Tag: israel

Ceasefire Mid-point

It’s a strange period now. Everything is back to normal but there’s these looming threats in the background. The idea that all of this can come crashing back down because the Americans and Iranians don’t come to an agreement makes you feel a bit helpless but at the same time, the sheer volume of people in the country after the ceasefire shows a strong and robust economy still existent waiting for the all-clear from the powers that be. There’s a quiet before a maybe-storm and even if that storm came, what could it look like?

My general feeling is that we won’t be going back to armed conflict and even if we were, it would be for a short while. And my initial feeling from wartime that Israel has weakened itself severely still stands; They’re not doing okay and public sentiment for Netanyahu, and Israel in general, is really bad. Open letters of insult in the open with a Hitler comparison for good measure, genuine calls to investigate arms exports, and the use of the word apartheid by Arab foreign ministries. When a selfish leader goes to untold lengths to preserve himself at the cost of Country, I guess this is what it looks like. It’s also impressive that it did not take that long for any initial pretense about what this war was about, and what it was for, to trickle down to simple worldly quarrels like reopening the Strait, reparations, and nukes. It’s so sad to see that all of this truly has been for nothing. And I don’t think people realize how staggering that is. Russia and Ukraine have something to fight over. Something tangible and real. Gains and losses can be reflected in the battlefield. But the US-Israel-Iran war? Absolutely nothing. What shame. What a strategic disaster. Anyway.

The Gaza ceasefire recently went into phase 2 and while there hasn’t been been a big change in the status quo yet, I expect that any halting or reduction of the Lebanon front for the Israelis will make them shift to Gaza once again and I’m not sure that that whole thing will turn out well politically or militarily just based on the present realities. There’s been a lot of moves with respect to Gaza, including the Board of Peace and plans to rebuild the strip and a new yellow line demarcating Israeli influence within the strip from Palestinian civil life. All of this sounds like the winner drawing out his plans and reaping the rewards of war, but there’s something important here that’s hard to explain: The winners are not winning properly. There’s no elegance to how all of this is being architected. There’s no Treaty of Jerusalem, Palestinian Right Watch, National Handover Assembly, and crucially, the ceasefire is not technically over. The weapons have not been dropped. I think where we are today can be more clearly seen mirrored by the Iranian ceasefire: America must make concessions and it simply does not feel like it needs to, and does not know how to. And that makes sense. If I lived my whole life having my cake, and eating it too, and watched generations of this behavior pass me by, I’d be a bit jaded by the changing world and feel surprised that these new guys are showing me up. And with what? Drones and stones? I’m the best! How dare you challenge me? It’s all just so messy. Politics at the high level must reflect reality. If it doesn’t, you end up in this worsening situation.

I will say, though, for the Israelis, this 40-ish-day war cost them $11 billion. That seems impressively low, suggesting that the real depletion was happening on the American side, further explaining the need for a ceasefire and why I don’t think longer armed conflict can be sustained. But for the Israelis, I wonder at what point will the soldiers say that they’re tired. All people have limits and your limits are a reflection of the life you lived. And the Israelis live good lives. With wartime slowly stretching into the third year, maybe money won’t be the key issue. It might just be morale and the army looking at its leadership and saying, “we need to wind this down. We’re tired.”

And for the Strait of Hormuz, now we have a blockade blockading a blockade. In real terms, this just means stationing some ships in a line and waiting, which is militarily cheap and easy to do. There’s no real strategy here other than delaying income for a lot of Hormuz-dependent industry. For me, as long as this doesn’t cross into more months of inaction, I see this as more damaging to Iran than the Americans and it is a surprisingly good idea, except for a small not-so-small thing. 

There’s an important question: What if the Chinese want to pass this new American blockade? Are they going to stop them? The whole reason Japan bombed Peal Harbor was because of a naval blockade on their energy imports. Seems like history loves repeating itself with stories like these.

With that being said, I think China is level-headed. And I think they will council Iran to accept a peace deal at a heavy cost, promising that this long game will eventually put them on top. China cannot lose the access to natural resources if they are on the precipice of conflict. And if they aspire to be a global power, this is their time to flex these muscles and find a way to put middle powers in their place to benefit themselves while also keeping the peace and earning goodwill of millions of people. I imagine this is all humiliating for the Iranians, but it’s a smaller humiliation. 

