Rulers of the nations along the Arabian Peninsula bet decades ago that they could use oil sales to build thriving modern societies. They aimed to lure expats from around the world in search of work, security, and warm weather. Anyone who has visited Dubai or Doha knows how successfully that worked out'the region's population has more than doubled in the past 30 years, to about 60 million, and huge increases are predicted. Now the Iran war has put that ambition's greatest vulnerability front and center. The scorching, oil-rich desert sands have precluded the development of much, if any, agriculture, forcing governments to rely almost entirely on imported food. Most of those imports arrive through the Strait of Hormuz, the slender waterway that is now effectively closed to commercial shipping because of the threat of mines and drone attacks from Iranian forces and their proxies. 'Of course we're worried,' one official from a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which comprises...
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