A business development manager at Trump Turnberry sent members of the International Association of Golf Tour Operators (IAGTO) a striking solicitation on 22 March. “I can only imagine the impact recent events in the Middle East may be having on your UAE bookings and wider plans,” the manager wrote, offering to redirect disrupted golf tours from the United Arab Emirates to the Ayrshire resort.
“We’ve seen an increase in last-minute bookings for golf and accommodation at Turnberry as a result of changing travel arrangements,” the manager added, inviting tour operators to explore a “stay and play” arrangement.
The pitch was made as Gulf travel had effectively slowed, with hotel prices dropping sharply and operators cancelling bookings across the region as the war entered its fourth week.
The Trump Organisation’s Gulf Footprint
The Trump family business holds such extensive commercial interests across the Gulf that the war carries a distinct financial dimension for the Trump presidency. The Trump Organisation is building an 80‑storey hotel in the UAE and a 2.6 million square metre golf resort in Saudi Arabia’s Diriyah, with a golf club and villas operating in Qatar.
Dar Global, a developer embedded in Gulf government investment networks, paid $21.9 million in Trump name licensing fees to the Trump family business last year alone. Eric Trump, announcing the Saudi projects, said the deals reflected the family’s “confidence in Jeddah as a dynamic, globally relevant city.”
That commercial architecture gave the Turnberry email a sharper edge. A US president’s business was recruiting clients from the fallout of a war the same president ordered.
Presidential War Fought From Afar
Donald Trump oversaw the Iran operation from a makeshift situation room at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, making the conflict the sixth major military action Trump has directed from the property during his second term. The cost of a single golf trip to Turnberry and Aberdeen is estimated at $9.7 million in taxpayer funds.
Donald Trump met British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at Turnberry’s hotel last year, endowing the Scottish resort with diplomatic weight.
The Trump Organisation’s Gulf licensing has generated millions from the governments whose economic welfare the Iran war now threatens.
Here, then, is the model: a US president profits from Gulf stability through licensing fees, wages war in the same Gulf, and dispatches booking solicitations to Gulf tour operators from his Scottish resort. Some may argue the plainspoken name for that is wartime profit-taking.
The Gulf Counts Its Losses
Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor, a leading Dubai hotel proprietor, had openly criticised Donald Trump for initiating military action against Iran, questioning the motivations behind the escalation. “Who gave you the authority to drag our region into a war with #Iran? And on what basis did you make this dangerous decision?”
Al Habtoor had wrote on social media, his anger carrying particular weight given his history as a known advocate for closer UAE-US engagement. He later told the Washington Post: “I blame Trump, but I blame the Iranians more.”
Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, warned that the global economy faces “a major, major threat” from the war’s disruption to oil and gas flows, adding that “no country will be immune to the effects of this crisis if it continues to go in this direction.”
Iranian officials warned that if the US attacks Iran’s power plants, Iran would retaliate against energy and water infrastructure across the Gulf region, including in countries hosting US military bases.
Europe’s Invisible Stake in Gulf Stability
The Iran war entered its fourth week with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, a narrow waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies pass, sending oil prices soaring.
Peter Sand, chief analyst at Xeneta, an ocean and air freight data firm, argues that transiting through the Strait of Hormuz was “completely off the charts for the rest of 2026,” with vessels likely to steer clear and global networks rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope for potentially another year.
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states are among Europe’s largest energy suppliers, and a durable disruption in Gulf security produces a European economic problem with immediate consequences.
Gulf countries privately warned Donald Trump of the dangers of following through with his threats, urging restraint behind closed doors. The European Council called for “a moratorium on strikes against energy and water facilities” and urged “de-escalation and maximum restraint,” a response that acknowledged the crisis without addressing the structural condition producing it.
Unequal Bargain Deserves an Honest Name
The Turnberry email originated from inside the ordinary operations of a US presidential property, and the ordinariness itself is the point.
A business development manager at a US presidential resort reached out to international golf operators to harvest the commercial fallout of a war prosecuted by the resort’s owner, phrasing the solicitation in the cheerful idiom of standard business development.
Al Habtoor’s public fury gave that asymmetry an unusually candid voice. Gulf leaders have long absorbed the price of American security with minimal public complaint, calculating that the protection outweighed the subordination.
If Europe genuinely wants to engage Gulf neighbours as equal partners, it must be willing to name the transactional logic of American security guarantees. And it must build something more equitable in their place, rather than appending calls for restraint to a war Europeans did not choose and cannot stop.
The Turnberry solicitation, filed in some golf tour operator’s inbox on 22 March, may read as a minor corporate document. Treated as evidence, it describes how power and profit circulate in a war that Gulf states entered as bystanders and absorb, four weeks on, as economic casualties.
Keep up with Daily Euro Times for more updates!
Read also:
Gulf Sports Investments and Regional Security
Capitulation by Trade: Why the EU-US Deal Serves Nobody Well
A Hole in One: Bromance, Nostalgia, and Brexit Dividend
