When the United Arab Emirates appointed Omar Sultan Al Olama as the world's first minister of state for artificial intelligence in 2017, he promised to turn the United Arab Emirates into the world's most prepared country for AI. Only six years later, Al Olama was listed on TIME magazine's inaugural TIME100 AI list and Abu Dhabi was well underway in implementing its digital strategy . However, after the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February, the UAE became one of Iran's key targets :