Finance Desk

With most carriers suspending operations, Aziz, a former Middle East Airlines’ advisor, discusses how the Beirut airport keeps operating despite Israel’s strikes on Lebanon.

Since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran in late February, air traffic across the Middle East has been severely disrupted. Large portions of regional airspace are either closed or avoided, forcing airlines to reroute flights and cancel services.

In Lebanon, the situation is even more extreme: Israel strikes Beirut and its southern suburbs almost daily, just minutes from the country’s only international airport. With most carriers suspending operations, Middle East Airlines (MEA) remains the only one flying, maintaining a fragile lifeline with the rest of the world.

Global Finance sits down with Captain Mohammed Aziz, head of Lebanon’s Civil Aviation Authority and former senior advisor to MEA’s CEO, to discuss how the Beirut airport continues to operate under fire and what this means for the airline’s business.

Global Finance: How is the airport operating these days?

Aziz: Considering what’s going on around us, the airport is operating in a very nice way. For example, on April 1^st, there was a hit near the airport road. The security forces closed the road for half an hour, the time for the bombing to happen and for it to be cleaned. They then resumed operations. But the airport didn’t stop at all during this period. We are ensuring that the airport remains open safely and securely despite the situation.

GF: How do you know when a strike is going to happen and when planes can go in or out?

Aziz: First, most of the time, [Israeli authorities] announce where they want to bomb, especially if it’s around Beirut. Second, we can see on the radar if there are planes coming in for bombardment. They also know when a civilian aircraft is coming in, and they try to avoid it. Only once or twice did they come during a civilian operation. We had to hold the aircraft in the air until they finished their job before landing.

GF: Who are the airlines flying in and out?

Aziz: MEA is flying on all its routes, except to destinations where the airports are closed, like Kuwait, Doha or Abu Dhabi. They are losing about 40% of their traffic because many Gulf airports are closed. Gulf carriers are not coming to Beirut anymore because either their airport is not operating, or, when it is, they have other priorities. European carriers stopped serving the whole region from day one.

GF: What are the MEA’s operations?

Aziz: MEA now has 22 planes; five or six are parked continuously abroad, so they don’t get exposed if anything happens. That means they are practically operating with 16 aircraft. But even these 16 planes are not at full capacity. For example, some airports that used to take Airbus A330s now receive A321s. They have to maintain a balance in order to minimize their losses and insurance exposure.

GF: Why is the MEA the only airline flying?

Aziz: Well, because it’s a Lebanese carrier. For MEA to stay alive, they have to fly. They also consider it a duty to maintain the link between Lebanon and the outside world. This has always been MEA policy. They only stop when the risk assessment tells them not to fly. This occurred a lot during the civil war (1975-1990) and more recently during the 2006 war. But for the time being, MEA is still flying.

GF: How does flying from and to Beirut still make sense business-wise for the MEA?

Aziz: To be able to fly in such a situation, you need a daily risk assessment conducted at the highest level, with the highest contacts. The head of civil aviation, the chairman of MEA and the head of the security forces have to be in direct contact with the government 24/7. The government is in contact with embassies and foreign ministries. So if anything changes, we can know immediately and take the right decision. Every day we have a coordination meeting. If anything changes, we know about it, but this is time-consuming. Now, if Lebanon is 100% of your operations, you do it because the only alternative is to stop. But for foreign airlines, Beirut is just one of thousands of flights, so they say, “OK, forget about it, when the situation gets better, we will return.”

GF: How does insurance cost evolve in a situation like this?

Aziz: Insurers look at many aspects: the risk management done by the company, by the authorities, their own information, and they adjust their policy accordingly. Sometimes they give higher premiums, sometimes they lower the ceiling, sometimes they say you can continue as you are. And it changes constantly. Today might be one thing, tomorrow another, so we have to keep in touch with them.  

GF: During a war situation, are there other extra costs?

Aziz: Sure. We have to pay employees extra to encourage them to come in and thank them for being here under the circumstances. If they feel they don’t want to come, they still get their salary. We also have special sleeping facilities for the staff to stay close to the airport. Then there are fuel costs. The ton used to be $700; it’s now $1,500. That’s over a 100% increase. And finally, some routes are now longer. For instance, Beirut to Dubai previously took three hours. Now, it’s about five because planes have to go from Dubai to Oman to Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Cyprus to Beirut instead of coming straight. In addition to the extra fuel costs, the longer flight time means more aircraft maintenance and more staff hours. It’s these incremental cost that keep on adding up.

GF: How can a company like MEA compensate for this extra cost?

Aziz: They cannot compensate 100%, but they can offset some of the cost with yield management. If you have many empty seats, you lower the price of the ticket; when the plane gets full, you raise it. It doesn’t recover all the extra costs, but the only alternative would be to stop flying. Even if they suffer some temporary losses, the MEA considers that people will appreciate that they kept flying, and when things return to normal, they will remain loyal customers. We are confident that the future will be bright. This is why we are working day and night to ensure that the airport remains open and that people’s confidence in the airline and the country remains the same, so that whenever things settle down, they know they have a good airport that never lets them down.

GF: Do you see opportunities in this time?

Aziz: Yes, we are using the current situation as an opportunity to accelerate the improvements to the departure and arrival areas we had started last year. Normally, it should take a year. However, the density of travelers is now 20-25% of what it normally is. I think we can finish it in two to three months.

Thanks to the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, trade and economic cooperation between inland China and Southeast Asia are growing fast.

China’s New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor (New ILSTC) is a critical component of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), linking the western inland regions to global maritime routes and—it is hoped—enhancing connectivity with ASEAN countries.

Last year was a very, very good year for the New ILSTC. And momentum is expected to continue in 2026.

The corridor’s rail-sea services handled 1.425 million TEUs of cargo in 2025. That’s up 47.6% year-on-year and surpassing 1 million tons for the first time with some 1,300 to 1,316 categories shipped, including electronics, vehicles, auto parts, and machinery. Trade value between January and October of last year saw combined imports and exports via the New ILSTC reach 1.35 trillion yuan ($196 billion), up 17.9% year-on-year.

“Trade between China and ASEAN has surged since 2017, when the New International Land-Sea Corridor was introduced, with ASEAN’s share of China’s exports surging from 12.4% to 17.6% in 2025,” notes Lynn Song, chief economist, Greater China at ING in Hong Kong. “It seems like there are local plans to continue to expand these logistics channels, which should continue to contribute to trade growth between China and ASEAN overall.”

From Beijing’s perspective, trade growth was nothing short of spectacular in the first two months of this year.

Shipments from China to Southeast Asia in dollar terms surged by 29.4% in January and February. Overall Chinese exports grew by 21.8% during that period, defying a Reuters economists’ poll in December that predicted 7.1% export growth. Chinese imports also increased overall, rising 19.8% during the same period. But China still booked a record $213.6 billion trade surplus for a 25.3% gain over the same period in 2025: a year when the country’s trade surplus hit an all-time high of $1.2 trillion.

“The share of exports from China to ASEAN economies has steadily grown from around 5.5% in 2000 to more than 15% in 2024,” says Professor Christoph Nedopil Wang, director of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University in Brisbane. “However, there was no significant breaking point: rather, it was a general growth in line with the ASEAN economies’ overall growth. Imports from ASEAN countries, meanwhile, have stagnated over the past five years at around 15% of total imports to China.Chongqing is still relatively small, handling about 251,800 TEU or only 0.5% of Shanghai’s 55 million TEU.”

That is expected to change as the Guangxi Pinglu Canal opens for 5,000-ton vessels later this year, offering river-sea access from inland hubs to southern ports and the ASEAN countries.

“Once the Pinglu Canal is opened at the end of 2026, with its 89 million tons annual capacity, Chinese southwestern inland provinces will be better connected to ASEAN economies by reducing transport times from weeks to days, says Nedopil-Wang. “Furthermore, several ASEAN countries, such as Singapore or Malaysia, could identify new opportunities to fill existing agreements with live programs, such as the Singapore-Chongqing Connectivity project.”

