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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Do they not have land trade routes?
Yes land and flight (I imagine limited now) freight but surely orders of magnitude more expensive.
First example I found https://www.cnbctv18.com/world/dubai-allows-alternative-route-for-jebel-ali-bound-cargo-freight-costs-jump-nearly-fivefold-ws-l-19864680.htm “a nearly fivefold increase in freight charges.” which I also imagine is a margin error if you ship expensive technological equipment or luxury goods but if it’s “just” tomatoes and salads, quite different.
Why drive through a desert when you have a port?
To not starve?
I think the point is that they werent doing it before the war. (Because it was so much more costly)
Getting that kind of infrastructure set up will take time. Were talking hundreds of refrigerated trucks and a couple thousand miles. Longer depending on where they come in from. Are they trucking across Saudi Arabia? Landing shipping vessels in a port outside of the strait and running along the coastal roads within Iran’s drones range?
Sure but you’d think they’d have a plan b or something for such an obvious threat they lobbied for getting into themselves.
Nah someone will bail us - let’s build more fake island shaped like flaccid cocks.
Capitalism does not like redundancies. Most of the globe is relying on single points of failure in their supply chains
Do you have any idea how hard it would be to logistically set up? This isn’t driving to the grocery store, it’s feeding a whole damn city
Even if they wanted to do this, it would take months to set up even at a breakneck pace
They do, but their sources would be Oman or Saudi Arabia. Both are already helping their neighbors but the UAE has sabotaged their relationship with both of them.
Oman: old issues.
Saudi Arabia: they have been attacking it over refusing the Abraham Accords, destroying their Yemen separatists supply lines, and backing the Sudanese government in their fight against the UAE backed RSF. They don’t want to look weak by resorting to Saudi who have been helping all the other GCC countries. Also have been playing Israel’s advocate and attacking Saudi for not joining the war against Iran.
Edit: Saudi dedicated an entire airport near the border for Kuwait airlines, and dedicated a terminal for Bahrain in an other airport. For Qatar they announced free transit for any shipments coming via Red Sea ports headed to Qatar.