What Lawyers and Their Clients Need to Know Right Now

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, long marketed to global investors as an island of stability in a turbulent neighborhood erupted in conflict during the last days of February 2026. Starting on February 28, joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran triggered a massive retaliatory Iranian campaign of missiles and drones that struck Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and what I have been calling home for almost 10 years, the United Arab Emirates. Airports shuttered, stock exchanges suspended trading and a data center was struck by shrapnel: possibly the first time in history that a major cloud infrastructure facility was damaged in a conflict.

For us lawyers and our clients, the legal consequences of this conflict are already unfolding, and they are complex, far-reaching, and in some cases unprecedented.

The Legal Landscape Has Changed Overnight

The GCC states: UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman host trillions of dollars in cross-border commercial activity. These jurisdictions have spent the past two decades building sophisticated legal and arbitral frameworks specifically to attract global capital: Dubai International Arbitration Center (DIAC), the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts, the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) Courts, the Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre (QICDRC), and dozens of bilateral investment treaties that underpin foreign direct investment across the region.

That institutional infrastructure remains formally intact, but the practical reality for clients with active contracts, pending transactions, ongoing arbitrations, or in-region assets has shifted dramatically. Here is what I believe that we practitioners need to be advising clients on, right now.

Force Majeure: The Argument (or Defense) that Everyone Will Invoke (and Why It’s Never a Simple as It Sounds)

The phrase force majeure borrowed from French Civil Law but now embedded in commercial contracts worldwide refers to an unforeseeable event beyond a party’s reasonable control that prevents contractual performance. In American and English law, the equivalent doctrine of “impracticability of performance” or “frustration of purpose” covers similar ground, though with important distinctions.

As I am writing this article, legal teams across certain sectors such as construction, energy, hospitality, aviation, logistics, technology are scrutinizing their force majeure clauses. And with good reason. Airports across the region have seen mass flight cancellations and the port traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has plummeted to roughly one-fifth of normal levels. For any party that cannot perform its contractual obligations as a result of these conditions, force majeure is the natural starting point.

What Must Be Shown

For a force majeure claim to succeed under most common law and civil law frameworks and in the arbitral jurisprudence that has emerged from DIFC, ADGM, and ICC arbitrations, a party typically must establish three elements:

First, that the event was unforeseeable at the time of contracting. This element is already becoming contested. Sophisticated parties negotiating contracts in late 2025 arguably had notice that U.S.-Iran tensions were escalating, particularly after Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025. Counterparties will argue that geopolitical risk in the Gulf was foreseeable and should have been priced into the deal.

Second, that the event was outside the claiming party’s reasonable control. This element is generally easier to establish in the case of missile strikes, drone attacks, and airport closures ordered by sovereign governments.

Third, that the event actually caused the non-performance. Causation is critical here. A contractor who was already behind schedule cannot suddenly attribute all delay to the Iranian strikes. Arbitrators will scrutinize pre-existing performance issues closely. I remember dealing with a case in 2022 when a developer has claimed 12 times Force Majeure due to COVID-19; obviously that didn’t fly so well as the developer was already behind the schedule pre COVID events.

Notification Requirements

Most well-drafted force majeure clauses require the claiming party to provide prompt written notice to the other side, often within 48 to 72 hours of the triggering event. Failure to provide timely notice can waive the force majeure defense entirely, even if the underlying event is genuine and catastrophic.

Given the chaos of the last week with communications disrupted, personnel evacuated, and leadership teams scrambling, many companies may have missed these notice windows without realizing it. A smart Counsel should audit all active contracts immediately and assess whether any notification obligations have been triggered.

Construction and Infrastructure Contracts: The Epicenter of Dispute

The Gulf region hosts some of the largest infrastructure projects on earth. Saudi Arabia’s NEOM, a multi-hundred-billion-dollar megacity remains under construction. UAE’s various smart city, tourism, and logistics projects involve hundreds of international contractors and subcontractors from the United States, Europe, South Korea, India, and China.

For construction contracts, the current crisis implicates at least four categories of legal risk:

Supply Chain Disruption. Specialized construction materials, machinery, and components routed through Gulf ports or flown into regional airports may now be stranded or delayed. Under most standard-form construction agreements, including FIDIC (Fédération Internationale des Ingénieurs-Conseils) forms widely used in the region, delayed delivery of materials triggers complex notice and claims procedures.