So, back to the question, if the Chinese want to pass the American blockade, what will happen? Probably not much. A few days’ delays in their energy supply until it opens up again. There might be a change to how things are done in the Strait via Iran, maybe some currency swaps and tolls in place, maybe not. But these guys have to figure things out. The way things are going, Iran can either benefit from the growing tensions in the East, or die fighting a precursor war to a larger war that they won’t have influence in. It’s smarter to realize that this war is moving East and to play the diplomatic game when that time comes.

Iran has not said a single thing about this fight being for Palestine, a gross miscalculation of propaganda. If anyone had any hope that the Iranians were fighting for Palestinian rights, we can put that to rest now. Their game of control over key trade routes and expansionist aspirations for profit have been revealed. Not a good look and it should probably lead to further dwindling of Arab support for their military and political activities.

My final concern regarding the Strait is about global shipping. The American and European media outlets love reducing my existence to a barrel of oil but the Arabian peninsula, whether by land, air, or sea, has been the global shipping and transit hub for generations. Closing off the key chokepoints are already jeopardizing this status and the further that it is closed, the more the shipping routes will shift their transit hubs elsewhere. This would be… Not great. Like at all. So I hope that cool heads prevail for a while until whatever next war happens next.  

There was a joke I heard by a Twitch streamer that if America blockades the strait then China could just blockade the blockade of the blockade. Given the way this year is going, it would be miserably funny for that to happen.

That’s most of where I am now in my thinking on the war side.

Life-wise, things seem mostly okay. Business is still moving and while the pace is reduced in some areas, I’ve been largely impressed and I’m feeling patient and hopeful. I found myself having to exert a lot of calm on my colleagues during the war and the misinformation available online continues to lead to people feeling nervous and I must continue reassuring everyone. There’s a lot of junk content. Even with regard to the scale of actions being taken, the media makes everything seem so large when it’s effectively small. And at work, I do prefer a quiet approach so having to sit and talk and keep morale high is a bit draining on me and keeps me in the negative news loop, which, really, I’m not in the mood for anymore.

When the conflict was active, a lot of people were talking about working from home and school from home and all this stuff. I didn’t like that. My perspective is simple: If we stay home, the enemy wins. If the government says it’s relatively safe, we have to go to work. We keep going until it isn’t safe. If anything, this is the most important time to work. It is the government’s responsibility to keep us safe and tell us whether an area is safe or not and, needless to say, the UAE government did a great job at that. So if the conflict restarts, I’ll still say the same thing: We have to go to work. I know in some cases, it’s easier said than done, especially in the targeted financial centers and the large economic anchors like the oil and gas fields and aluminum plants, but creating economic flow isn’t about making money for the top dog. It becomes about maintaining the city and the life within it. It becomes about showing up for each other and talking to one another and socializing and seeing people’s faces. It is a form of resilience and defiance in the face of aggression. And the negative news loop hits hardest when you’re at home so I’d very much like to avoid that.

I’m sure some people saw the Iranians shopping in broad daylight for Nowruz during the war. And given the scale of the aggression on them, I imagine onlookers were impressed. We must, and will, be better.

MOD/MOI: Thank You For Your Cooperation

“I wonder if that could have been me.” It’s the darkest thought I’ve had anxiously driving past a destroyed car to work. I don’t even know if the car just burned randomly or if missile debris had fallen on it or if it had been targeted.

I’ve moved a lot through my country. I’ve seen all parts of it and it’s difficult to go anywhere without a memory. The UAE is home for people without a home. For someone like me, I can’t find a place on Earth that hasn’t made me yearn to come back after about a week. And for anyone that’s been here over 10 years, the prospect of going back to their country is probably impossible. There is no spot unclean, no restaurant not tasty, no service too convenient, and no person unwelcoming in this country.

