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.
…
be dubai
build city in the middle of the desert
literally nothing grows here
we import all our stuff
trade blockade
gonna starve
mfwAlso how did people historically live there? Before desalination plants
In XVIII they lived from fishery and hunting clams. In XX they lived from port and trade. In second half of XX they lived from petroleum. Now they live from youtubers who are testing rooms and food there.
You left out the slave trade in XIX but yeah…
It should also be mentioned that considerably fewer people lived there back then.
Yes
Most of the Arab peninsula was inhabited by nomadic tribes that continuously moved with their cattle and tents, with the exception of a few scattered cities that thrived on trade and light agriculture (dates).
Obviously far fewer people lived there. They probably got their fresh water from a wadi or an oasis.
They’re not going to starve because they have a reserve of canned and frozen foods (as it says in the article), but they won’t get fresh food for a while. And, if you live in a modern city, you also import all your food, often from across an ocean.
The problem we’re seeing a lot in the modern world is that everything has been ultra optimized. Lots of just-in-time delivery, as little warehousing as possible. Products are bought for the lowest possible cost, even if that means they’re shipped from the other side of the planet. When it works, that’s fine. But, when there’s a disruption it’s deadly. I remember at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, the price of bread in Egypt skyrocketed since all the grain they used came from Ukraine.
UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, etc. are in a bad geographic situation. They have ports on the sea but to get anything into their countries it has to pass by the Strait of Hormuz. Iran can mess with that traffic any time it wants, and Iran isn’t exactly friendly with those countries, or particularly stable. I wonder if those countries have backup plans to ship things in via say Oman.
10 days are over now. What is the update?
It’s a food pipeline they need, none of them gas ones.
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.
But how many toilets do they have left?
That Dubai some time, just not enough
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.
Maybe a few more gold plated jets will do the trick
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.
Comrade Krasnov’s plan all along!
I mean. I’m a socialist. Just not a corporate socialist.
Explain to me how this doesn’t encourage a United bombing run on both Israel and the states.
They’re starving working class plebs like you and me right now. Something about the internal class war in the states makes me livid about that wherever it’s happening. Viscerally.
A handful of guys decide to shit on one another and the rest of us are supposed to bathe in the excremental splatter and like it. Why FFS?
These same assholes are supposed to be in power for the express purpose of shielding their people from said shit.
Explain to me how this doesn’t encourage a United bombing run on both Israel and the states.
Nukes. The US has a lot of fucking nukes. We’ve used them before, when a sane government was in control. If anyone bombs the US it will literally be the end of civilization.
That’s not hyperbole. This orange fuck will absolutely let the nukes rip.
Israel also has a lot of nukes.
And Israel has the Samson option
No he’s not. Any nuke use by anyone would be completely geopolitical collapse and even americans would probably refuse the order.
The secretary of ““defense”” of the US is an actual doomsday accelerationist.
Is “““defense””” in scare quotes because his real title is Secretary of WARRRRR?
A big chunk of American administration is salivating over the idea of geopolitical collapse. Sure, maybe a few might refuse, but that just means they will find a replacement or find leverage that convinces the person to follow orders.
Think of Nazi Germany. While some soldiers followed horrific orders gleefully, many others did them because hurting someone else prevented retaliation against themselves or their families. It’s easy to say you’d never hurt anyone, but harder to adhere to if you’re watching a gun aimed at your child’s head.
These same assholes are supposed to be in power for the express purpose of shielding their people from said shit.
with the context from the rest of your comment, the fact you still believe this is astounding.
Oh NO! RICH people live in Dubai!
-The Media!
there’s also many slaves who live in dubai
i sure wonder who, of the two, will be denied food
Maybe they’ll eat the rich
I wonder if the LARGE NUMBER of slaves might discover an alternate source of nutrition?
Nobody, because there is plenty of food. The article even says so.
But let’s just send our food over to them. Surely it will trickle down this time!
Horse and sparrow ftw
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.
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?
Move over unhealthy Dubai Chocolate and say hello to Dubai Gruel, packed full of super grains and cryo-rich greens that will help you lose weight and stay healthy.
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.
Tbf it’s a great differentiator shorthand to know whether the topic of discussion is about actual creatives or diet pill shilling slop.
Can’t wait until all the professional airbreathers are replaced by simple AI models lmfao
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.
That’s the issue, gen Z bred to believe that a recording of themselves is the equivalent of “creating” something with effort lmao
To be fair, that title says fresh food.
But fresh fruit looks nice in my fruit bowl even though I don’t eat it
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.
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.
Add to the scary list: that some people think it’s no cause for alarm if a country resorts to grain reserves to survive.
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
Let them eat those stupid ass chocolate bars
What you say as a piece of shit is swirling around the toilet? Doo-doo, bye! Or watching Trump & Netanyahu make out… Du… Bi?!?
No need to brag about it, Dubai.
How many days of “fresh food” can someone possibly have left?
Zucchini in the fridge will last for more than a week easy. Eggs last a month or longer. Onions don’t even need a fridge and last months.
Do they not have land trade routes?
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
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.
