With the Strait of Hormuz turned into a virtual parking lot for cargo ships, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have created an emergency corridor with thousands of trucks hauling their loads across the Arabian desert from Gulf ports to the Red Sea.

Shipping companies, including MSC and Maersk, and Saudi mining giant Maaden have grown dependent on the improvised land bridge over the past three months since the Iran war practically shut down the Strait, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The regional disruption has also turned secondary ports into strategic hubs for Gulf logistics, with the UAE’s Khor Fakkan handling 50,000 containers a week compared with 2,000 before the conflict.

Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline and the UAE’s export hub in Fujairah are picking up some of the slack as neighboring states try to wean themselves from dependence on Hormuz, which carries a fifth of the world’s oil trade.

As the Gulf states have sought to knit their territories together with improved rail transportation, attention has also focused on rehabilitating Jordan’s old Hejaz train line, with Turkey, Syria and Israel proposing extensions to reach their Mediterranean ports. Emirati and Jordanian officials oversaw the signing of a $2.3 billion deal last month to build a 360-kilometer (224-mile) cargo train route reaching the Red Sea port in Aqaba.

The war is also forcing fundamental changes in the airline industry, with low-cost air travel close to becoming a thing of the past because of soaring fuel prices, the Financial Times reports.

Dubai’s ruling family is raising its stake in Emaar Properties, one of the UAE’s largest real estate developers and builder of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper.

Dubai Holding, which is under the direct control of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Ruler of Dubai and Vice President of the UAE, said in a stock exchange report today that it acquired a roughly 22.3% stake in Emaar – worth about $6.5 billion – from the Investment Corp. of Dubai.

While both entities are owned by the emirate, the deal shifts Emaar’s largest bloc of shares from the ICD sovereign wealth fund to the Dubai Holding conglomerate, which has broad interests in real estate, hotels and entertainment.

Emaar was founded almost 30 years ago by businessman Mohamed Alabbar, a close business associate of the emirate’s rulers.

Its logo adorns the top of more than a dozen downtown office towers surrounding its signature Burj Khalifa and Dubai Mall properties.

The deal comes as Dubai’s real estate prices have taken a dip amid two months of missile and drone attacks from Iran, some of which damaged buildings in the city center.

Jordan has signed a $1 billion agreement to build its first utility-scale green ammonia plant, as the kingdom pushes to establish itself as a regional hub for clean fuels and green hydrogen exports.

The project, led by Jordan Green Ammonia Co.,  a Polish-Emirati consortium backed by Dutch expertise, will use off-grid solar power with up to 550 megawatts of renewable generation capacity to produce 100,000 tonnes of green ammonia annually.

Located in Aqaba, the facility is expected to begin operations in 2030 and underscores the strategic importance of the Red Sea port as a gateway for exporting low-carbon energy products.

Officials said the development would cut more than 200,000 tonnes of carbon emissions a year while attracting foreign investment, advanced technology and skilled jobs to Jordan’s emerging green industrial sector.

Partners Capital, a London-based investment firm, has opened an office in Abu Dhabi and teamed up with a local business alliance to guide family-owned companies on improving their finances.

The firm, which has $75 billion under management and specializes in advising university endowments, foundations and family offices, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Abu Dhabi Family Business Council on Monday during a launch event at the St. Regis Abu Dhabi hotel. Among its clients are the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Guggenheim Foundation and New York’s Metropolitan Opera.

Partners Capital CEO Arjun Raghavan said in an interview with The Circuit that the firm decided to go ahead with opening the Abu Dhabi office despite concerns about regional instability stemming from the Iran war.

“The question is: should we hit the pause button given what’s happened?” Raghavan said. “And our view was, it doesn’t make any sense to pause. This is what we want to do long-term, and now is as good a time as any.”

Family-owned businesses dominate much of the UAE economy, controlling major interests in sectors including retail, real estate, logistics, banking and industry. In recent years, both Abu Dhabi and Dubai have seen an influx of family investment offices from abroad, drawn by low taxes, light regulation and access to large pools of Gulf money.

