Back from Dubai: Iran’s air strikes will shape a different city to the one I visited a month ago

By Daniel Gayne2026-03-03T07:00:00

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The sight of smoke rising between skyscrapers has shaken one of the Gulf’s most stable hubs, where construction and real estate sectors have thrived on perceived insulation from conflict, writes Building’s reporter Daniel Gayne

In January this year, I took a short train from Tottenham to Stansted airport and got on a flight to Dubai.

The journey took me over a fistful of countries that have experienced violent sectarian conflicts within living memory and deposited me on a peninsula with a civil war raging at its southern tip and a well-armed but increasingly unstable nation across the narrow gulf to its north.

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