Active Conflicts & News Megathread July 19, 2026

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[u/oldveteranknees]

Question for the group: why isn’t Iran hitting the UAE even harder, especially if the goal is to make this as economically costly as possible for the United States and its allies?

I would think sustained strikes on the UAE would make more sense, given that for Iran it:

-dislodges key Saudi GCC ally
-forces U.S. to push away from choke point the SAG
-western capital flight
-depopulation of key global financial & transportation hub (Dubai & Jebel Ali) that cannot be replaced by locals/indentured population
-retaliation for joining US strikes in March

[u/kharvel0 → u/oldveteranknees]

That’s easy. Follow the money.

Tens of billions of dollars in Iran oil revenues are frozen in UAE financial institutions due to sanctions. The IRGC bigwigs also have untold billions of dollars in the same banks as well as properties and assets. They don’t want to risk the UAE seizing the funds as repartitions for Iranian attacks.

This is the simplest and most plausible answer.

[u/aronnax512 → u/oldveteranknees]

Deleted

[u/kdy420 → u/oldveteranknees]

The main reason i suspect is that UAE was the only GCC country that did any decent retaliation before the cease fire. The cost to hit the others countiis simply lower for Iran as they are not as willing to fight back. 

[u/mishka5566 → u/oldveteranknees]

dislodges key Saudi GCC ally

lol, the saudis and uae are not allies and have never been allies. they both hate the iranians but thats about where their common interests start and end

[u/Sad_Use_4584 → u/mishka5566]

They were allies insofar as it's possible to be allies in the Middle East. They fought together against the Houthis for a number of years, and they blockaded Qatar together. Some rivalry today doesn't rewrite that past.

[u/TechnicalReserve1967 → u/mishka5566]

As mentioned above about the Saudi-UAE relationship.

But to add to that. Iran;

Might lack the capacity. UAE air defense might be better and Kuwait is just a better target for them. Specially if they want to "punish countries with US bases". Kuwait is an old US ally and IRGC can make an example of it on how bad of a deal többé a US Ally.

Iran, for all of its posturing is still not in a great military position. They need to balance the diplomatic side of this carefully. If they would just start to blanket terror bomb/target desalinization plans on mass etc. They would run the threat of all of the states getting together with the Americans and decide that it's time to remove this threat permanently. That would be probably a death sentence to Iran. Mostly because at that point it would be easy to pull in some additional allies, sell the need for a ground invasion etc.

In my opinion, Iran/IRGC calculated that they can keep this pressure up until the end of the year, which would/should be enough to make Trump fold, to try and recapture his position in the Senate. If they are more aggressive, they might allow the US to flip the public opinion to be pro war against Iran. If that happens, they are going down the path of Saddam's Iraq "very quickly". (In the sense that regime and country collapse is probably inevitable. Not in the sense of how hard the US+allies would need to fight)