The latter was established in 2015 to enhance connectivity between the two countries and also between landlocked western China and ASEAN. Last December, the links grew closer when Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority and China’s National Data Administration signed an MoU for a Digital New ILSTC, focusing on AI, blockchain, data analytics, and digital economy cooperation. The same month, the People’s Bank of China provided a further boost to the New ILSTC when it outlined a raft of financial support measures aimed at expanding supply chain finance and infrastructure funding for the project, encouraging the use of digital renminbi for settlement and aiming to broaden intra-Asian trade.

“The Land-Sea corridor is likely further strengthening opportunities for China’s exporters,” observes Nedopil-Wang. “But to what extent ASEAN members will benefit from improved export opportunities to China through the corridor depends on their ability to provide attractive industrial or consumer goods relevant to the southwestern regions of China.”

The UAE has carefully crafted a position for itself as a hub for digital assets. Can the good times last?

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) positions itself as a center for digital assets, a market that may be worth up to $500 billion over the next few years by some estimates. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are already acknowledged as global hubs, based not only on quality of regulatory oversight but their early strategic bet on tokenization as the basis of a new financial infrastructure.

But the UAE’s pioneering moment may soon end. The US-Israeli war against Iran, launched in February, has sown doubts as to whether the Persian Gulf monarchies are the haven of stability they claim to be. And for all the regional talk of tokenization and fintech, longestablished financial centers elsewhere are taking the lead in drawing up a unified set of rules to govern crypto regulation. If a clear regulatory framework emerges, it could reshape crypto market dynamics at the UAE’s expense.

In January, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the world’s largest financial market, said it was launching a platform for 24×7 trading and on-chain settlement of tokenized securities, a development some analysts predict will spark a revolution in capital markets. The move by NYSE could leave some other financial centers behind as liquidity and institutional investors shift to more efficient, always-on markets.

Financial centers, including London, Singapore, and Hong Kong, are also evaluating tokenization.

And other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states, notably Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain, are increasingly embracing tokenization, backed by financial war chests of various sizes.

Management consultancy Kearney earlier this year estimated that by 2030, close to $500 billion of assets across the GCC could be placed on-chain, the most fertile ground being in private markets, public equities, funds of tokenized sovereign wealth fund (SWF) assets, commodities, real estate, and bank deposits. Tokenizing these assets would unlock some of the GCC’s most prized but difficult-to-access holdings, such as SWF assets and family offices. Tokenizing listed securities, for example, could simplify cross-border transactions and open markets to fractional ownership, a move likely to attract global investors looking to participate at smaller ticket sizes.

UAE real estate is already on the road to wider tokenization. Last year, Dubai launched a real estate tokenization sandbox pilot, the first regulatory body in the region to adopt blockchain-based tokenization for fractional ownership. The initiative coordinates with the emirate’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), which monitors issuance, trading, and custody, together with the Central Bank of the UAE, which ensures compliance with national financial regulations.

For some analysts, the holy grail would be the tokenization of the GCC’s oil output. In January, Bahrain and UAE-based Gulf Energy Exchange announced plans for the first oil-backed stablecoin, aptly named OIL1, subject to regulatory approval by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB). OIL1 is to be collateralized by verified reserves of Persian Gulf crude oil and pegged to the US dollar, creating a link between the energy sector and digital assets.

Regulatory Oases

To stay competitive, however, the UAE will need to continue innovating, given that adoption of tokenization and digital assets is moving at breakneck speeds. Tokenization’s market growth “looks like an express ride to the top of the Burj Khalifa,” Kearney noted, a reference to the world’s tallest building, located in Dubai.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi operate offshore free-zone financial centers—the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) and Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM)—both of which have taken leading roles in ensur ing the UAE remains at the forefront of digital-asset innovation, says Jason Barsema, president and co-founder of Chicago-based Halo Investing. “The UAE’s ascendancy as the destination for digital assets is rooted in a unique policy-to-production approach that separates it from purely speculative markets,” he notes.

