Our two New York senators have suddenly lost their tongues.

Neither Senator Schumer, the man who will run toward any microphone, nor Senator Clinton, aka “I have something to say about everything,” has had much to say about a new foray into America by the fearsome Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai, the Middle East shark who is coming in for a second bite after his successful Dubai Ports World attack of last year.

After buying sensitive access to world and American ports last year, Sheik Mo, the prime minister and vice president of the United Arab Emirates and the ruler of Dubai — also known as the man who will never be turned down by an American president — is now planning to get into the American defense-related aerospace industry and airports.

Unlike the fuss made over Dubai Ports World last year, there is hardly a ripple of protest from American businessmen and politicians about this new offering of sensitive security access to a highly suspect Arab ruler with close ties to Iran.

According to both the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, the Carlyle Group, an American company that is studded with former top American politicians, is in discussions to sell two of its aviation businesses to Dubai Aerospace Enterprise for more than $1.5 billion.

The sheik and his family own everything that matters in Dubai, including all the land. His new targets are Landmark Aviation and Standard Aero Holdings Inc., which provide repair and overhaul services at 33 American airport terminals for small-jet aviation, including some military transports, according to news reports. Their activities include fueling, flight-scheduling services, maintenance operations, and repairs on jet aircraft.

Why is one opaque ruler from a little-known place like Dubai buying access to world seaports and airports with such determination?

And who is Sheik Mo, anyway? What are his family connections to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other states in the region? What is the United Arab Emirates, which includes his principality?

I have lived there for three years and reported on the place for 30. Not once have I ever seen a real interview with Sheik Mo. He is closely managed by a group of equally opaque British and Palestinian Arab expatriate mercenaries who have created a well-crafted image him as a horseman and visionary. In effect virtually nothing reliable is known of the man. Dubai’s population is almost entirely made up of expatriates — at least 300,000 are Iranian citizens. Only 10% are natives of the UAE.

It is an open secret that Iran maintains one of its biggest spying and intelligence operations abroad in Dubai, as do, in all fairness, the CIA, the British, the Russians, and the French.

Almost a whole floor of the American Consulate in the World Trade Center building of Dubai is populated with intelligence agents fluent in Farsi. Iranian spies make their headquarters in an entire floor of the enormous Iranian hospital of Dubai. Many of the captains who sail back and forth on dhows to Iran from Dubai Creek maintain a wife in each port. Farsi is the second language of Dubai, after English.

My friend Gholamreza Aghazadeh told me that Iran would have lost the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s had it not been for the weapons and medicine smuggled in from Dubai’s open ports. “Dubai is the lung through which we breathe,” Mr. Aghazadeh, once Iran’s oil minister and now the head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization, said.

The UAE is made up of absolute monarchies run by sheiks and their families as fiefdoms. No rules exist in the oil-rich Arab desert country.

Dubai’s offshore ports are so tax-free that few know what gets in and what goes out and to where. Dubai’s secret police maintain a life-or-death power over all expatriates. Everyone knows he is only a guest worker. Life can end suddenly. Journalists living there tread carefully.

We do know this about the UAE: It was one of three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. It has been a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. And, according to the FBI, money was transferred to the terrorists behind the attacks of September 11, 2001, through the UAE banking system, which is nothing but a huge money-laundering operation.

Enough of my questions: Perhaps more should come from our representatives in Washington. Hello, Mr. Schumer. Hello, Mrs. Clinton.