For all its flashiness, what I love about my country is that it’s humble. The tallest tower in the world does not hide a crumbling economy under its surface. It hides one of the strongest and most well-considered economies per capita in the world. The tax-haven status does not hide a system that is relying on theft and corruption, it reveals that there is a better system: the Arabic system. And the UAE makes the ultimate case for Arab and global cohesion, the ultimate case for unity, the ultimate case for one strong unifying currency, and the ultimate case for kindness and truth in a world that has revealed itself to be greedy, corrupt, radical, violent, and dishonest.

This war is revealing just how much the world outside lies to all of its separated populations. It has revealed that we live at the mercy of monsters. It has revealed that things can definitely, and should be, much better than they are. And it’s probably best seen from our vantage point here.

I first want to preface and say, that I believe the biggest motivator for this violence is religion. Arabs and Muslims, more than any other people, can very easily identify radical religious rhetoric and motivation. The red heifer rearing, the closure of Al Aqsa, the Amalek invocations, the establishment of the promised biblical land, and on they continue. These actions do not serve anyone. And I can make the case for this in multiple ways.

But most importantly, I do not mean to suggest that the reasons for this war are purposefully religious. Merely, that politicians have found themselves increasingly surrounded by people who wish to make strange prophecies come true and since they have perceived that this is how they can stay in power, then stay in power they have. Israel was a country that was plunged into bureaucratic deadlock for 4 years before it eventually emerged with a government that advocated for nothing less than pure unadulterated biblical war. Its government system is well-suited to this sort of deadlock and allows the people in power to maintain their power so long as they have the danger of annihilation holding the facade together.

Recall, Israel’s benefit did not come at its own hand. It was happy to play the long game and allow the course of decades to play out as its Arabic neighbors were weakened through American intervention with little direct intervention from Israel outside the green line borders. Iran would have had regime change without this conflict and that was clearly evidenced by the January protests in 2026. A war was simply not needed and a more classic CIA-sponsored approach might have done the trick. But today, Israel is waging war directly hand-in-hand with America, revealing the writer conspiring in his own favor and recoloring the history that we have collectively experienced in the background over the last two and a half decades. For what end? I genuinely cannot find any reason other than religion.

There are, effectively, three groups that are interested in the religious aspect of Israel’s fall. And faith is a dangerous tool here because, in my opinion, all three faiths are being hijacked. Jewish communities are defying God by forcing their existence in biblical territory to bring back the Messiah even though it is the Messiah that will supposedly lead the believers back to biblical land. This is a fundamental contradiction. In service of this contradiction, there is a colonial motivation to seize the lands of Greater Israel.

Evangelical Christians are interested in the same story, except that they believe that the Messiah that appears will be a false Messiah that will be defeated by the second coming of Jesus of Nazareth. Muslims, interestingly, sort of agree with the Christians with the addition of a Mahdi character but all of this flies in the face of a Quranic verse that explicitly mentions that Jesus has passed away (متوفي). Put another way, he’s dead as far as the Quran is concerned. The only true prophecy from the Islamic word of God is the prophecy of Gog and Magog. And even then, the instructions don’t really involve much fighting.

Faced with corruption, you should try to remove yourself from said corruption and if it overwhelms you in the form of turmoil, you should physically distance yourself from it. All this advice is very practical and emphasizes the idea that if you have faith, these sorts of issues will sort themselves out. So… in God we trust, I guess. I realize this is a very strange thing to think, let alone read. But it definitely makes the most sense. A prophecy that favors and singles out Jesus has always felt strange since Islam deemphasizes its own final prophet in the favor of focusing on direct commands and revelations from God. But I believe that many years of Hadith study have allowed contradictions between what is passed down through God and through man to coexist even though we should definitely disregard these contradictions and arrive at the simplest possible understanding of God’s intention.

All of this is to say: We have been played, ladies and gentlemen. The Bene Gesserit have successfully hijacked the Fremen religion, making us all wait for Timothee Chalamet to save us, and our world of Arakkis is being colonized and fought over by the Imperium. Think about it. Anyway:

Moving on from the insane fundamentals of the war, as I perceive them, we come to Israel itself. If it was 2022 and we were fresh out of COVID and we looked at the map, Israel was basically number one. Their military strength and economic prowess and possession of nukes basically meant that you couldn’t really challenge them. They’re also culturally brutal, perfectly capable of and willing to subject an entire city to destruction, famine, and isolation. They also engage in apartheid governance. All of this is factual, it is true, and unfortunately, it shows strength and resolve.

