With the synchronicity to make a marketing manager proud, a clutch of TikTok influencers have been asking a simple question: “You live in Dubai, aren’t you scared?”
The users provide the answer by cutting to slow-motion images of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, striding forward to swelling music.
“I know who protects us,” declares one user. And another. And another.
As Iranian missiles and drones streak across the region, social media influencers have raced to the defence of the emirate and its leaders. Their message: total confidence in Dubai’s security and its future as a sun-blessed haven for aspirational expatriates.
While some influencers have shared frightened videos of booming interceptions overhead, others have insisted they are unafraid and intend to stay in the city, where many shops and businesses remain open.
Some 172 ballistic and eight cruise missiles have been intercepted since the outbreak of war on Saturday, as well as 755 drones, the UAE defence ministry said on Tuesday. But a handful of buildings, including the US consulate, have sustained damage in the glitzy city, which has long sought to cast itself as an island of stability and prosperity in the turbulent region.
Dubai’s rulers are seeking not just to defend the emirate militarily but also contain the damage the strikes are likely to cause to its reputation as a low-tax safe haven for the global elite, an image traditionally reinforced by an army of glamorous bloggers who have made it their home.
Katja Muñoz, senior research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, noted the “I know who protects us” campaign had a clear template.
“It’s not quite propaganda but it has a touch of it. It’s an influence operation, and it’s interesting that after just 60 hours [of war] we’re seeing that,” she said. “Of course, partly this is just people copying, monetising content, but it definitely began in a negotiated, sponsored way.
“What it tells me is that they [the UAE] have established structures already — they have existing relationships with influencers which they have been able to use very quickly.”
Other interventions have been more spontaneous. British political pundit Isabel Oakeshott, one of the emirate’s many expats from the UK, said it was only tourists scrambling to find ways to get out of her chosen home.
“British citizens who live in Dubai are not queueing to be ‘evacuated’,” she said, writing on the social media platform X. “Shops are still open! People are going to work.”
To reassure residents, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, known as MBZ, and his defence minister appeared in an ordinary café in the middle of the vast Dubai Mall on Monday for a rare coffee in public among shoppers and passers-by.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Nick Candy, a property developer who is treasurer of Nigel Farage’s rightwing Reform UK party, compared the gesture to “how the Royal Family remained in London during the Blitz, and the palpable effect their presence had on public confidence”.
“Everyone is safe in the UAE. Everyone is protected,” declared Amjad Taha, an emirati analyst. British expats, he claimed, were refusing to fill out evacuation forms provided by the British government “just in case it somehow turns into a tax form instead”.
For every social media mention critical of tax exiles seeking repatriation on taxpayer-funded flights, there have been Dubai residents favourably comparing the security of living under the UAE’s air defences to the dangers of street crime in the west.
Longtime Dubai resident and Telegram chief executive Pavel Durov said on Sunday he regretted being in Europe during the strikes. “I’m not only missing the free fireworks from Iran, but also exposing myself to greater risk. Given Europe’s crime rates, Dubai is statistically safer even with missiles flying,” he claimed.
Even self-described misogynist influencer Andrew Tate shared a video of himself dancing outside and smoking a cigar with the tagline: “Me in Dubai while the bombs fall.” It received over 11mn views on X. His brother shared a statistic comparing the air attacks to knife crime in London.
Some have not wanted to take their chances. On a chat group for the city’s many Russian expats, residents discussed making their way out of the city, for example to Muscat in Oman. Many wealthy residents have also sought to fly out by any means.
One chartered plane from Oman to Moscow, which belongs to the Russian space agency Roscosmos but is rented out when not in use by cosmonauts, sold tickets for €20,000 per spot, RBC magazine reported this week.
The crisis has posed one of the biggest tests for Dubai since it emerged as the influencer capital of the world during the Covid pandemic, when social media stars joined cryptocurrency investors and hedge fund managers taking advantage of sunshine and low-tax freedom from lockdowns.
After imposing some of the world’s toughest coronavirus measures in the first months of the pandemic and rolling out rapid vaccinations, Dubai relaxed restrictions faster than elsewhere, leading to the city becoming known as a pandemic party capital.
The legacy of that period has been surging numbers of new expatriates, from European tax exiles to Russians fleeing the post-Ukraine invasion crackdown at home, and younger finance professionals seeking a leg-up in a fast-growing sector.
Social media users and influencers sharing the viral clip were “super incentivised to speak about the safety of Dubai”, said one London-based businessman who travels to Dubai frequently for work.
Those criticising the emirati government or its authorities, by contrast, risk large fines, imprisonment or visa revocation. Dubai police reminded residents that “rumours, false information, or any content that contradicts official announcements or that may cause public panic or threaten public safety, order, or health is prohibited”.
One emirates resident, Anastasiia Polonskaya, who describes herself on social media as a blogger that “bought a flat in Dubai thanks to Instagram reels”, dismissed suggestions the videos were a part of government-run, co-ordinated campaign.
She said she simply copied into Russian what she’d seen on the platform in English. In the video, she asked: “You live in Dubai and have your own property, aren’t you scared?” before cutting to the same images of the country’s rulers striding forward in a group.
Her next update online was posted from Thailand, where she told followers about her day as a “refugee from Dubai”.
Additional reporting by Sam Jones in Berlin