Iran conflict traps migrant workers in impossible choice between danger and poverty

Mohammad Abdullah Al Mamun had spent fifteen years in Saudi Arabia, most of it away from his son. They had met once—a few days together in a life otherwise measured in phone calls and wire transfers. This year was supposed to be different. He had saved enough to build a larger house back in Bangladesh, enough to finally stay home. On March 8, a missile struck his workers' camp. He died from severe burns weeks later, arriving home in a coffin instead of the man his family had been waiting for.

He was one of at least twenty-four foreign workers killed across the Middle East after the United States and Israel went to war with Iran in February. The conflict has exposed a brutal arithmetic that millions of migrant laborers face every day: the wages in the Gulf are far higher than anything available at home, but the danger is real and the protections are thin. Tens of millions of foreign workers have built the modern economies of the Gulf Arab states—the oil facilities, the construction sites, the infrastructure that runs on their labor in scorching heat and long hours. Yet many do not fully share in the prosperity they have created. Now they are trapped between two forms of devastation: stay and risk their lives, or leave and watch their families sink deeper into poverty.

Mamun's widow, Sadia Islam Sarmin, was left with the question that haunts millions of other families: "We don't know what we will do next." The conflict has driven up prices for fuel, fertilizer, and basic goods across Asia. Remittances from Gulf workers represent about one percent of India's gross domestic product, three to five percent for Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, and nearly ten percent for Nepal. Those money transfers are no longer luxuries—they are survival. Household incomes are strained. Governments are desperate for foreign currency to buy oil and gas. The money that workers send home has never been more vital, and never more threatened.

The workers most at risk are those doing what one labor advocate called the "most dirty, dangerous and difficult" jobs. A twenty-seven-year-old Bangladeshi factory worker in Qatar labors through twelve-hour shifts while missiles fly overhead. He earns less than four hundred dollars a month and sends two-thirds of it home. When alarms sound, workers go to a designated room—not a proper shelter, just a room. "We have no choice but to keep working," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The Coalition for Labor Justice for Migrants in the Gulf reported that few workers had access to bomb shelters and many were stranded by the conflict. Eight mariners were killed at sea. Three Indian workers were injured in the United Arab Emirates when an Iranian drone sparked a fire at an oil facility in early April, the first attack on the UAE since a fragile ceasefire took hold.

The ceasefire is fragile. Negotiations to end the war have repeatedly stalled. Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for global oil and gas, and says it will only reopen it if the war ends and the United States lifts its blockade. The Gulf economies face a bleak outlook—exports bottled up, key energy facilities damaged, the fighting potentially resumable. Iran has rejected demands from President Donald Trump.

For workers, the choice between staying and leaving is not really a choice at all. Ahmed al-Aliyli, a taxi driver in Qatar, has not sent money home to his family in Egypt for two months. He once earned as much as three thousand dollars a month. Now his income has plunged to a third of that as the war has disrupted travel. "We are the collateral damage of this war," he said. A slowdown in construction and real estate will hit migrant workers directly. Workers from Bangladesh and Pakistan are especially vulnerable because they are often employed informally, without fixed contracts. Work permits are frequently tied to a single employer, leaving workers effectively stranded if they try to leave. Some employers have already begun using the conflict as cover to withhold wages, deny leave, or carry out arbitrary dismissals.

Marlene Flores, a Filipina worker in Qatar, feels the shudder each time a missile is intercepted. But the tax-free pay and health insurance make it feel safer, in a way, than the Philippines, which has declared a national energy emergency. "It's not easy for me to say," she admitted. "But I would really stay here." Jeremiah Supan, a Filipino caregiver in Israel, continues caring for two elderly charges despite near-daily missile alerts, sometimes dashing out for food or medicine despite the danger. He questions whether his own family could survive if he returns to the Philippines. "I know that in the blink of an eye, one can die," he said. "But what life shall we return to?"

Mamun's mother, Shahida Khatun, had urged her son to come home when the war began. In his last call, he promised to pay for his younger siblings' studies, to build a larger house, to return for good that spring. "The pain of losing a child," she said. "There are no words to describe the agony." Now his family is struggling to recover his wages and piece together a life without him. The choice that was made for Mamun—to stay, to work, to die far from home—is the same choice millions of others are making every day, knowing that either path leads to a form of loss.