The gulf states are floating on oil but likely in under two decades things like electric cars and thorium reactors will collapse the demand for oil and collapse the price of oil. Dubai has built up enough of a trading economy to withstand the big change. Saudi arabia depends on oil for 90% of their economy. When the price of oil collapses so will Saudi Arabia’s economy. However, likely one of the things that will collapse the price of oil will be dirt cheap electricity—which will in turn make desalination dirt cheap. Dirt cheap desalination makes desert farming doable.
My wag as to why the Israelis are not tooting their horns about water independence is that desalination work pales in comparison to the desalination being done in Gulf States. The Israelis have only got into desalination in a big way in the last ten years. The Gulf states have been the worlds biggest consumers of desalination technology for about five decades. They use their dirt cheap oil and gas to fire their electricity plants that run the desalination plants—so their costs are pretty low. So low that you can see circular green fields from space where the saudis use desalinized water to grow crops. Their costs are still to high to be competitive on a global scale. But food independence is a big deal in that part of the world in the same way energy independence is in much of the rest of the world.
Electric cars?
Thorium reactors?
Just remember that corrupt politicians, bowing to the corrupt "environmental" lobby has the final word.
Forget electric cars running on electricity produced by fairy dust or unicorn methane.