One of the Arab world's most prominent business figures has broken ranks and openly condemnedDonald Trump for launching a war that has turned the Gulf into a target zone.Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor, the founding chairman of Dubai-basedAl Habtoor Group, has become the first high-profile Middle Eastern businessman to publicly denounce the US president over the military campaign against Iran.
This conflict has sent air-raid sirens ringing from Manama to Dubai and upended the strategic calculations of every Gulf state. Hislengthy open letter, posted in Arabic on X on 5 March 2026, arrived at a moment of acute regional anxiety, and from a man whose public silence on Trump had, until now, been near-total.
The rebuke lands with particular force given who Al Habtoor is and what he once meant to Trump's ambitions in the region. In 2008,Habtoor Leighton Group, his construction and engineering arm, was part of a joint venture awarded a 2.9 billion-dirham contract, approximately £166 million ($214 million) at today's rates, for the proposed Trump International Hotel and Tower on Dubai'sPalm Jumeirah. The project wasshelved in 2011after the global financial crisis guttered Gulf real estate investment.
In August 2015, Al Habtoor pennedan op-ed for the UAE newspaper The Nationaltitled 'Why I'm backing The Donald's bid to be president,' calling Trump a 'fearless doer' and a successful businessman.
That endorsement collapsed within months. After Trump called for Muslims to be barred from entering the United States in December 2015, Al Habtoor toldNBC Newsthat he regretted his support for the Republican frontrunner. He has remained largely silent on Trump until now.
According to Forbes, Al Habtoor is ranked 335th among the world's wealthiest individuals, with a net worth of £1.78 billion ($2.3 billion). His privately held group spans luxury hotels, shopping malls, construction, engineering, hospitality and sports investment across the Gulf and beyond. That commercial reach is what gives his words their edge: when a man of his stature in the UAE speaks this way, it reflects pressures that go far beyond personal opinion.
Al Habtoor'sX postdid not mince words. Addressing Trump directly in Arabic, he condemned the decision to strike Iran as 'dangerous' and asked whether the president had calculated the collateral damage before acting.
'You have placed the countries of theGulf Cooperation Counciland the Arab countries at the heart of a danger they did not choose,' he wrote. 'Thank God, we are strong and capable of defending ourselves, and we have armies and defences that protect our homelands, but the question remains: Who gave you permission to turn our region into a battlefield?'
سيادة الرئيس دونالد ترامب،سؤال مباشر: من أعطاك القرار لزجّ منطقتنا في حرب مع#إيران؟ وعلى أي أساس اتخذت هذا القرار الخطير؟هل حسبتَ الأضرار الجانبية قبل أن تضغط على الزناد؟ وهل فكّرت أن أول من سيتضرر من هذا التصعيد هي دول المنطقة!من حق شعوب هذه المنطقة أن تسأل أيضاً: هل كان…
He also accused Washington and Tel Aviv of igniting the war 'before the ink has dried' onTrump's Board of Peace initiative, launched in January 2026. That body, initiallyapproved by the UN Security Councilas a temporary Gaza-focused reconstruction mechanism, has since expanded into a broader voluntary coalition of states operating outside the formalUN peacekeeping system.
Source: International Business Times UK
