Council (gcc), a club of six petro-monarchies, has managed the crisis well, spending tens of billions of dollars to support their economies. Officials sound confident that they can weather a bit more disruption and bounce back quickly when it ends. As weeks turn into months, though, the risk of lasting damage grows. On May 10th Iran offered its latest proposal for a permanent ceasefire. The text is not public. But diplomats in the region say key issues remain unresolved. The parties have yet to agree on the duration of a moratorium for uranium enrichment; what to do with Iran’s stockpile of highly-enriched uranium; and whether Iran will have to dismantle some nuclear facilities, among other things. Donald Trump called the proposal “totally unacceptable”. It is easy to see the consequences of a prolonged stalemate for America and Iran. Motorists in America are now paying an average of $4.52 a gallon for petrol, up 52% from before the war. In Iran, one official estimates that more than 1m people have lost their jobs. Quantifying the damage in Gulf states is harder, given that they are desperate to project an image of normality. The clearest hit is on the oil and gas industry, which accounts for roughly a quarter of the region’s gdp and most of its export revenue. Saudi Arabia’s oil exports have fallen by around a third since the war began, and the uae’s by half. Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar have exported almost nothing. “If trade and shipping remain curtailed by more than a few weeks from today, we anticipate...the market to normalise only in 2027,” Amin Nasser, the boss of Saudi Aramco, the kingdom’s state-run oil giant, said on May 10th. A tanker loaded with Qatari liquefied natural gas (lng) did manage to pass through the Strait of Hormuz on May 10th, the first Qatari one to do so since the war began. The vessel, bound for Pakistan, took a route through Iran’s territorial waters, where the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (irgc) has tried to levy tolls. A source familiar with the arrangement denied that any such fees were paid, however. They described a deal between Iran and Pakistan, which has been the central mediator between America and Iran—and is also desperate for gas. Yet Iran is unlikely to allow many more such transits.
The energy sector is not the only one desperate for a lasting deal. Take travel and tourism, which accounted for more than 11% of pre-war Gulf gdp (and an even larger share in the uae). Though few tourists are arriving in the Gulf, transit traffic has kept airlines in business. Emirates, the largest of the bunch, moved a total of 4.7m passengers in March and April. That is only around 50% of the Dubai-based carrier’s usual load—but still better than one would expect from an airline whose hub has been repeatedly bombed. On recent flights to Doha, Dubai and Riyadh, your correspondent found cabins nearly full. Step outside the airport, however, and things look bleak. Hotels are empty enough to let receptionists greet arriving guests by name, because no one else is checking in that day. In Bahrain the value of credit-card spending at hotels was 64% lower in March than in February. Moody’s, a ratings agency, estimates that hotel occupancy in Dubai will be just 10% this quarter, down from 80% in February. Tens of thousands of workers have been furloughed or fired from service-sector jobs. Shops are still well stocked, despite the closure of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia has emerged as a lifeline, with goods delivered by ship to its Red Sea ports and then hauled overland to neighbouring countries. Wartime shortages seem trivial: restaurants apologise for running out of Australian Wagyu beef or Italian burrata; the lone liquor store in Riyadh has periodically exhausted its stocks of white wine. But the cost has been eye-watering, both for governments and retailers. Gulf countries have varying abilities to cope. The Qataris say they can manage for a few more months despite the near-total loss of export revenue from lng, helium and other commodities. Banks in the uae still look well capitalised. They have deferred loan payments and waived fees for thousands of businesses, part of a relief package worth more than 6bn dirhams ($1.6bn). Bahrain, by contrast, has already signed a $5.4bn currency-swap agreement with the uae; it may need further bail-outs if the crisis drags on. Many officials and executives point to the end of summer as a deadline. In the next few months, scorching heat would anyway put off visitors and residents alike. By September expats ought to be back and firms should be
preparing for millions of tourists and conference-goers. If America and Iran have not reached a deal that reopens the strait and removes the spectre of war, a temporary downturn could turn into something much more serious. ■ Sign up to the Middle East Dispatch, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in the loop on a fascinating, complex and consequential part of the world. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//middle-east-and-africa/2026/05/11/gulf-states-fear- irreversible-fallout-from-the-iran-crisis
