On Jan. 3, a United States drone strike targeted and killed Iranian major general, Qasem Soleimani, outside of the Baghdad International Airport. Soleimani was not the only casualty. Nine others in the entourage accompanying Soleimani were also killed; this included four members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and five prominent officials from the Popular Mobilization Forces, an Iran-aligned Iraqi paramilitary organization.

Often purported to be the second-most powerful person in Iran after the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Soleimani occupied the apex of the Iranian state’s military and intelligence apparatus in his function as head of the elite Quds Force. This gave him a key role in shaping some of the Middle East’s most bitter and protracted conflicts to Iran’s advantage. From supporting Bashar al-Assad’s war effort to reconsolidate control over a divided Syria to coordinating movements with Iran-allied non-state actors like the Supreme Political Council in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Soleimai’s presence was felt across the region.

Reactions to Soleimani’s passing were correspondingly mixed. Upon confirmation of the news, celebrations broke out in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, where protesters have been gathered since October calling for the resignation of the government and for the elimination of both American and Iranian influence on the country’s fraught politics. Meanwhile, in Tehran, the government declared three days of national mourning, with an estimated one million people thronging the streets of the capital on the occasion of Soleimani’s funeral.

Soleimani’s death was also taboo-shattering. An analysis conducted by The New York Times highlighted the fact that the assasination of Soleimani was the first time the United States has killed a “major military leader in a foreign country” since Operation Vengeance in World War II, when American pilots downed an aircraft carrying the admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Isoroku Yamamoto.

The extent to which tensions between the United States, Iran, and their respective allies in the region would escalate remained unclear in the immediate aftermath of the killing. In the days following the incident, Iranian missiles rained down on American air bases in Ayn al-Asad and Erbil in Iraq while President Trump, in turn, took to Twitter to controversially threaten the destruction of 52 prized Iranian cultural sites. Tragically, the increased hostilities also led to the accidental downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 by two Iranian surface-to-air missiles, which result in the deaths of all 176 of its occupants.

Jitters were also felt across the Gulf in the United Arab Emirates, as rumors swirled that Dubai could also feature on a list of potential targets for Iranian attack. Authorities, both on campus and nationally, sought to assuage these concerns.

In an email sent out to the NYU Abu Dhabi community, Vice Chancellor Mariët Westermann emphasized the university’s close collaboration with “sources in the government, law enforcement, embassies, and the U.S. Department of State” to monitor the situation.

The Government of Dubai Media Office released a statement denying the existence of any security threats to the city, “urging everyone to refrain from circulating fake news and spreading rumors.”

After nearly five decades at the helm of the country, Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman — the longest-serving ruler in the Arab world — passed away on [Jan. 10, 2020] (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/middleeast/sultan-qaboos-79-is-dead-built-oman-into-prosperous-oasis-of-peacemaking.html).

Having assumed power with the orchestration of a bloodless coup d’état against his father in 1970, the Sultan went on to oversee an era of profound change for a sultanate where, at the time, “slavery was legal, no one could travel abroad, and music was banned”.

His early years of governance were punctuated by efforts to suppress a communist and secessionist insurgency in the country’s Dhofar province, which Qaboos quashed together with the assistance of British, Jordanian, and Iranian forces. With the conclusion of the Dhofar Rebellion by 1976, Qaboos proceeded to devote his attention to the modernization of his country. Occupying the positions of Prime Minister, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Minister of Defense, Minister of Finance, and Minister of Foreign Affairs in addition to Sultan , Qaboos sponsored the construction of schools, hospitals, and roads in a bid to kickstart the economic development of the sultanate. These efforts yielded tangible results: in 2010, the United Nations noted that Oman came “first in the world in advancement up the Human Development Index over the previous 40 years, ahead of China.”

The President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, ordered all national flags in the UAE to be flown at half-mast for three days in a gesture of mourning for the death of the Sultan. A statement from the Emirates News Agency quotes the President expressing “great sorrow” and “[commending] the late Sultan for being dedicated to the service of his people and nation and his work on bolstering cohesion of the Arab nation”.