Why has Dubai become Iran's top target? Here's what investors in the Middle East think

The Dubai Stock Market (DFM) index jumped 8.5% at the open on Wednesday on news of a truce between the US and Iran. The UAE has suffered the heaviest bombardment from Tehran during the war in the Middle East - even Iran has fired fewer missiles and drones at Israel. Movchan's Group senior partner Elena Chirkova publishes a version of why on her Facebook page.

We have investments in funds operating in the Middle East. We have two in our equity fund and one in our more conservative fund, which invests mainly in debt instruments. One equity fund is managed from London and the other two by the same manager that runs some of the Emirates sovereign money. The second two we spoke to today. They put forward a very interesting version of why Iran was targeting the UAE the most. According to their information, more missiles have been fired at the UAE than at Israel.

According to their version, a mess in Iraq or missiles against Israel would not surprise anyone, and they would not hold the attention of the world media for long. Iran had to bomb some very famous and rich country, a cool and rich city. And that's Dubai. It actually got and held the world media's attention, so Iran got their way. So in their view, it's not about whether the UAE has military bases or not.

This idea seems very sensible to me, and I think I would agree. I haven't seen it expressed elsewhere before.

By the way, if anyone is interested, they have already started picking up the fallen developers. Both debt and shares. But not all of them, they say that there are some very stable ones that will pay off their debts, and the yield on bonds to maturity is high.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor