Welcome to Morning Joe on this Friday, March 6th, and we begin with breaking news in the war with Iran.

The push to punish Iran is expanding from the battlefront to the banking system.

Morning Joe has learned that the United Arab Emirates moved forward early this morning on its threat to freeze billions of dollars in Iranian assets.

That's according to a top official in the region speaking with Joe.

The UAE has long been a financial hub for Iran and its business interests seeking to avoid Western sanctions.

The Wall Street Journal had reported that such a move by UAE officials would sever a key economic

lifeline for Iran and cut off its access to foreign capital and trade.

The Iranians who have fired over 1,000 missiles into the UAE have

suffered a sharp economic downturn that was responsible for public demonstrations that led up

to the American and Israeli attacks on that country.

David Ignatius, we're going to get into the specifics of the military side of the war,

but the journal had reported that if the UAE went through on this,

it would have a crippling effect on their economy because they've used the UAE as a conduit

to avoid Western sanctions, that this would severely limit currency, their ability to get foreign currency and trade.

I'm curious now that the UAE has moved forward with this, what impact do you see it having?

So, Joe, I think it'll have both political impact and economic impact. The economic is obvious. The UAE holds enormous volumes of Iranian assets. It's the place where Iran does business. And so just in economic terms, it will squeeze Iran at a time when it needs to have access to its money and assets.

Politically, it's significant as a sign that Iran's strategy of attacking the UAE and other Gulf countries has totally backfired.

The Iranians were hoping that by launching missiles and drones at key

U.S.-UA.E cities early in the war, there now been over a thousand drones launched on the

UAE, they would intimidate the Emirates into basically stepping back from the war, not supporting the U.S. and Israel.

And the opposite has happened.

Emirates have gotten angrier.

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