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.

  • mvlad88@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Maybe one of those vanity projects could have been a greenhouse or something, but I guess it’s too late for that.

      • Zron@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        It’s a desert. Solar powered desalination plants might have been a good idea.

        • Bigfishbest@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          That’s a nice soft target there. Would be a shame if something, oh iran bombed one already.

          • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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            1 month ago

            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!

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 month ago

    be dubai
    build city in the middle of the desert
    literally nothing grows here
    we import all our stuff
    trade blockade
    gonna starve
    mfw

    Also how did people historically live there? Before desalination plants

    • Tatar_Nobility@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      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).

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      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.

    • ms.lane@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Never finished it and won’t.

      Game directly tells you you can stop killing Civilians at any time by just not playing.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 month ago

        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?

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          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.

          • MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            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).

          • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 month ago

            Yeah, it’s a cool game, but you could just read Heart of Darkness instead and prob be better off

            • merc@sh.itjust.works
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              1 month ago

              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.

          • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            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.

    • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        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.

      • TalkingFlower@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Still one of the best games with a story that subverts its own genre alongside KOTOR 2, definitely worth experiencing.

      • biofaust@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        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.

  • Jaberw0cky@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Then they shouldn’t allow US bases that get them embroiled in unprovoked conflicts.

  • sheetzoos@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Dubai had no problem using slaves to build the Burj Khalifa. Maybe they should have their slaves bring some food for their masters?

  • BilboBargains@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    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.

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    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.

    • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        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.