Thought this was worth sharing from a nat-sec guy on Twitter who modeled this exact scenario back in July after the earlier Israeli strikes. He basically said that once Iran hits existential territory like losing Khamenei today in the big US-Israeli barrage, they'd go asymmetric and hit the softest, highest-leverage targets: the Gulf states, especially the UAE. Why? Dubai/Abu Dhabi have ~9 million expats from basically every country on Earth; locking them down creates instant global pressure and chaos without needing to directly take on the US/Israel militaries head-on.
Add in closing the Strait of Hormuz, sealing UAE airspace, and threatening critical infrastructure (he hinted at water/desalination plants without going into details—those supply like 90% of UAE's fresh water). We're seeing pieces of it play out right now with reports of Iranian missiles/drones hitting Dubai airport, intercepts over Abu Dhabi, and strikes on US bases across Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, etc. Iran denied suicide-level retaliation before because of regime survival calculus, but with the Supreme Leader reportedly gone and Trump/Netanyahu going all-in on regime change, that restraint is off the table.
It’s not at full worst-case yet but the playbook looks spot-on so far.
And this take also makes sense