Qatar, UAE, Kuwait airspaces closed, flights affected
Qatar temporarily suspended air traffic around the country, its foreign ministry said Monday, after nearby Iran threatened retaliation for US strikes on its nuclear sites. "The competent authorities announce the temporary suspension of air traffic in the country's airspace, as part of a set of precautionary measures taken based on developments in the region," the foreign ministry said. Qatar is home to the United States' largest base in the region.
UAE airspace is now closed, causing multiple inbound flights to hold or divert from airports across the country, according to flight trackers
Kuwait has suspended its airspace until further notice as a precautionary measure following similar steps taken by neighboring countries due to the regional circumstances, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation announced Monday.
Bahrain closed its airspace temporarily as a precautionary measure following the recent regional developments.
Global airlines have suspended or reduced flights in the Middle East as the conflict between Israel and Iran rages after the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear enrichment sites over the weekend.
The US carried out strikes against Iranian nuclear sites overnight Saturday to Sunday after over a week of deadly missile exchanges between Israel and Iran.
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Observer
7 hours ago
- Observer
Which Iran will we get?
The 12-day war that pitted Iran against two nuclear powers, Israel and the US, is one of those conflicts that permits all sides to declare victory. For the Islamic Republic, that declaration came quickly, and centred on the fact that the regime is still standing. Despite heavy losses and widespread damage, there was no collapse, no revolt, and no regime change. To many Iranians, especially among the opposition abroad (some of whom — from the exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, to the former armed group Mojahedin-e-Khalq — openly cheered the strikes), the scale of the onslaught suggested an intent to topple the government. But a revolt was always unlikely, given who was calling for it. The urban middle class — the backbone of Iran's civic and professional life — was not going to rise up on behalf of the two foreign powers most associated with decades of coercion and violence in the region. Thus, whether ordinary Iranians 'won' or not will depend on what comes next: how the government responds, how quickly it can rebuild civilian infrastructure, and whether it offers concessions to a middle class that rallied around the flag in the face of a brutal bombing campaign. Some change was already coming well before Israel attacked. Since mid-2023, the Islamic Republic has been showing signs of a strategic shift inward. It did not directly enter the fray after Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel, nor in response to its allies in Lebanon and Syria coming under pressure. Owing to mass protests in 2022, the regime curtailed street-level enforcement of the unwritten dress code. When I visited Tehran and a few smaller cities last April, I was struck by how much the urban scene had changed. Many women (though not most) went out with their hair uncovered, and mingled freely with young men in the coffee shops that have mushroomed across urban Iran. Then came Masoud Pezeshkian's surprising election to the presidency in June 2024. A more reform-minded figure, he succeeded Ebrahim Raisi, who had made hijab enforcement a priority and cracked down violently on protests. By contrast, when a new hijab law was passed, Pezeshkian refused to enforce it, allowing a new social norm to take hold. Moreover, the Iranian economy is not as weak as foreign media coverage often suggests. The data do not paint a rosy picture, but nor do they point to an imminent collapse. Despite the draconian US sanctions imposed in 2018 (after Donald Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal), the economy has been slowly recovering. By 2024, GDP had surpassed its 2018 peak, and growth averaged around 3 per cent per year – aided by oil exports that benefited from the Biden administration's lax sanctions enforcement. Pezeshkian's appointments — including a progressive minister of welfare and labour and a young Chicago-educated economy minister — signalled a turn toward better economic management. Internally, there has been a major debate over whether Iran can meet the 8 per cent growth target that is regularly listed in annual budgets and five-year plans. The consensus among economists was 'not without sanctions relief,' which in turn would require diplomacy, not missiles. Still, the Pezeshkian administration's economic reforms likely bolstered the urban middle class's willingness to stand with the government in the face of Israeli air strikes. Iran's rather measured response to the US attack on its nuclear sites shows where its leaders' priorities lie. They see renewed conflict as a distraction from their development mission, originally laid out in the 2005 Twenty-Year Vision Plan to place Iran among the region's top economies by 2025. The immediate question is whether the recent war will push Iran further toward militarisation and an expanded role for the state in the economy, or toward greater freedom for civil society and the private sector. Many will remember how the bloody eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s led to entrenched rationing, central planning, and dominance by state-linked institutions. It took nearly two decades of reform to reintroduce market principles and revive the private sector. Iran may be better positioned today, because the war was limited in scope, and the private sector and market institutions are more firmly established. Just as the Iran-Iraq War led to vast development investments that acknowledged the contribution of rural communities, this one may catalyse a similar gesture of recognition for the urban middle class. If so, that would go far toward achieving the kind of social consensus (vefagh) that Pezeshkian is seeking. Two decades ago, the joke in Iran was that the Islamic Republic had a consistent Korea strategy, except that sometimes it resembled the North, and sometimes the South. Now Iran faces a similar choice. The North Korean model may seem attractive to some, with its nuclear deterrence, stifling of dissent, and closed borders. But most observers familiar with Iran's culture, religion, history, and temperament would not regard this as a viable option – even after a war that has exposed Iran's vulnerability in the absence of nuclear weapons. Undoubtedly, there will be tensions between rebuilding the military and addressing civilian needs – from shoring up the water supply to distributing gasoline and dealing with youth employment. Fortunately, unlike a military buildup, economic reconstruction can be advanced through broadly felt policies that attract private-sector engagement and reduce the budgetary trade-off between defence and development. Assuming the cease-fire holds, the real question will not be who won or lost. It will be whether Iran uses the pause to double down on economic development, or whether the trauma of war will provoke an ideological hardening. The pro-development option may be constrained by the nature of the regime; but the alternative – a permanent wartime posture – is economically and socially untenable. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025.
