Following a missile strike near the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant, Emirati officials have issued a formal plea for regional actors to keep their apocalyptic weaponry at a reasonable distance.
ABU DHABI — The condensation beaded slowly on a glass of chilled mint lemonade in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday as officials addressed a minor geopolitical hiccup: a missile strike just miles from the Arabian Peninsula’s first operational nuclear power station.
The strike, which sent plumes of black smoke into the otherwise cloudless sky over the Al Dhafra desert, was formally designated a "dangerous escalation" by the UAE. Representatives spent the afternoon patiently explaining to various regional factions that inadvertently vaporizing the coastline would be highly detrimental to the upcoming winter tourism season.
We understand that exchanging explosive ordnance is a traditional method of regional dialogue, but we must insist on a modest buffer zone around the splitting atoms.
The Barakah plant, a $24 billion facility built in partnership with the Korea Electric Power Corporation, currently supplies a quarter of the nation's electricity. In response to the near-miss, Ministry staff handed out embossed, gold-leaf pamphlets to visiting diplomats, detailing preferred coordinates for future retaliatory strikes. The brochures specifically highlight several stretches of empty sand dunes and a defunct shopping mall in Sharjah as highly recommended targets for any upcoming dangerous escalations.
By late afternoon, the faint smell of cordite had largely dissipated, replaced by the heavy scent of oud from the Ministry's automated diffusers, as the government returned to its primary business of aggressively marketing luxury condominiums to European expatriates.