Dubai had grand plans to tow a massive iceberg thousands of miles from Antarctica to its desert shores, promising 100,000-year old pristine water to its millions of residents. More than 8 years have passed and they did get ice from the arctic but only to cool fancy cocktails.
By Sayan Chakravarty – LuxuryLaunches.com
July 31, 2025
In the blistering heat of the United Arab Emirates, where fresh water is more precious than oil, a fantastical idea once captured global attention. Around 2017, Abdulla Alshehi, an Emirati businessman and author, proposed a staggering solution to the region’s water scarcity: towing an iceberg from Antarctica all the way to the Persian Gulf. The plan sounded like something out of science fiction, yet it was grounded in a very real and growing problem.
The UAE, with its limited natural freshwater sources and ever-expanding population, has long relied on energy-intensive desalination plants to meet its needs. Alshehi’s vision aimed to deliver an alternative, which included ancient, pure, and naturally formed water, harvested straight from the bottom of the earth.
The project involved identifying a massive iceberg near Antarctica’s edge, attaching it to a specially equipped tugboat, and dragging it more than 5,000 miles across the Indian Ocean, as pointed out by a report by the The National. Upon arrival near the coast of Fujairah, the iceberg would be anchored offshore, slowly melting under the desert sun. The water would then be collected, filtered, and added to the national supply.