Middle East & Africa | Rough justice Bashar al-Assad’s henchmen start to go on trial in Syria Some observers worry that the process is too rushed to be credible May 14th 2026 Fifteen years ago Atef Najib, then the security chief of Deraa, a city in southern Syria, epitomised the cruelty of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the dictator who was toppled in 2024. When the parents of children arrested in protests in the city in 2011 came to Mr Najib to beg for mercy, he told them to forget about their sons, go home and make new ones. The brutality in Deraa morphed into nearly 14 years of nationwide repression and bloodshed. Now Mr Najib sits in a cage in a court in Damascus, the capital, wearing a black-and-white prison uniform. He is on trial for murder, torture and orchestrating massacres. “We have been waiting for this moment since the beginning of the revolution,” says Maram Abazeid, who in 2011 was a
teenager in Deraa forced to watch her friends’ arrests. Now she is one of the lawyers representing Mr Najib’s victims in Syria’s first trial of Assad-era officials. As his name was read out alongside those of his victims during a hearing on April 26th, she scrutinised his features. “He knew exactly who he was facing,“ she says. “He knew which children he had arrested.” On May 10th Mr Najib denied all charges against him and blamed the repression in Deraa on Syria’s other security agencies. A first cousin of Mr Assad, he was captured in a raid in January 2025. He is the most prominent figure in the old regime in the custody of the government of Ahmed al- Sharaa, the rebel leader who overthrew Mr Assad and is now Syria’s president. Mr Najib’s case illustrates the difficulties that the new government and the lawyers sympathetic to it have been having in holding people like him to account. Last year Mr Sharaa announced a transitional-justice commission, to some fanfare. Yet many Syrians feel its performance so far has been lacking. Some had hoped justice would be applied to all sides, including to rebels who perpetrated atrocities. That would have included holding to account some of Mr Sharaa’s comrades. The government’s approach has been more selective. Apart from not looking too closely at its own ranks, it has on occasion found it expedient to recruit some of those implicated in Mr Assad’s crimes. As the commission has foundered, the pressure on the government to achieve accountability has grown. Sectarian violence and lethal reprisals have been spreading in rural areas outside Damascus that are home to Mr Assad’s acolytes. “People feel the government has no interest in transitional justice, so they take matters into their own hands,” says a lawyer. The trial of Mr Najib is an attempt by the government to stem such trends by doling out swift justice. It was brought by the Ministry of Justice, using the pre-existing legal system in Damascus, rather than a new transitional-justice law being prepared by the commission. Yet it is unclear what sort of justice the trial will bring, if any. Five decades of the Assads’ rule ruined Syria’s justice system. Its statute book has no
provision for crimes against humanity, or for assigning command responsibility or indirect responsibility for crimes. Judges say they will be able to draw on treaties that Syria has signed, notably the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture. Even so, convicting the likes of Mr Najib will not be straightforward. Some lawyers are troubled that the trial has started before the legal framework has been publicly debated and agreed upon. Such haste risks undermining the legitimacy of the trial, says Nousha Kabawat, a specialist in transitional justice who attended the first hearing. Because of the rush to get the process over with, not enough time is spent ensuring that “investigations, prosecutions and eventually these trials must be consistent with due process and meet the standards of a fair trial”. Given Syria’s recent history, achieving justice was always going to be complicated. For Ms Abazeid, it is important that the trials are happening, regardless of legal imperfections. “These trials represent a historic moment, not just legally but humanly,” she says. “It acknowledges the victims’ suffering and sends a clear message that Syrian blood is not cheap.” ■ Sign up to the Middle East Dispatch, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in the loop on a fascinating, complex and consequential part of the world. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//middle-east-and-africa/2026/05/12/bashar-al-assads- henchmen-start-to-go-on-trial-in-syria
Russia is stumbling on the battlefield Peter Magyar takes office pledging to clean up Hungary’s mess Armenia’s election will test its leader’s pivot to the West The world’s best-sounding nightclub is in an unexpected place To understand European voters’ anger, look at their rent bills Socialism is being left behind in Europe The EU and China are stumbling into a trade war
Russia is stumbling on the battlefield As casualties soar in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin looks ever more beleaguered at home May 14th 2026 THIS YEAR’S Victory Day parade in Moscow on May 9th involved nothing triumphal. For the first time in two decades tanks and other military vehicles did not rumble through Red Square in celebration of the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany. Russia’s authorities deemed it too great a risk to cram armoured vehicles and missile-carriers into nearby staging areas—they would have made far too juicy a target for Ukraine’s increasingly effective drones. In the run-up to the big day, mobile internet services in Moscow and St Petersburg were cut off for security reasons. Large numbers of air-defence systems were redeployed from remote parts of the country.