re: Official US/Israel vs Iran war thread

While I'm glad to see UAE striking back, I do wonder why they always seem to strike kind of low-profile targets when Iran is hitting the crown jewels of their oil industry, such as their bypass pipeline. Kharg Island is about as vulnerable a target as can be imagined - bombing that would be proportional to what Iran has been doing to them since the war started.

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Translated from Arabic
Iran's threat to the UAE is high-stakes, unprecedented, and dangerous, as voiced by an Iranian military source:
All its interests will turn into targets for Iran, and no point in its facilities will be safe. The UAE is well aware that it lives in a thin and extremely fragile glass house, and that the absence of security represents a deadly poison for it.

This is a statement that appeared in the Iranian Tasnim news agency, which is close to the Revolutionary Guard.

Iran threatens what it calls a glass house, but it knows that it breathes through some of its windows.

The irony is that the relationship between Iran and the UAE is one of the strangest relationships in the region: a security threat from one side, and deep economic dependence from the other.

Iran needs the UAE for two main reasons:
Facilitating the flow of funds from its exports, and providing commercial/logistical cover for companies that cannot operate directly under Iran's name under sanctions.

The numbers say a lot:
In the year ending March 2024, Iran imported $20.8 billion from the UAE and exported $6.6 billion to it.
And in the following year ending March 2025: imports from the UAE $21.9 billion, and exports to it $7.2 billion.

In other words: The UAE is not just a trading neighbor for Tehran; it is one of the lungs of the Iranian economy.

Dubai and Jebel Ali: Import gateway.
Free zones: Re-export platform.
Exchange houses and intermediary companies: Financial lung.
Some front companies: Cover for circumventing sanctions.
The expatriate community and businessmen: A historical network for trade.
And assets, companies, and ports: Mutual leverage.

Therefore, if the UAE freezes assets or shuts down exchange networks linked to Iran, it is not just striking a trade relationship; it is striking the mechanism for converting Iranian oil into liquidity.