Iran war fallout puts 9 million Indian workers in the line of fire

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.A policeman inspects the wreckage of a drone in downtown Dubai on Thursday. Photo: AFP“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.”