The Unravelling of Dubai as a Safe Haven

For Mohammad, the assault on his home country brought back decades-old memories of growing up in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war. “I remember the sound,” he told me. “I remember the bombing.” He said he was still in shock.

When I asked Mohammad what had kept him in Dubai all these years, he didn’t mention the skyscrapers or monuments. He spoke of the thrill of seeing something being built in real time and the sense of belonging he felt to the city. “Most people ask me today, ‘Why are you staying? There’s nothing here,'” he said. “I tell them, ‘There is a future.’ » Yet this future is becoming more and more uncertain. Iran has launched more than nineteen hundred missiles and drones towards the United Arab Emirates since the start of the war. Although the physical damage in Dubai was limited, compared to other cities in the region, the attacks – and their emotional toll – persisted. Three weeks after the start of the conflict, on March 16, a fuel tank at Dubai International Airport was hit by a drone strike. “We are all worried about what will happen,” Mohammad said.

If you search for “Dubai,” you’ll find images of sprawling shopping complexes, glass towers, and influencers posing by infinity pools with cocktails in hand. You might also come across a series of headline-grabbing projects that the city has championed over the years, from creating artificial islands to sending a mission to Mars, an attempt to position itself as the pinnacle of innovation and luxury, a place where the future arrives early. This year, in partnership with Elon Musk’s Boring Company, the city began building the Dubai Loop, a high-speed underground transportation network. Dubai has also staked a claim on artificial intelligence, integrating it into government services, healthcare, finance and urban infrastructure – a topic officials have mentioned at every opportunity.

But the glitzy and extravagant aspects of Dubai have long hidden the reality of the hard work that underpins the city. For more than a century, people have come from the Gulf, the wider Middle East and around the world, seeking not glamor but economic opportunity and political stability. In 2026, Dubai’s population is estimated to be around three million, with only ten to fifteen percent Emirati nationals and the rest expatriates from over two hundred different countries, including large communities of Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Filipinos, Lebanese, Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians.

My parents, two young Egyptians trying to build a life and start a family, moved from Cairo to Dubai in 1986. My father was a journalist and had received a job offer from a newspaper based in the United Arab Emirates. “I didn’t even know what Dubai was,” he recalls. “But my boss at the time suggested I try my luck there.” Over the years, our family would travel back and forth between Cairo and Dubai, although the latter is where I spent most of my childhood. My sisters and I attended British curriculum schools, where our classrooms were filled with students from other countries as well.

Then as now, the city was home to a large Iranian population. (Estimates suggest that there are around half a million Iranian nationals in the UAE, most of whom live in Dubai.) In the late 19th century, Persian merchants began to settle in Dubai, attracted by the city’s favorable trade policies; shortly after, Sheikh Maktoum bin Hasher Al Maktoum, then ruler of Dubai, declared the city a duty-free port. These merchants largely settled along the Dubai Creek, building wind tower houses that still exist today, in what is known as the Bastakiya district, named after Bastak, the town where some of the merchants were from. “They never lost their ties to their communities in Iran, speaking the same languages ​​– mainly variations of Achomi or Larestani, which derive from Old Persian – and often financing the construction of mosques and other public facilities in their villages,” Arash Azizi, an Iranian-Canadian historian and author, told me. “Their networks remain intact to this day, connecting communities from Iran’s Hormozgan province to Dubai, then to London, South Asia and elsewhere. »