The Islamic Republic, on the other side of the Gulf, is in a serious pickle. After its war with Israel, it is more isolated than ever. Its oil exports are still flowing, but it is struggling to collect the proceeds because America keeps cranking up sanctions on anyone helping it move money. Britain, France and Germany are threatening to restore their own embargoes unless it resumes nuclear negotiations in earnest. That is pushing Iran to find new ways to pay for the foreign goods it so desperately needs. Flooding the Gulf with fruit and veg is one of them. Iran now supplies nine out of ten cauliflowers, tomatoes and watermelons imported by the UAE, a near-monopoly built in just a few years.
Noooooo 
cauliflowers!!
reading the article, it's emirati traders (not iranian traders mind you) buying produce cheap from iran using sanctions as a bargaining chip, paying through customs, mislabelling it as coming from other countries and selling 1/3 of it to other gulf countries such as saudi arabia. the concern is this fraud is displacing imports from "bona fide exporters" such as spain or italy, basically white european countries.
the article also talks about this hurting an UAE food security program where they are employing basically slaves on vertical farms to produce tomatoes in a place where there's almost no water.
Sanctions created market inefficiency. EU and US are to blame for violating the sanctity of free trade