Observer
13 hours ago
- Observer
Qatar, UAE, Kuwait airspaces closed, flights affected
Qatar temporarily suspended air traffic around the country, its foreign ministry said Monday, after nearby Iran threatened retaliation for US strikes on its nuclear sites. "The competent authorities announce the temporary suspension of air traffic in the country's airspace, as part of a set of precautionary measures taken based on developments in the region," the foreign ministry said. Qatar is home to the United States' largest base in the region. UAE airspace is now closed, causing multiple inbound flights to hold or divert from airports across the country, according to flight trackers Kuwait has suspended its airspace until further notice as a precautionary measure following similar steps taken by neighboring countries due to the regional circumstances, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation announced Monday. Bahrain closed its airspace temporarily as a precautionary measure following the recent regional developments. Global airlines have suspended or reduced flights in the Middle East as the conflict between Israel and Iran rages after the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear enrichment sites over the weekend. The US carried out strikes against Iranian nuclear sites overnight Saturday to Sunday after over a week of deadly missile exchanges between Israel and Iran.
Observer
a day ago
- Observer
Fresh truce in Gaza likely
DOHA: Gaza mediators are engaging with Israel and Hamas to build on momentum from this week's ceasefire with Iran and work towards a truce in the Palestinian territory, Qatar foreign ministry spokesman Majed al Ansari said. Israel and Iran on Tuesday agreed to a ceasefire brokered by the United States and Qatar just hours after the Islamic republic launched a salvo of missiles towards Doha, targeting the American military base hosted there. The unprecedented attack on Qatari soil followed Washington's intervention into a days-long war between Israel and Iran which saw US warplanes strike Iranian nuclear facilities, prompting promises of retaliation from Tehran. In an interview with AFP on Friday, Al Ansari said Doha — with fellow Gaza mediators in Washington and Cairo — was now "trying to use the momentum that was created by the ceasefire between Iran and Israel to restart the talks on Gaza". "If we don't utilise this window of opportunity and this momentum, it's an opportunity lost amongst many in the near past. We don't want to see that again," the spokesman, who is also an adviser to Qatar's prime minister, said. US President Donald Trump voiced optimism on Friday about a new ceasefire in Gaza saying an agreement involving Israel and Hamas could come as early as next week. Mediators have been engaged in months of back-and-forth negotiations with the warring parties aimed at ending 20 months of war in Gaza, with Al Ansari explaining there were no current talks between the sides but that Qatar was "heavily involved in talking to every side separately". A two-month truce, which was agreed as Trump came into office in January, collapsed in March with Israel intensifying military operations in Gaza afterwards. "We have seen US pressure and what it can accomplish," Al Ansari said referring to the January truce which saw dozens of hostages held by Hamas released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. The Qatari official said particularly in the context of US enforcement of the Israel-Iran truce, it was "not a far-fetched idea" that pressure from Washington would achieve a fresh truce in Gaza. "We are working with them very, very closely to make sure that the right pressure is applied from the international community as a whole, especially from the US, to see both parties at the negotiating table," Al Ansari said. As part of such an agreement, the remaining hostages from Israel in Gaza are expected to be released and many Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are to be freed. — Agencies
