in any sense of the word, wouldn’t it make sense to just finish it to see how the story ends?
Yeah. The story is on rails. It’s not an RPG where you can choose the good path or the evil path. I can imagine feeling bad about playing the evil path in a game where you had the option not to do it. But, if you want to see the story in a linear game like that you have click the mouse in the way required to get to the next save point. Feeling superior about not finishing a game like that is like feeling superior because you read a book where the main character is an antihero, and you chose not to finish the book.
Besides, it’s “deep” for a modern AAA shooter video game, but not particularly deep or upsetting in terms of storytelling.
The story isn’t strictly on rails - you do get some choices (especially how your character reacts in the end.) When you reach the part where you are told that you have to kill one of two guys, you can actually refuse to kill either and take on a massive firefight.
You got it right.
You know, that’s an interesting point. I think it can be really interesting to explore the „darker“ sites of one’s psyche through choices offered by better RPGs.
I refuse to play games which revolve around what I perceive to be normalization of and desensitization towards amoral killing, though. I simply don’t enjoy them because I can’t help but wonder what playing them does to people’s minds.
The only shooter I’ll play is Hell Let Loose because it really makes you feel like canon fodder.
I refuse to play games which revolve around what I perceive to be normalization of and desensitization towards amoral killing, though. I simply don’t enjoy them because I can’t help but wonder what playing them does to people’s minds.
I think this has been bleeding over into television as well. There have been series I have just stopped watching because there was no longer someone I could consider a protagonist. Not everyone has to be a shining paragon of virtue, but for fucks sake, if you just give me a bunch of sociopaths running amok am I supposed to keep watching and hope they all die in the end? The latest series I dropped for this reason was Alien Earth, which was pretty decent up until near the end of season 1.
Still worth playing in 2026? I have it and never played. I just have a hard time pulling the trigger (no pun intended) and starting to play mms’s. And that’s even with all the old guard game reviewers like tb praising it, which is why/how I own it in the first place. It just sits uninstalled in my steam library and I think about it every few years.
Absolutely, especially if you care about good story and atmosphere in games.
I played it again last year on a whim and was not disappointed.
Still one of the best games with a story that subverts its own genre alongside KOTOR 2, definitely worth experiencing.
Yes, its still worth playing.
It may have lost its cultural significance some since the 2000’s US invasions have been forgotten a bit, but its not all about that anyway. Its still poignant. Maybe it will make it easier to decide if I tell you its a short campaign.
Oh NO! RICH people live in Dubai!
-The Media!
there’s also many slaves who live in dubai
i sure wonder who, of the two, will be denied food
I wonder if the LARGE NUMBER of slaves might discover an alternate source of nutrition?
Nobody, because there is plenty of food. The article even says so.
Maybe they’ll eat the rich
But let’s just send our food over to them. Surely it will trickle down this time!
Horse and sparrow ftw
Lol, that’s cool. haha <3
The people with wealth have already fled to their spring palaces, the people left to starve there are the workers and migrants.
The UAE is not about to starve. It maintains strategic grain reserves and holds significant stocks of frozen and packaged foods, meaning the country is not facing a broader food shortage.
But fresh fruit looks nice in my fruit bowl even though I don’t eat it
To be fair, that title says fresh food.
UAE and specifically Dubai live on PR and marketing
When the surgically perfected bikini-clad Dubai influencer has to eat barley porridge and frozen veggies, it’s not good content 😆
People will survive, they won’t starve. But how will their PR machine spin this?
I kind of hate how we now have “content creators” who make “content” instead of, you know, people who make videos and stuff. Bland corporate language.
Maybe we should tell snobbier sort of influencers in Dubai that if they want to produce the Content, they unfortunately have to eat the Food.
Watched a clip by some standup comedian who described an odd encounter and then unironically said “Well, I went to my car, you know, created some content, uploaded on Insta.” I had to rewind and hear it again. Felt like I glimpsed into some parallel bizarro reality.
Move over unhealthy Dubai Chocolate and say hello to Dubai Gruel, packed full of super grains and cryo-rich greens that will help you lose weight and stay healthy.
I don’t know what’s scarier. The fact that half the commenters didn’t read that far into the article or that they couldn’t figure out for themselves that fresh food is not all food.
I think the headline is designed to be misleading - the dramatic tone implies a worse situation than the actual words describe.
It’s not how headlines are written now, but it would be more honest to say: Dubai to rely less on fresh food Perishable food in limited supply Fresh fruit and vegetables affected by war in iran
How is the UAE stockpiling frozen foods? Feels like the least cost-effective way for this country to store anything long term as emergency stock.
They aren’t. But the rich aren’t going to eat rice and lentils for very long. Just have to hope those shelf stable stores are available to the slaves.