Labor Evacuation and Contractor Demobilization. Some of the international contractors have begun evacuating expatriate staff. Under FIDIC and bespoke contracts, employer-directed suspension of works triggers very different legal consequences than contractor-initiated suspension. The distinction matters enormously for who bears the cost.

Insurance Coverage Disputes. Contractors’ All Risk (CAR) insurance and professional indemnity policies routinely contain war and terrorism exclusions. If Iranian drone shrapnel damages a partially completed building or construction equipment, the insured may find itself staring at an exclusion clause. The legal battle over whether an intercepted Iranian drone constitutes a ‘war risk’ versus an ‘act of terrorism’ is already shaping up as a significant coverage dispute.

Energy Contracts: When the Strait of Hormuz Matters to the Client’s Deal

Roughly 20 to 25 percent of global oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade transits the Strait of Hormuz. Vessel traffic through the Strait reportedly fell to one-fifth of normal levels on March 1, 2026.

Long-Term LNG Sale and Purchase Agreements (SPAs) frequently contain ‘Material Adverse Change’ clauses or dedicated force majeure provisions keyed to specific delivery points or transit routes. A buyer in Asia or Europe that cannot receive contracted LNG shipments because Gulf export terminals are damaged or blocked has both an immediate operational problem and a medium-term legal one: whether to invoke force majeure, renegotiate commercial terms, or pursue damages.

On the seller side, Qatar which is the world’s largest LNG exporter has been struck by Iranian missiles. Counsel for LNG offtakers should be reviewing their contracts’ delivery point definitions, destination flexibility clauses, and force majeure notification requirements immediately.

Oil price volatility adds another dimension. Production disruptions at Gulf energy facilities and the mere threat of Strait of Hormuz closure will spike oil prices, triggering derivative contracts, hedging arrangements, and price re-openers in long-term supply deals. Energy trading desks and their legal advisers are probably already working through the cascade of contractual consequences.

Arbitration: The Forum of Choice

International arbitration has long been the preferred dispute resolution mechanism for sophisticated parties doing business in the Gulf and the current crisis demonstrates precisely why that choice was wise. The Gulf’s arbitral infrastructure is among the most developed in the world. The Dubai International Arbitration Centre (DIAC), the Abu Dhabi International Arbitration Centre (arbitrateAD), and the Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre (QICDRC) have each invested heavily in institutional rules, trained case managers, and technology-enabled proceedings that allow disputes to advance even under difficult conditions. International institutions with Gulf practice, the ICC, LCIA, and SIAC bring additional depth and geographic redundancy to that ecosystem. Crucially, all GCC states have ratified the New York Convention, providing a robust, treaty-backed framework for the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards in over 170 countries worldwide. For parties with active disputes, that global enforcement architecture is a powerful and durable asset.

Interim Measures and Emergency Arbitrators

For parties whose assets, cash flows, or contractual rights are threatened by the current events, arbitration offers a powerful and immediate tool: the emergency arbitrator. Most major arbitral rules: ICC, LCIA, SIAC, DIAC, and arbitrateAD now provide for emergency arbitrator procedures that can produce binding interim relief within days of filing, without waiting for a full tribunal to be constituted. Injunctions, asset preservation orders, and orders compelling or restraining specific conduct are all available through this mechanism. In a fast-moving crisis where a counterparty may be tempted to dissipate assets, redirect payments, or abandon contractual obligations, the emergency arbitrator is one of the most effective protective tools available to counsel.

Parties whose arbitration clauses designate institutions in the region can proceed with particular confidence that filings, appointments, and procedural steps will advance without interruption. Regional institutions have also demonstrated meaningful operational resilience: DIAC and arbitrateAD maintain digital-first case management platforms specifically designed to keep proceedings moving regardless of physical access constraints. Counsel should engage their designated institution early to confirm continuity protocols and take full advantage of the procedural tools already at their disposal.

Aviation and Hospitality

Airlines face a cascade of legal questions: passenger compensation obligations under applicable regulations (EU Regulation 261/2004 applies to flights departing EU airports; U.S. DOT rules apply to covered U.S. carriers); obligations to reroute or refund passengers; claims against airport operators for ground handling losses; and insurance claims for revenue losses.

For the hospitality sector which represents a cornerstone of the GCC’s economic diversification strategy the damage is both physical and reputational. Hotels that suffered physical damage from drone strikes or intercept shrapnel face property insurance claims. Hotels that did not suffer physical damage, but experienced guest cancellations, and revenue reduction face business interruption claims that will turn on whether the applicable policies cover ‘contingent business interruption’ arising from nearby damage rather than damage to the insured property itself.

