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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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.
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
Add to the scary list: that some people think it’s no cause for alarm if a country resorts to grain reserves to survive.
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.
To be fair, that title says fresh food.
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.
But fresh fruit looks nice in my fruit bowl even though I don’t eat it
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?
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
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.
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.
Yeah, it’s a cool game, but you could just read Heart of Darkness instead and prob be better off
Yeah. I read Heart of Darkness long before I saw that, plus I’d watched Apocalypse Now, which is a movie adaptation of Heart of Darkness. I saw a list of their influences in making the game, and I’d already seen all of the other ones too. So… it was definitely taking FPS military games in a new direction, but it wasn’t anything really new overall.
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.
Does that actually change anything beyond the firefight though?
Yup. Undertale’s Geno Route is much better at this. Not only can you avoid it, you need to actively go for it and make sure you don’t “fall” out to the Neutral route halfway through. Not to mention the skill curve walls (if for no other reason, you should do the Pacifist route first for practice).
You got it right.
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.
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.Still one of the best games with a story that subverts its own genre alongside KOTOR 2, definitely worth experiencing.
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.
Shouldn’t have been an ally of the US and Israel.
Dubai had no problem using slaves to build the Burj Khalifa. Maybe they should have their slaves bring some food for their masters?
I propose the slaves eat their masters
Perhaps a few cocktails as well
Then they shouldn’t allow US bases that get them embroiled in unprovoked conflicts.
All the Andrew Tate bro types are going to FAFO.
REAL MEN DON’T STARVE!
Let them eat those stupid ass chocolate bars
Good.
Who do you think will go hungry first?
The powerful or their slaves?
Goddamnit you’re right. Nevermind. Hopefully the elite there will evaporate in a big hellfire.
The slaves for sure, but it also creates a situation where the powerful may not be giving enough food to their security forces, and their security forces turn on them, joining the slaves in outright rebellion.
Not that this will bring more food in, but it could result in some of those “powerful” people suddenly not being so powerful.
The other issue these gulf states have is potable water. The majority of it is generated at a few desalination plants. The Iranians have already demonstrated their ability to reliably hit infrastructure all over the region. They can up the ante and create absolute chaos in the region. Even if the US-Israeli strikes cripple Iran’s infrastructure, Iran is in a stronger negotiating position. I’m appalled at the EU response to this unprovoked attack. They seem to think that appeasing a bully like trump is going to benefit the EU. Trump started this conflict in order to distract us from his other crimes. When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
If they’re unable to reopen the strait, perhaps they can force Trump to halt attacking Iran by stopping their own fossil fuel production. Something oil embargo.
The US is less reliant on products which traverse the strait then in the other population center on the planet. It actually may be in its strongest strategic interest to continue on a course which keeps the strait closed, ignoring the humanitarian impact and loss of soft power and goodwill.
True but they can’t escape the coming inflation wave. As fossil fuel supply thru the strait decreases, intl buyers would seek to buy from other sources, bidding up prices everywhere. That includes American producers who’d gladly export instead of feeding the domestic demand. This could change if the US gov’t decides to move away from free markets and imoses export and price controls.
Sounds like socialism.
Not democratic. Socialism isn’t just when the government does things.
Comrade Krasnov’s plan all along!
I mean. I’m a socialist. Just not a corporate socialist.
Maybe a few more gold plated jets will do the trick
lol It’s Dusell now I guess.
But how many toilets do they have left?
No need to brag about it, Dubai.
