Iran struck the world-famous Fairmont hotel in Dubai, setting the hotel alight, as the war launched by the US and Israel on Iran quickly spread to the rest of the Middle East on Saturday.
Residents watched in shock as an Iranian missile hit the five-star hotel in Dubai’s luxurious Palm Jumeirah area. Social media videos showed fires breaking out near the entrance of the hotel, which led to four people being injured.
One resident said that “everyone is very scared” as the situation in Dubai continued to deteriorate.
“There is footage of missile interceptions all over the city,” they said. “I am packing a suitcase just in case … not that we can leave, because airspace is closed. It is the thing we have all been frightened about happening, and now it has.”
Elsewhere in the Gulf, previously considered oases of stability in the Middle East, similar scenes unfolded.
Within hours of the first US and Israeli bombs being launched, Iran responded with a wide-ranging attack targeting more than six countries, pulling in places that had been previously untouched by the escalating crisis.
In Bahrain, an Iranian drone flew into a high-rise building in what looked like a targeted attack, exploding and engulfing the skyscraper in flames. Earlier, the country’s national security agency was also struck by an Iranian missile.
Social media footage also appeared to show a missile hitting the huge US naval base in Bahrain. In Kuwait, a drone crashed into the country’s main airport, wounding several employees and damaging the facility.
As Iran responded to US and Israeli strikes by bombing the Gulf and Israel, its proxies joined the fray. Bases belonging to the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq were struck by either the US or Israel, killing at least two members of the armed Iraqi group Kataib Hezbollah.
The Iran-backed groups responded by coming to its aid, with Kataib Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis both warning they would be joining strikes on US military bases across the region.
Just a few hours into what Washington was calling Operation Epic Fury, fighting had already expanded far beyond the geographic scope of the previous war in Iran in June 2025, which was almost entirely confined to Israel and Iran.
For citizens in the Middle East, the escalating war prompted anxiety and concern.
In Lebanon, gas stations across the country had lines 10 cars deep within an hour of the strikes. People in Beirut airport watched as commercial flights were cancelled, and grocery stores were filled with the more cautious stocking up on essential goods – the memory of the 2024 war with Israel fresh in their minds.
All eyes were on Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group that previously said the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a red line.
A statement from the group on Saturday afternoon made no mention of whether it would help its chief patron, Iran, but instead condemned what it described as a violation of the UN charter by the US and Israel.
Many Lebanese dreaded the entry of Hezbollah into the ongoing conflict, fearful of triggering a response from Israel, which has signalled through diplomatic channels that it would unleash a wide-ranging attack against Lebanon in the case of Hezbollah’s involvement.
Explosions rocked the rest of the Middle East as Israel intercepted incoming Iranian ballistic missiles above other countries. In Jordan, fires blazed in the northern city of Irbid as missile shrapnel fell from the sky and caught alight.
The attacks drew condemnation from Arab states around the region for what they called a violation of their sovereignty by Iran. Qatar called the Iranian strikes on its territory a “direct assault on national security”, while it and other Gulf states warned they have the right to respond.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview with NBC that he told Gulf states “we have no intention to attack them but we are actually attacking the American bases in the act of self-defence”.
Attacking the Gulf states was a line Iran did not cross in past rounds of conflict, with rare attacks on oil infrastructure remaining unclaimed.
Gulf states had previously tried to prevent the Trump administration from attacking Iran, fearful of blowback and unintended consequences destabilising the country of 93 million.
Imposing material costs on Gulf states, stable kingdoms unused to wars in their back yards, could be to get the monarchies to put pressure on Trump to halt the bombing campaign.
Some of the ruling families, such as the al-Thani family in Qatar and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman, have close relationships with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who has a heavy hand in shaping the president’s Middle East policy.
Conversely, some analysts warned targeting the Gulf kingdoms could backfire, alienating voices that were previously lobbying the US to reconsider its military campaign on Iran.
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