Event cancellation insurance covering concerts, conferences, sporting events, and the like will also be heavily claimed. The Gulf region hosts a substantial calendar of major international events, many of which are now postponed or canceled. Sponsors, organizers, and venue operators should be reviewing their event cancellation coverage terms carefully.

What Lawyers Should be Doing for the Clients Right Now

The legal response to a crisis of this magnitude demands that counsel act on two tracks simultaneously: addressing the urgent, time-sensitive obligations that can make or break a client’s legal position in the coming days, while laying the evidentiary and strategic groundwork for the disputes that will unfold over the coming years. Experienced practitioners will recognize the framework below not as a checklist to be completed in sequence, but as a set of parallel workstreams to be launched at once.

Every active agreement with performance obligations must be identified and reviewed for its force majeure language, notice requirements, termination rights, and governing law and dispute resolution provisions. Legal notices must be sent and the Counsel who complete this within the first 48 to 72 hours of engaging on the crisis will be in a fundamentally stronger position than those who delay. The notice need not commit the client to invoking force majeure as its final position; it simply keeps the option open. Failing to send notice on time is one of the most consequential and irreversible mistakes counsel can make in the early stages of a crisis, and it is entirely avoidable.

Running in parallel, counsel must ensure that all applicable insurance policies are promptly notified. This means not only property and casualty policies, but also business interruption, political risk, event cancellation, directors and officers, and any specialist war risk coverage the client may hold. Insurers will scrutinize notice timing closely, and late notification is among the most common grounds on which otherwise valid claims are denied.

A Nation That Protects His Own and Security as a Guarantee

In the middle of the most serious challenge the UAE has faced in its modern history, the country’s leadership did something that speaks volumes about the character of this nation and those who govern it. On March 7, 2026, the UAE President, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited the injured in hospital, looked them in the eye, and made a promise. Not to governments. Not to markets. Not to allies. He made it to the people who call the UAE home: citizens and residents alike: “Do not be misled by the UAE’s appearance. The UAE has thick skin and bitter flesh, we are no easy prey. We will carry out our duty towards our country, our people and our residents, who are also part of our family”.

The President’s message was addressed not only to Emiratis but expressly and warmly to the millions of residents and visitors who make the UAE their home. He called them “our guests and our family,” and declared that “everyone is Emirati through their love for this land and their contributions to it.” For the expatriate professionals, international investors, and foreign legal practitioners who have built careers and lives in the UAE, these were not merely reassuring words, they were a reaffirmation of the social compact that has always distinguished the UAE from every other jurisdiction in the region. The UAE’s identity has never been defined by borders alone. It has been defined by inclusion, by aspiration, and by a leadership that takes its responsibilities to all who live under its flag with complete seriousness.

From a legal perspective, this matters in ways that go beyond sentiment. The stability of the UAE’s legal and commercial order, its courts, its arbitral institutions, its regulatory agencies, its enforcement mechanisms rests ultimately on the quality and resolve of the sovereign that underpins them. A government that protects its people under fire is a government that will honour its legal commitments when peace returns. The UAE’s track record across five decades of nation-building speaks for itself: the DIFC Courts have become a global benchmark for commercial dispute resolution; the UAE Federal Arbitration Law stands among the most modern in the world; and the country’s investment and regulatory frameworks have consistently ranked among the most business-friendly anywhere. None of that was dismantled by Iranian drones. It remains intact, and it will be rebuilt and strengthened in the months ahead.

The legal disputes that flow from this conflict, the force majeure claims, the insurance coverage battles, the arbitration proceedings, the investment treaty cases will take time to fully resolve. Counsel and their clients face a demanding period ahead, and the guidance in this article is intended to help navigate it with clarity and purpose. But it would be a mistake to read this article, or this moment, only through the lens of legal risk. Crisis also reveals character. The character of the UAE’s leadership, its institutions, and the diverse community of millions who stood firm alongside each other during the most challenging days, has been revealed with exceptional clarity.

The UAE President said it plainly, and this author believes it completely: the UAE will emerge from this phase stronger and more cohesive than before. For nationals and residents, for investors and practitioners, for all of us who have chosen to make this remarkable country the center of our professional and personal lives that is not a hope. It is a conviction grounded in five decades of evidence, and in the words of a leader who made his promise in person, at a hospital bedside, in a time of war.

We Stand with UAE!