Reality television personality Caroline Stanbury says she has been unable to reunite with her teenage sons in Dubai as Iranian missile strikes and regional airspace closures disrupt travel across the Middle East.
Stanbury, 49, a cast member on Bravo’s “Real Housewives of Dubai,” said she has been stranded in the United States roughly 17 hours by air travel away from her children while tensions escalate in the region. Her twin sons remain in Dubai while she attempts to arrange travel amid widespread flight cancellations.
Stanbury shares three children with her former husband, Turkish financier Cem Habib. Both parents were traveling for work when the strikes began, leaving the teenagers temporarily on their own as military activity intensified across the Gulf.
“Obviously, it’s not ideal for anyone to be separated from their children in something so serious as this and so unpredictable, so unprecedented,” Stanbury told Fox News Digital. She added that she had long considered the United Arab Emirates one of the safest places for her family during the more than a decade they have lived there.
The television personality said she has kept in constant contact with her sons as the situation unfolded.
When the boys heard explosions in the distance, Stanbury said she advised them to move away from windows and take precautionary shelter in the garage with a mattress. “There’s not a lot you can do. ... I’m still 17 hours away,” she said.
Stanbury also addressed the situation on social media, telling followers she was struggling to secure travel for her children.
“Still can’t get a flight to Dubai 😩 really want to get my kids out to me now let’s see I keep booking them on flights,” she wrote in a recent post on social media.
According to Stanbury, her sons initially appeared unfazed by the unfolding events.
“First of all, they’re teenage boys,” she said. “So luckily for me, I think at the beginning, you know, it was kind of like, ‘Whoa, mom, calm down, everything’s fine.’”
By the second night, however, the ongoing blasts, later identified as defensive systems intercepting missiles, made the situation more unsettling. Stanbury said her sons began following news reports closely and expressed a desire to reunite with a parent.
The travel disruptions come amid a broader regional escalation following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets over the weekend. Iran responded with missile attacks targeting Israel and several Gulf states, including the United Arab Emirates.
The conflict has disrupted commercial aviation throughout the Middle East. Aviation analytics firm Cirium reported that through Monday, roughly 13,000 flights scheduled to depart or arrive in the region were canceled after the strikes began.
The U.S. Department of State has also urged American citizens in several countries, including the UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Oman, to depart using available commercial transportation due to “serious safety risks,” according to a statement posted by the department’s Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs.
Stanbury is best known for her role on Bravo’s “Real Housewives of Dubai,” which premiered in 2022 and follows the lives of affluent expatriates living in the UAE. Before joining the franchise, she gained prominence on the Bravo reality series “Ladies of London,” which aired from 2014 to 2017.
