Bravo star Caroline Stanbury has insisted that she feels “safer” leaving the U.S. to return home to Dubai amid the Iran War.
“I mean, I just want to put it into perspective as well, actually,” Stanbury, 49, told PageSix’s “Virtual Reali-Tea” podcast in an interview recorded on Friday, March 6. “This is quite interesting. There were 600 missiles, 500 drones intercepted and I was in Austin on the 1st of March, 24 hours before the mass shooting — so in all of this war so far, we have had three deaths.”
International reports suggest that six people have been killed and 122 have been wounded in the United Arab Emirates since the Iran War began on February 28.
“I think there were 14 people injured in Austin and I’m not sure how many people died. [Four people died and 15 were killed in the Austin bar attack.] And there’s been two other shootings since then in America,” Stanbury noted in her latest podcast interview. “So let’s just put it in perspective. I still feel safer there than I do in most European or American cities right now.”
The Traitors season 4 star revealed on March 1 that she was stranded in Los Angeles while her twin sons, Zack and Aaron, were at home in Dubai. (Stanbury shares the twins and daughter Yasmin with her ex-husband Cem Habib. She married her current husband, Sergio Carrallo, in 2021.)
“Thank you so much for all the amazing messages I am getting — I am currently in L.A, which is not ideal because my sons are in Dubai,” Stanbury revealed in a video on her Instagram Story. “But they are safe and I feel very comfortable with where they are and they feel very comfortable. Obviously, I would like to get back as soon as I can but that’s not possible right now.”
Since then, Stanbury confirmed to the “Virtual Reali-Tea” podcast that Habib has been staying with the twins.
“Again, I have two 16-year-old boys and, obviously, I know the severity of the situation but thank god, being teenagers, they’re like, ‘Mom, calm down. We’re fine, stay over there,’” she said. “So it wasn’t like they were in this giant disaster zone and having a heart attack while I was sitting over here in L.A.”
Stanbury now plans to return to Dubai once direct flights from L.A. to the region resume on March 15. The Ladies of London alum considered trying to make her way home by flying into Doha, Qatar, only to discover that the trip would come with its own challenges.
“The flights are the flights,” she explained. “I can get to Doha now on another airline but if I get to Doha, the airspace there is closed. So I’d rather stay put and wait it out. It’s only another week.”
Stanbury moved from London to Dubai when then-husband Habib was offered a job in the United Arab Emirates in 2016. She later starred on two seasons of The Real Housewives of Dubai before Bravo paused the series in 2024.
During a February 2025 appearance on Vicki Gunvalson’s “My Friend, My Soulmate, My Podcast,” Stanbury suggested that Real Housewives stars “never really know” about their future in the Bravoverse.
“Everyone always tells you, ‘Don’t rely on Housewives,’ and so I think that’s really important. It’s something I learned from [Ladies of London]. It can be taken, it can go at any time,” she acknowledged. “I don’t think a lot of people saw us being paused, which, we’re ‘paused,’ not ‘cancelled.’”
