How the Iran war impacts Abu Dhabi's AI strategy

Published 26 June 2026 · tech

Abu Dhabi's ambitions to turn the UAE into a global hub for digital infrastructure and AI, dubbed "UAE AI Strategy 2031," face pressure after the

Abu Dhabi's ambitions to turn the UAE into a global hub for digital infrastructure and AI, dubbed "UAE AI Strategy 2031," face pressure after the war with Iran. But the UAE is also known for its business resilience. When the United Arab Emirates appointed Omar Sultan Al Olama as the world's first minister of state for Artificial Intelligence in 2017, he promised to turn the UAE into the world's most prepared country for artificial intelligence. Only six years later, Al Olama was listed on TIME magazine's inaugural TIME100 AI list and Abu Dhabi was well underway in implementing its digital strategy. However, after the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February 2026, the UAE became one of Iran's key targets: Over the course of the war, thousands of Iranian missile and drone strikes were aimed at local offices and data centers operated by global companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia. The news magazine The Conversation reported that the war also raised questions about the safety of undersea cables which are essential for data centers and other digital infrastructure. Furthermore, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran, and later by the United States, delayed hardware deliveries. "Data centers have long become critical infrastructure and need to be better protected just like oil refineries or desalination plants," Sebastian Sons, a senior researcher at the German think tank CARPO, told DW. Analysts point out that data centers need to be protected as critical infrastructure Image: Nic Bothma/Matrix Images/picture alliance UAE resilience Despite the impact of the war on the Gulf state, observers point out that not everything changed.

"The political risk profile has changed, but the fundamentals haven't changed," Mohammed Suleiman, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, told DW. "The UAE still lies at the intersection of capital flows between East and West, it still has the energy, land and political will to build AI capabilities at scale," he said. In the past, the Gulf region has weathered different crises, from the financial crisis of the late 2000s to the COVID-19 pandemic and previous Gulf conflicts, all of which tested the Gulf business model, Sebastian Sons recalls, adding that "during all these crises, the UAE has demonstrated a high level of resilience and found ways to reinvent itself and deal with such strategic situations." In his view, long-term damage would only occur if the Iran conflict continued for a long time and the UAE couldn't find a way to adapt its business model. However, it remains to be seen in what way the UAE's global compute diplomacy strategy will pivot in the short, medium and long term. In May, a planned $1 billion mega-data-centre project in Kenya was called off, Business Insider Africa reported. Academic business strategies It might as well be that Abu Dhabi's AI strategy is already diversified enough to withstand the Iran crisis. At the heart of Abu Dhabi's ambition is G42, a multibillion-dollar Abu Dhabi-based conglomerate founded in 2018 that specializes in artificial intelligence and cloud computing. In 2019, the UAE inaugurated the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), the world's first graduate-level university dedicated entirely to AI with the ambition of making it the "Stanford of the Middle East".