Drone attack at UAE’s Barakah nuclear power plant and real motive behind it: HT explains

The origin of the attack remains murky. The drone reportedly came from the west, raising the possibility that Yemen’s Houthi movement, closely aligned with Iran, may have been behind it, or another Iranian proxy operating from that direction. What is clear, Gupta stresses, is the escalation: once nuclear power plants are targeted, the risk matrix changes dramatically, bringing questions of radiation leaks, emergency responses, and long-term environmental fallout into play.

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Equally significant is the pattern. The UAE, he notes, has now been struck more times than any other country in the region, including Israel, by Iran or its affiliates. That exposes the Emirates’ vulnerabilities despite its advanced air defence systems and underscores that in this phase of the confrontation, Gulf infrastructure – energy and now nuclear – is firmly in the crosshairs.

The fallout is already visible: Middle Eastern economies are suffering, global inflation remains high, and Gupta warns that the next logical step will be banks raising interest rates, tightening financial conditions for households and businesses alike. The result, he says, is “entire world in turmoil,” with the Middle East crisis interacting with other conflicts, including an escalating Ukraine–Russia war as Kyiv steps up its strikes, and renewed fighting in Gaza following Israel’s killing of a senior Hamas commander.

In this crowded battlefield, ceasefire talks linked to Iran’s nuclear programme and the status of Hormuz continue, but Gupta sees “no meeting ground” so far. Tehran shows no inclination to give up its nuclear capabilities, despite repeated threats from US President Donald Trump, and is preparing yet another memorandum for Washington. The basic positions on both the nuclear file and maritime navigation remain entrenched.

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Yet Gupta does not believe the war is about to flare into a dramatically new phase. The US, he argues, has hit most of its declared military objectives: polarising nuclear “sides,” degrading elements of Iran’s armed forces, and targeting key leadership figures. What it has not achieved—and likely cannot—is regime change in Tehran. The hardline Shia state structure has neither collapsed nor looks close to collapse. That reality, he suggests, points not towards all-out escalation, but towards a messy compromise in which both sides climb down partially to stabilise the situation.

He sketches a possible pathway: some form of agreement on freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz towards the end of the month, followed by a separate track on the nuclear issue. Even in the best-case scenario, however, he estimates it would take at least six to seven months after Hormuz is fully reopened for the global economy to stabilise.

According to him, Pakistani bases – including Noor Khan in Sindh, facilities near Peshawar, and even locations in Afghanistan – hosted Iranian transport aircraft from shortly after 11 March, with the broader war having begun on 28 February. Between four and five such aircraft were observed moving regularly.

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New Delhi, he says, was fully aware: Indian agencies knew Iranian Air Force planes were flying in and out of Pakistan to Iran, carrying weapons and ammunition sourced from China. The Americans and the Chinese themselves also knew. In Gupta’s telling, Beijing was supplying Iran with weapons, drones, spare parts and even satellite imagery to help target US bases in the Middle East.

The most striking claim is not that this supply chain existed, but that Washington allowed it to function. Gupta suggests the US tolerated this pipeline partly to give China leverage with Tehran and partly to allow Pakistan to maintain some influence with Iran. The result was a multilayered covert network—“over ground, under ground, overt, covert”—that linked Chinese factories, Pakistani bases, Iranian transport aircraft and battlefields across the Middle East.

Gupta notes that an Israeli opposition leader had visited earlier, and argues that, given the pattern of quiet contacts, it is reasonable to believe Netanyahu’s version. In the “fog of war”, as he puts it, many actions – whether a UAE role in retaliatory strikes on Iran or Saudi operations – are kept deniable to avoid inflaming sensitivities within the broader Muslim Ummah.

Also Read: ‘Don’t have much time’: Pakistan shares revised Iran peace proposal with US

Israel’s interest is clear: it wants to stand publicly and privately with the UAE as it comes under attack, and to help ensure that Emirati airspace is not repeatedly violated by Iranian missiles and drones. Providing systems like Iron Dome and other missile defences is part of that equation, reinforcing a new security architecture layered on top of the Abraham Accords.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, he says, took a hard line on Taiwan, warning Trump that any US siding with Taipei would bring out the “nasty side” of China and bluntly describing the US as a declining power—an unprecedented statement made directly to a sitting American president. Xi made clear he would not tolerate US intervention over Taiwan.

On Iran, the two leaders found some common ground regarding the Strait of Hormuz and nuclear talks, but Gupta believes the meeting was “advantage China all the way”. Beijing held most of the leverage, and little of substance emerged aside from the symbolic gesture of the US side later discarding Chinese gifts. For a president known to go “ballistic” on most issues, Trump’s visit, in Gupta’s view, was remarkably tame.

By contrast, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s brief two-and-a-half-hour stop in Abu Dhabi was, in Gupta’s assessment, a strategically significant moment in India–UAE ties. Received by UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Modi was building on a relationship he has personally cultivated.

For 34 years, no Indian political leader visited the UAE; Modi has now travelled there eight times in 12 years. The transformation is stark: when IC-814 was hijacked and diverted to Dubai’s Al Minhad airbase in 1999, India’s ambassador was not even allowed inside, but today the UAE is formally designated as India’s strategic defence partner. Both countries have pledged to support each other against a third-party threat, a major shift in the Gulf’s security geometry.

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Economically, the visit cemented UAE commitments to invest around 5 billion dollars in India, vastly expand its strategic oil reserves on Indian soil from 5 million to 30 million barrels, and build reserves in LPG and LNG. In essence, the UAE is underwriting India’s energy security, while India, in turn, bolsters the UAE’s food and defence security.

Today, he maps a fractured landscape: