Ziad Daoud Explains How War with Iran Will Reshape the Gulf

What It Covers

Bloomberg Economics chief emerging markets economist Ziad Daoud analyzes how the February 2026 Israel-Iran war reshapes the Gulf region across four dimensions: energy infrastructure vulnerability, petrodollar capital outflows, the US security umbrella's credibility, and the long-term viability of Gulf city-states like Dubai as stable wealth havens.

Key Questions Answered

• •Strait of Hormuz dependency: The war exposed that nearly all Gulf energy exports flow through one chokepoint. Saudi Arabia and UAE, which built alternative pipelines to the Red Sea and Fujairah respectively, now earn more despite exporting 30% less oil, because prices rose proportionally more — a direct return on decades-old infrastructure investment decisions.
• •Petrodollar outflow reduction: Gulf sovereign wealth flows into global markets will decline as defense spending rises to replenish depleted missile systems and rebuild damaged infrastructure. Bloomberg Economics previously estimated Gulf petrodollar recycling suppressed US long-term interest rates by roughly 25 basis points — a reduction in these flows carries measurable consequences for US Treasury markets.
• •US security umbrella limitations: The US military equipment, including advanced missile defense systems, intercepted the majority of drone and missile attacks on Gulf infrastructure. However, the political dimension failed — Trump prioritized Israeli security preferences over Gulf leaders who had pledged trillions in US investments, hosted his first foreign trip, and accelerated OPEC+ output increases.
• •Gulf economic diversification collision: All six GCC states pursued identical diversification strategies — petrochemicals, financial centers, tourism, logistics, AI data centers — simultaneously within the same time zone and geography. The region likely cannot sustain multiple mega-airports, mega-ports, and financial centers concurrently, creating structural cannibalization that the war now accelerates by diverting capital toward defense and reconstruction.
• •Kuwait precedent for long-term scarring: Kuwait's 1990 Iraqi invasion caused leadership to redirect domestic investment abroad for decades, producing infrastructure deterioration visible today as power cuts in one of the world's wealthiest per-capita oil states. Gulf states facing the current war risk a similar multi-decade reallocation away from domestic development toward external security and foreign asset accumulation.