Iran Attacks Dubai in Renewed Hostilities, Hits Oil Facility: Ceasefire ‘Effectively Broken’

Iran launched attacks on the United Arab Emirates on Monday, with several missile volleys aimed at Dubai and energy infrastructure in the country — including a successful strike on the latter, resulting in a fire.

MS NOW anchor Ana Cabrera broke the news live on air, noting “missile alerts went out in the United Arab Emirates for the first time since the ceasefire began. The Defense Ministry says missiles were fired from Iran and three were intercepted.”

“This as President Trump’s new efforts to guide stranded ships through the Strait of Hormuz are underway with Iran promising an aggressive response. US Central Command says two US-flagged merchant vessels successfully got through the strait. The US denies Iran’s claim that it struck a US destroyer trying to enter the straits. Let’s get right to MS NOW contributor Inzamam Rashid in Dubai, MS NOW senior national security reporter David Rode, and Hagar Shamali, former spokesperson for the U.S. Mission to the UN and Syria and Lebanon director for the National Security Council under former President Obama. Inzamam, what is the latest on these missile alerts?” Cabrera asked, turning to Rashid who declared the fragile ceasefire “effectively broken” after this latest round of attacks.

“Well, we’ve had around three alerts so far in Dubai today. These are the first alerts on our mobile phones that Iranian drones and missiles are incoming since the 8th of April, since that ceasefire kicked in. Ever since then, it’s been fairly quiet and the ceasefire has held up until today because now we’ve seen fighting on the Strait of Hormuz, but it’s not just on water,” Rashid replied, adding:

We’re now seeing actual Iranian attacks on land once again, and particularly here in the UAE. So what the Ministry of Defense has said is that there were four loitering munitions coming from Iran towards the country that were detected. Three of the missiles were successfully intercepted over the country’s territorial waters, and the last one fell into the sea.

But now we’ve just had some information come out from the Fujairah media office. Fujairah is one of the Emirates in the UAE It’s one of northern Emirates, and it’s actually where a lot of the country’s oil activity takes place. There’s huge oil storage facilities there, and they’ve just said that the competent authorities in the Emirates of Fujairah confirmed an advanced fire in the Fujairah petroleum industries area, resulting from the targeting of a drone coming from Iran.

Civil defense teams in Fujairah immediately began dealing with the incident whilst continuing their efforts to control it. So look, we are now in a situation where, after almost a month of a ceasefire essentially from the U.S. and Israel into Iran and Iran’s retaliation into the Gulf states and into Israel, is now effectively broken because we are seeing fighting occurring once again.

Not only on the Strait of Hormuz, after we’ve seen UAE oil tankers targeted, potentially U.S. warships also struck from Iranian strikes as these U.S. Navy vessels tried to carry out escort missions in the Strait of Hormuz, but now we are seeing the UAE tonight under attack from Iranian fire, and I think this just basically takes us back to square one of this conflict, Ana. All that diplomacy that’s been taking place intensely over the weekend as well effectively feels like it’s been scrapped because of where we are once again.

And I think tonight the people of the UAE here will be looking up to the skies to see whether there is any further Iranian incoming fire, which we saw for many weeks of this conflict as the alerts continue to come through, Ana.

Watch the clip above via MS NOW.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!