
Florian
25K posts

Florian
@djflore
Fractional COO, previously @interel. Angel Investor. Photographer. House music producer. Doctorate @IUM_Monaco. Lecturer Uni of Europe DXB. @enlaps Ambassador.



Excellent by @ghoshworld on the failure to plan for “logistics states” like the UAE to go offline—& why this will likely hit Global South hardest. Few analysts are granular enough to even realise that Dubai hosts WHO & IFC. The “materialistic petrostate” stereotype precludes it.



WOW. Just in the last two weeks, BYD showrooms around the world are seeing a surge in customer demand from people who are deciding that now is the time to switch to EVS, with oil prices so high. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…


UAE air defences engage 10 ballistic missiles, 45 UAVs The UAE air defence systems on 17th March 2026 engaged 10 ballistic missiles and 45 UAVs launched from Iran. Since the onset of the blatant Iranian aggression, UAE air defences have engaged 314 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles and 1,672 UAVs. These attacks have resulted in the martyrdom of 2 members of the armed forces while performing their national duty, as well as 6 fatalities of Pakistani, Nepali, Bangladeshi and Palestinian nationalities. A total of 157 people were also injured, with injuries ranging from minor to moderate and severe. The injured included nationals of the UAE, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Iran, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, Yemen, Uganda, Eritrea, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Comoros, Türkiye, Iraq, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman, Jordan, Palestine, Ghana, Indonesia, Sweden and Tunisia. The Ministry of Defence affirmed that it remains fully prepared and ready to deal with any threats, and will firmly confront any attempts to undermine State security in a manner that ensures the protection of its sovereignty, security and stability, and safeguards its national interests and capabilities. #وزارة_الدفاع #وزارة_الدفاع_الإماراتية #MOD #UAEMinistryOfDefence

The United Arab Emirates welcomed migrant workers but rarely granted them citizenship or even permanent residence. As a result, they are more likely to flee now that the country is under attack by Iran. trib.al/SY4Fs2y




A drone struck a fuel tank at Dubai International Airport. The world’s busiest international hub. Flights temporarily suspended. Smoke visible across the city per live footage. ADNOC, the UAE’s national oil company, has shut in more than 50 percent of crude output. Fujairah loading halted. This is no longer a crisis contained to a 21-mile strait. Proxy forces attributed to Iranian-backed groups are now striking civilian energy and aviation infrastructure in a Gulf state that is not a direct belligerent in this conflict. The UAE did not conduct strikes in Operation Epic Fury. Yet it hosts Fertiglobe, one of the largest nitrogen fertilizer operations in the region at 6.6 million tonnes of annual capacity, whose entire export volume is now trapped behind a strait that is mined, uninsured, and unescorted. The ADNOC shut-ins are not the result of direct hits on oil facilities. They are the result of a Hormuz transit collapse so total that production without export capacity becomes a liability. When you cannot ship it, you stop pumping it. This is the escalation path that markets have not priced. The consensus assumption is that the Hormuz crisis is a transit problem. Reopen the strait, restart the flow. But what happens when the conflict expands beyond the chokepoint itself and begins striking the energy infrastructure of the Gulf states that sit behind it? The transit problem becomes a confidence problem. Even if the strait reopened tomorrow, would commercial operators trust that the facilities loading their cargo are safe from the next drone? Would insurers underwrite a vessel loading at Fujairah when a fuel tank at Dubai airport was struck this morning? Tehran does not need to match American airpower. What Iranian-backed forces are demonstrating is that asymmetric pressure on Gulf civilian infrastructure accomplishes three objectives simultaneously. It raises the cost of Gulf states hosting American operations. It undermines commercial confidence in the production and loading infrastructure that would restart exports. And it stretches US defensive resources across yet another front, from Baghdad embassies to Gulf fuel depots, further delaying the Hormuz escorts that remain the only pathway to restoring fertilizer flows. The US military is now defending personnel and facilities across Iraq, partner infrastructure in the Gulf, and its own carrier groups in the Arabian Sea. All while trying to assemble a multinational escort coalition that Germany formally refused today, Japan previously declined, and Australia has not joined. Washington is shouldering this burden largely alone against an adversary executing a multi-front resource-denial strategy with disciplined patience. Meanwhile the fertilizer arithmetic grows worse by the hour. One-third of global seaborne fertilizer trade passes through Hormuz per UNCTAD. Transit down 97 percent. Nearly 49 percent of traded urea tied to conflict-exposed Gulf exporters. Bangladesh has shut four to five of its six major urea factories. India is running plants at 60 percent capacity and has formally asked China for emergency urea. China has banned phosphate exports through August. Egypt faces $28 billion in debt repayments while feeding 69 million people on bread subsidies hemorrhaging at prices nobody budgeted. 318 million were at crisis-level hunger before February 28. The Corn Belt needs nitrogen by mid-April. India needs Kharif prep by May. Australia needs urea by June. Every drone that hits Gulf infrastructure is not just an act of aggression against a sovereign state. It is an extension of the same siege that is strangling the food system sustaining four billion people. The planting calendar does not distinguish between a blocked strait and a burning fuel depot. Both produce the same outcome: molecules that do not arrive in time. The window is not just closing because the strait is blocked. It is closing because the crisis is expanding beyond it. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

March 17 (Reuters) - The UAE's General Civil Aviation Authority announced the temporary and full closure of the country's airspace, as "an exceptional precautionary measure", amid rapidly evolving regional security developments, the state news agency reported on Tuesday.



Today we continue suffering in the alleged war zone of Dubai at Aura Skypool the world’s highest 360° infinity pool. Pretty cool seeing the DXB departures taking off westbound before turning hard left and over the city currently.