The UAE’s Securities and Commodities Authority offers a comprehensive regulatory regime straddling the central bank while Dubai’s onshore VARA, Abu Dhabi’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA), and the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), which are offshore entities, operate at the local emirate level.

This regulatory landscape gives international investors a degree of comfort that governance standards are aligned with global legal standards. Its core advantage is a sophisticated yet “pragmatic regulatory architecture that offers something most emerging markets still lack: clarity,” says Shivkumar Rohira, CEO of EMEA at financial services firm Klay Group.

“Dubai’s VARA, alongside the DFSA in the DIFC, has built a tiered, activity-based framework that sets out clear permissions for exchanges, custodians, and token issuers, while tightening standards around AML, investor protection, and market integrity,” he adds.

Abu Dhabi’s ADGM has gone further in positioning itself as an institutional-grade venue with a regime that accommodates tokenized securities, funds, derivatives, and increasingly, staking, among other yield-generating activities.

“This integration keeps Dubai and Abu Dhabi the default GCC base for global digital-asset players even as regional rivals race to catch up,” says Rohira.

Even within the UAE, however, there are fundamental differences of approach between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, notes Martin Leinweber, director of Digital Asset Research and Strategy at MarketVector. The result is a layered system that gives firms the flexibility to structure licensing around their business model, not the other way around.

“What strikes me most from an institutional perspective,” Leinweber says, “is how deliberately the UAE constructed its regulatory architecture at a time when most major financial centers were still debating whether crypto deserved a framework at all.”

In creating VARA, Dubai established a purpose-built regulator with its own mandate, rulebooks, and enforcement capacity rather than grafting virtual asset oversight onto an existing regulator. In comparison, Abu Dhabi took a complementary path through ADGM’s FSRA, he notes.

Other GCC States Wake Up

While the UAE may be in the lead, other GCC states are finding a place for tokenization in their financial markets as well.

Bahrain’s regulatory framework is closest to the UAE’s, but with the CBB as sole authority for virtual assets. That includes a regulatory sandbox where firms can test and modify digital asset models; Rain was the first crypto-asset firm to be accepted into the program, in 2017.

Bahrain FinTech Bay, the island kingdom’s fintech center, acts as an incubator, bringing together startups, regulators, and financial institutions.

Qatar is taking a more gradual approach; the Qatar Financial Center (QFC) is over seen by the QFC Regulatory Authority, which has recognized tokenized assets, custody, and transfer within a virtual assets framework under the QFC’s jurisdiction.

The GCC’s largest economy, Saudi Arabia, remains underdeveloped when it comes to digital asset readiness, Kearney found, but the authorities have signaled openness to some use cases, including tokenized deposits and stablecoins. Further announcements are expected this year as tokenization becomes embedded in regional capital markets. The Kingdom is home to the buy-now-pay-later juggernaut Tabby, which was valued at $4.5 billion following a recent secondary share sale.

Oman, which recently announced it was establishing a financial center, is moving toward a digital assets framework under the auspices of the Central Bank of Oman, in compliance with existing AML standards. Conversely, Kuwait has adopted the GCC’s most restrictive digital assets policy. Several crypto activities increasingly accepted in other markets, including payments, trading, mining, and tokenization, are banned. The government cites market stability and risk as the primary reasons; the Kuwaiti stock market has a history of instability and volatility.

Although the NYSE threatens to jump ahead of the competition, it has done so against a backdrop of regulatory uncertainty; there is yet to be a definitive set of laws as to how tokenized assets are classified, issued, held, and traded in the US. Dubai and Abu Dhabi may be ahead of that curve, but even they have work to do to allay wider concerns, as does the rest of the GCC.

Those concerns, underscored by the conflict with Iran, center around the question of whether the GCC is a long-term stable environment for global investors. And with the US on the cusp of approving the CLARITY Act, creating a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets, and Europe moving toward unified regulation, investors may prove more inclined to opt for the safety of more established financial markets. If so, the UAE’s outsized position in the digital assets market may not be as secure as it would like.