DUBAI—Before the Iran war, 40,000 shipping containers a day moved through Jebel Ali port, a sprawling complex of deep-water piers and warehouses that powered this city-state’s rise from backwater to international powerhouse.

Now, just 1,000 containers pass by the largely vacant docks. Port officials are racing to ramp back up to prewar traffic, but the reality, they say, is that it will take at least a month.

“People are watching to see if this is lasting, will it stick?” said Abdullah Alajaji, chief executive officer of a real-estate brokerage. “We’re expecting continued volatility.”

Dubai became one of the world’s biggest, richest and gaudiest financial centers on the back of a simple idea: In a tumultuous region, it was impervious to conflict—a haven of stability untouched by the wars, geopolitics and upheaval around it. Its meteoric rise was fueled by low taxes, a paternalistic but mostly unobtrusive government and an easy lifestyle of cheap domestic help, luxury homes and poolside evenings for the expatriates who make up 90% of the population.

“You’re at an inflection point in the future for Dubai,” said William Wechsler, the director of Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. “The question is, ‘Are you going to bet against them being successful?’”

Six days after the war started, Ria Karapataki, a Cyprus native, fled Dubai, her home of 15 years and the place where she and her husband started a high-end property-renovation company.

“I panicked,” Karapataki said. The war, she said, “was something we felt would never happen.”

Her first reaction was that the place where she had raised a family and built a business would never be the same. “I thought Dubai was over,” she said.

It was a common reaction in a city that is driven not by the attention-seeking influencers and celebrity chefs but by expatriates who come here to start businesses and take risks for a better lifestyle.

The family took refuge first in Scotland, then in Cyprus, where they own a house. When her sons tired of being away, they returned to their apartment on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, the tree-shaped artificial island jutting into the Persian Gulf, on April 17, a week after an initial ceasefire was announced. Almost immediately, alerts sounded on Karapataki’s phone, warning of possible attacks.

The alerts didn’t frighten her as much as before, she said, and her fears about the future have eased. Her company is having trouble obtaining building supplies because of the shutdown at Jebel Ali, but that is temporary, she said.

None of the renovation projects her firm began before the war has been canceled. Several teachers at her son’s school have departed, but none of her friends has decided to leave for good. Her book club has resumed regular gatherings.

Many other residents have returned since a ceasefire was first declared in mid-April, but the aftershocks are still being felt. Hotel occupancy rates have plummeted well below the normal off-season levels. The property market, which was at all-time highs before the war, is stagnant. Some institutional investors have pulled their money out of Dubai, and deal activity has slowed.

A financial-sector executive said the war accelerated her timetable for leaving Dubai. The United Arab Emirates champions its openness to foreign investment and entrepreneurs, she said, but its huge sovereign-wealth funds and tightly knit Emirati elite mean outsiders are always competing against the government. She is seeking a U.S. visa, hoping to move to New York.

“Generally, those who’d arrived more recently were the ones who left,” said Jeremy Savory, a Dubai resident from Britain whose company assists clients seeking to secure second passports and overseas residency in Dubai and other tax havens. “Those who have been around for a while are incredibly bullish.”

The property market is slowly beginning to recover after transactions plunged 80%, said Alajaji, the founder of Driven Properties, a real-estate brokerage. Before the war, half of all sales were “off plan.” Investors bought unfinished apartments or homes years in advance, expecting values would rise when construction finished.

Those sales have almost collapsed, he said. With European tourists staying away, a large source of first-time buyers has disappeared. Some residents—mainly Indians, Russians, Chinese and Emiratis—are bargain shopping for investment properties, with prices down 10% to 15%.

“Dubai has always thrived on outside money,” said Alajaji. “There needs to be a continuous flow of tourists becoming residents, and with a peace deal, there’s an argument that you’ll see more transactions, more flow.”

Emirati officials say that Dubai is already recovering.

“Whoever thought they could strangle the U.A.E.’s economy was ignorant of its very nature,” said Sheikh Abdulla bin Mohamed bin Butti Al Hamed, head of the Dubai media office. “It is a global center of gravity that cannot be besieged, disrupted or opposed by any party.”

Dubai is already adapting. With cargo ships blocked from Jebel Ali, the smaller ports of Khor Fakkan and Fujairah on its eastern coast, outside the Persian Gulf, have become an unexpected lifeline for the U.A.E. Truck traffic at Gulf of Oman ports surged during the conflict. Long lines of heavy vehicles laden with shipping containers are now a regular sight on the highway.

“Our teams are primed and ready to manage the increase in vessel calls once shipping schedules begin to normalize,” said Ahmad Yousef Al-Hassan, chief executive of DP World GCC, which manages Jebel Ali.

Emirati officials have announced plans to expand the ports, seeking to reduce their vulnerability to another blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Since the war, the government has announced a flood of new projects and assistance programs aimed at jump-starting the economy and easing the impact of the slowdown.

But earlier in June, a beach and concert venue hugely popular with expats, Barasti Dubai, announced that it was closing for renovations until next year. The Burj al Arab, the city’s famous sail-shaped hotel, also closed for renovations after it was targeted by an Iranian attack in February.

At the Fairmont Hotel on the Palm, almost all signs of damage from an Iranian drone that struck near the front entrance on the first day of the war are gone, but so are many of the guests. Instead of the customary 60% to 70% occupancy rate in off-season June, the hotel is less than 40% full, the manager said.

Rooms at the four-star hotel were recently available for $146 a night.

At the Atlantis resort, also on the Palm, more than 700 hotel employees were laid off during the war, around 10% of the staff, a person familiar with the decision said. The hotel promised to try to help them find jobs elsewhere, but for many workers the move means that visas tied to employment are canceled and they must return to their home countries.

The hotel didn’t respond to a request for comment on the firings.

Dubai has weathered downturns before.

The 2008 financial crisis burst Dubai’s real-estate bubble, forcing a bailout from Abu Dhabi, the U.A.E. capital with much deeper oil reserves. But when the Arab Spring protests broke out a few years later, Dubai benefited, as investors looked for a haven. Dubai experienced one of the fastest global recoveries from the Covid-19 pandemic in late 2021, transforming the crisis into an economic boom.

The U.A.E.’s sovereign-wealth funds managing over $1.8 trillion in assets provide a massive cushion that allow it to avoid external borrowing, subsidize local businesses and inject liquidity into the domestic economy.

“People are still going to restaurants, meetings are happening,” said Ebtesam Al Ketbi, president of the Emirates Policy Center, a U.A.E. think tank. “The conversation is not, ‘Should we leave Dubai?’ It is more, ‘Where are the opportunities?’ and ‘What is the right timing?’”

Dubai Mall, one of the largest in the world, was crowded with shoppers on a recent weekend, exhorted by optimistic and patriotic signs suggesting the war was nothing but a bad memory. “A New Chapter Is Unfolding,” read one. “Keep Calm and Skate on,” read another as dozens of skaters circled the mall’s huge ice rink.

Foot traffic has returned, but sales are still well below prewar levels, merchants said. “We’ve just had less customers,” said Essa Cabauatan, a sales assistant at AAPE Now, a trendy clothing store without a single shopper on a recent day. “I think it will come back, though.”

The store averaged sales before the war of around $21,000 a day, which fell by 90% during the war, he said. Now customers are spending only about $6,800 a day on hoodies, T-shirts and other merchandise.

He said he feels lucky if daily sales hit $10,000.

Write to David S. Cloud at david.cloud@wsj.com