There were theories for as long as I’ve lived that placed Israel’s downfall before it turned 80 years old, arguing that a concentrated Jewish population or Bani Israel population cannot last more than 2 generations, predicting their fall by 2027 or 2028. For all intents and purposes, these prophecies were going to prove themselves false if we all just kept to ourselves for 5 years after 2022. And of course, this is not how things have gone.

For whatever bizarre reason, the State seems to be intent on doing to itself what happened in South Africa when it had its own apartheid regime to contend with and, like South Africa, Israel has nukes that don’t serve a geopolitically sound purpose. If Israel has nukes to scare off the Palestinians, then any use of those nukes would be effective suicide. Any use of those nukes to harm a regional adversary, on the other hand, and Israel might as well unsubscribe from the planet. Coupled with a bureaucracy that now requires war to exist and we’ve arrived now at the current status quo that a forever war must be sustained in order to keep Israel in power and this now requires the destruction of Iran, another Zionist country that thinks they harbor the Mahdi and will bring about the new age of prosperity through death and destruction.

What a stupid farce to be dragged into. 

Note: In my opinion, Zionism is any political movement that is trying to bring about promised eschatology of any kind in Arabia. This is because all eschatologies converge and are interlinked. And thus, any country that is not defending itself and is actively seeking to blow shit up is Zionist. This is my definition, it is a definition I like, and it is a reality that is clearly wrecking the region and eventually the planet.

Finally, Iran. The logic of destroying GCC countries as punishment for what Israel and America are doing to them shows that they do not understand anything that I have just said. They are idiots that are losing the support of the world on their way to disaster. And I, alongside many, don’t understand why it’s all worth losing the benefit that Dubai provides and has provided for many years. And yes, by my broader definition, whether knowingly or unknowingly, they are engaging in Zionism. It is strange to find ourselves here but our once geopolitical nuisance has rebranded itself into our enemy.

The enemy cannot win and we will not submit to them.

There is another layer to all of this: The layer of Sunni and Shia conflict that has ravaged this region for the last four decades, maybe longer. This is the conflict that should not exist. We make fun of other religions for being “changed” and “hijacked.” But we are one and the same. Islam, the One True Religion, has been separated into 77 different sects and sub-beliefs. And it is within these sub-beliefs that we have been able to reconcile a religion about giving in to God with eschatology that rivals the other two Abrahamic faiths. It’s not clear how damaging this is on an individual level but when you have millions of people who are anxiously rooting for God to save them and who think destruction justifies this end, you arrive at the logical conclusion: This situation.

And with all of the above said, I must say that I am extremely impressed by Emirati policy because it is smart. Emirati policy seems to be to ignore all this crap until it passes by or responding in kind if it really goes too far. Emirati policy seems to understand South African history and might know that while there is no destroying of Israel, there will definitely be a weakening of it. You can work with that. Emirati policy understands that no one is going to come and help you, stand with you, or fight with you, if you are not a force to be reckoned with, a political player, and a reliable and stable nation capable of protecting people, assets, and forwarding your partners’ interests, as agreed. And Emirati policy rejects radicalism in all its forms. And the UAE is going to succeed because it is now in the strongest position in Arabia. Its ports companies manage the world’s ports. Its airlines move the world. Its energy powers Asia. Its financial interests are paid by the West. And it is enemies with nobody, weak or strong, and it welcomes all faiths. The way this war is playing out for the UAE, I have renewed faith in my country, renewed faith in its institutions, and an assurance that when all of this is over, the biggest winner will once again be, like many other wars around the world before it, the UAE.

“Thank you for your cooperation. We reassure you that the situation is currently safe. You may resume your normal activities while continuing to remain cautious and take the necessary precautions, and to following official instructions.”

And these are all my thoughts so far.

Long live the UAE. Long live the Union. Long live the rulers. Long live the people. 

May this desert’s well never run dry.