When the alert arrives on his phone, Yashwant Deshmukh knows exactly what to do.
The Dubai-based political analyst moves away from the windows, waits for the second message confirming the missile has been intercepted, and then goes back to work.
“It has become a drill,” he said.
For the roughly 9 million Indians living and working across the Gulf, the war on Iran has shattered one of the region’s most durable illusions: that cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Manama would remain apart from the conflicts flickering at the region’s edges.
“This is not just another Gulf war, akin to those in 1991 or 2003,” said Uday Chandra, a professor at Ashoka University in India’s Haryana state who was recently based in Qatar.
“It is the collapse of the long-standing assumption that the GCC states would remain insulated from crises in the Persian Gulf.”
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