wsj and NY Times are both $2/month.
Here's another good article. The pictures are nuts.Will Bailey couldn’t wait to get back to Dubai.
The 26-year-old fitness coach and influencer from Manchester, England, was preparing to launch a new business in the city and had posted a series of videos on social media showing him packing his suitcase and explaining how a tan would show off his abs.
His first night wasn’t quite what he expected.
“Oh my days, over the beach club. It’s f— mental,” he said into his phone as the city’s air defenses tried to take out an Iranian attack, while dance music pulsed from the bar where he was partying. Bailey pointed his camera at a column of smoke rising from a nearby building. “That is the Fairmont Hotel in Dubai. Oh my God.”
The emirate is now home to some 240,000 Britons, including Will Bailey. Will Bailey
Many of Bailey’s 630,000 followers praised his updates for capturing the mood of the city since it came under missile and drone fire from Iran, in response to strikes by Israel and the U.S. But others seemed to relish the predicament now facing Bailey and tens of thousands of fellow Britons residing in what many saw as a responsibility-free playground.
“You choose to live in Dubai mate, you’re not getting sympathy,” said Lorna Wolski, who works in corporate sales. “The U.K. government should charge you all a re-entry tax,” said another.
For more than two decades, Dubai has sold itself as an expat paradise, a global crossroads between East and West known for its low taxes, high salaries and luxury lifestyle. More recently, it has also emerged as a premier destination for U.K. residents in search of a sunny, uncomplicated alternative to modern Britain.
The emirate, now home to some 240,000 Britons, represented a place to start afresh, far from the rising costs, political upheavals and overbearing class system back home. It also became a magnet for entrepreneurs in the engagement economy spawned by reality TV shows such as “The Only Way Is Essex” and “Love Island.” British influencers are now among its loudest and most visible residents.
That hasn’t won them much sympathy from their compatriots. Growing numbers of critics are questioning whether the British government should include all expats and influencers in any potential evacuation of the thousands of tourists and travelers currently stuck there.
In the Houses of Parliament, Ed Davey, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrat Party, asked Prime Minister Keir Starmer whether “washed-up old footballers” and anyone else who had gone to Dubai to escape His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs should start contributing to the upkeep of Britain’s armed forces if they wished to board a government-financed flight out.
Starmer demurred, saying all British citizens were entitled to the same help regardless of their tax status. Unlike the U.S., the U.K. generally taxes people only on what they earn while residing in their home country.
Some celebrities rushed to defend the expats caught up in the widening conflict.
Duncan Bannatyne, an entrepreneur who once starred in the U.K. version of “Shark Tank,” said Britons who had begun new lives in Dubai were made of stern stuff and wouldn’t be easily panicked into going home.
“Not one Dubai resident has expressed a desire to leave as far as I know,” he posted on X. “The British who need to vacate are on holiday or on business in Dubai.”
Still, there is plenty of concern among the British community.
“Been a different week for me, not going to lie,” said Rio Ferdinand, a former Manchester United and England soccer star who moved to Dubai with his family last year for, among other things, the perceived lack of crime. “You want to try and remain calm and keep everybody as calm as possible.”
Former football player Rio Ferdinand speaking at the Globe Soccer Dubai Awards 2024.
Former soccer star Rio Ferdinand at Globe Soccer Dubai Awards 2024. Waleed Zein/Anadolu/Getty Images
“It is such a scary time right here at the moment,” said Arabella Chi, who rose to fame as a contestant on “Love Island.”
Bailey, meanwhile, continued posting videos as the crisis evolved and praised the United Arab Emirates for keeping people safe and informed.
After the initial wave of attacks, he fetched his passport and clothes and moved with friends to a house away from the main tourist sites. There he began posting periodic updates as the situation unfolded, often while shirtless.
British news networks such as the BBC and Sky News soon noticed and booked him to appear. One interview with talk-radio show “LBC” was interrupted when air defenses intercepted another Iranian attack with an audible thud. Bailey appeared on edge.
“There are a lot of people in Dubai who are not taking it as seriously as some others,” he said. “I’m shaking now just hearing that sound.”
Not that Bailey had entirely left behind the British way of life in Dubai. The day after the first attack, he and his friends enjoyed a traditional roast beef dinner between airstrikes.
“It is Sunday after all,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/worl ... uwait.html
A high-rise residential tower in Bahrain. A five-star hotel in Dubai. An oil refinery in Saudi Arabia.
Five days into war, Iran has suffered the greatest destruction and loss of life by far. At the same time, people in the Middle East who worried that the fighting might not be contained to Iran and Israel are getting grim confirmation from the images emerging from the Middle East in the days since the United States and Israel began their attack.
As expected, the missile and drones Iran launched in retaliation targeted both Israel and U.S. military bases in the region — but the destruction did not end there. The barrage has left a trail of damage across the Middle East, touching cities that were left mostly unscathed in past regional conflicts, according to a New York Times analysis of satellite imagery and dozens of verified videos posted online.
None of Tehran’s actions have caused the scale of damage and loss of life that have occurred within Iran. But the attacks have shaken the image Gulf nations have built as economic hubs insulated from the tensions of the region.
In Bahrain, verified footage shows the moment a drone slammed into the upper floors of a high-rise residential tower in Manama, igniting a large fire visible across the city’s skyline.
In Dubai, drones hit some of the city’s densely packed residential areas. Videos captured the moment one hit an apartment on the top floor of a residential complex, though no explosion could be seen. At an apartment complex in Dubai’s Al Wasl district, footage shows a large fire and a plume of black smoke in the garden area.
Footage shows an Iranian drone striking the ground near the five-star Fairmont on Dubai’s man-made Palm Jumeirah island, causing a large explosion. The hotel said in a statement that four people in a car park near the hotel had been injured. Other footage shows a fire on the outside of the Burj Al Arab hotel after it was hit by falling debris from an interception.
In Bahrain, home to a major U.S. naval base, video shows a large plume of smoke outside the Crowne Plaza hotel in Manama, and photographs taken later showed structural damage to the building’s facade, including rows of broken windows.
In Kuwait, videos show damage to the inside of the terminal building at the international airport after it was struck by a drone, according to a spokesperson for the civil aviation authority.
At Dubai International Airport, where a strike injured four people, a dark plume of smoke was seen rising.
Bahrain International Airport was also struck, according to the country’s interior ministry.
Amazon’s cloud computing business said two of its facilities in the United Arab Emirates had been struck by drones and remained “significantly impaired” as of Tuesday morning. A drone also landed close to one of its facilities in Bahrain, damaging the site.
In Jordan, a large munition was filmed burning in the middle of Al Hashemi Street, a busy shopping area of Irbid. In the United Arab Emirates, satellite imagery captured smoke billowing from an industrial area in Sharjah, while videos show a fire at warehouses in an industrial area of Doha in Qatar.
It was unclear what was targeted in the strikes.
On Monday, Iran ratcheted up its military campaign by striking Gulf energy infrastructure and forcing the closure of key production facilities.
In Saudi Arabia, the energy ministry said that a fire had broken out at the Ras Tanura oil refinery, one of the largest crude oil terminals in the world, after fragments of two intercepted Iranian drones fell. Video verified by The New York Times showed a large fire at the facility. Debris also fell on the Kuwait National Petroleum Company, injuring two workers, according to a spokesperson.
In the United Arab Emirates, a fire broke out on Tuesday at a major energy hub in Fujairah, from the falling debris of a downed drone, the authorities said.