Welcoming the investment firm on behalf of the government was Zaki Nusseibeh, Cultural Advisor to President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed and Chancellor of UAE University, who said the country is focused on supporting private businesses as it pushes to diversify the economy beyond oil.

“It is the private sector that will be driving growth from now on,” Nusseibeh said.

Dubai is courting Cartier as it looks for ways to enhance its luxury sector amid headwinds from ongoing regional conflict.

That was evident in the enthusiastic reception Louis Ferla, CEO of the luxury French jewelry brand, received when he visited Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed, UAE Minister of Finance and Deputy Ruler of Dubai, on Saturday.

“Innovation and design are essential to enhancing the competitiveness of Dubai’s luxury retail sector and developing shopping experiences that meet the aspirations of its residents and visitors from around the world,” Sheikh Maktoum said in an X post.

Dubai’s zeal for luxury brands has taken a hit from the Iran war, which has dampened consumer confidence and dramatically slashed tourism.

Cartier’s most recognizable piece, the minimalist “Love” bracelet that starts at more than $5,000, is a regular feature on the wrists of wealthy Gulf nationals and expats.

Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser says no one should expect the oil market to rebound anytime soon. After the loss of 1 billion barrels with the near shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, the vulnerability of global energy supplies is clear.

“The market will not rebalance overnight,” Nasser said Sunday, adding that any opening of Gulf shipping lanes will take time to make a substantial difference.

Prospects are dim even though Aramco reported a 26% jump in first-quarter net income to $33.6 billion, driven by higher crude prices as traders scrambled to price in war risk and supply shortages across the Gulf, Reuters reports.

Aramco has been rerouting exports through its East-West Pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu to bypass Hormuz, helping Saudi Arabia keep oil flowing while attacks and shipping restrictions disrupted normal Gulf traffic.

The outlook for oil prices is hazier with the UAE’s pullout from OPEC after years of friction with Saudi Arabia and other producers over the enforcement of supply quotas to keep prices up.

DP World, the Dubai-owned port operator that handles 10% of all global container traffic, is introducing a war-risk insurance plan aimed at companies suffering cargo losses connected to the Iran conflict.

With some 1,500 vessels immobilized by the two-month-old blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, DP World’s insurance plan will offer as much as $400 million per shipment, according to the state-run Emirates News Agency.

Policies, which cover shipping, air freight and trucking routes, also apply to the Red Sea, which has periodically been blocked by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

Meanwhile, UAE’s national oil company ADNOC has kept some LNG exports moving through the strait by going dark – instructing tankers to switch off their tracking signals so they pass undetected through the Gulf waters, Bloomberg reports.

As the Gulf states have managed to transport petroleum and gas overland across the Arabian Peninsula to reach foreign ports, Iran has also been shifting more trade with China onto rail lines to get around a U.S. counter-blockade on its shipping routes, according to Bloomberg. 

G42, the UAE’s government-backed artificial intelligence company, is moving forward with expansion plans in the U.S. by opening a new data center in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.

A unit of the Abu Dhabi-based firm, Core42, leased space in a converted office tower in the Midwest city that is being redeveloped into an AI data center, as it seeks a bigger foothold in the U.S. market amid surging demand for high-speed computing, Bloomberg reports.

The Minnesota project is part of the strategy pursued by G42 Chairman Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the UAE’s National Security Advisor, to turn the company into a global AI leader through partnerships with U.S. technology firms, including Microsoft and OpenAI.

G42, which is also operating in California, Texas and New York, announced in February that it’s leading a $1 billion project in Vietnam to build data centers and provide cloud computing services.

At the Milken Institute’s Global Conference 2026 in Los Angeles this week, Mubadala Deputy Group CEO Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi said that disruptions from the ongoing conflict with Iran won’t stop the sovereign wealth fund – which holds a minority stake in G42 – from increasing its investments in the U.S.