Ann: Directors & Key Managements Intention with Rights Offer, page-47

I believe what you have said is quite true, The company with Joe at it helm have not deviated from their ultimate goal of operating a P1 plant.
I think they have tried exceptionally hard to get this over the line. If you are experienced Fenners with working in UAE your presumption may well be spot on and they (the UAE) are dragging their feet.
If they are taking a broader view of UAE long term green industry, what doe that actually mean? . i mean wouldn't LPD tech be a big part of their long term localised green industry.

The announcement of the credit raise explains again that LMAX and LOHMAX is unproven beyond pilot stage, that is the biggest risk for investors that the tech will fail at commercial scale, they actually state this risk, and this may simply be the ultimate stumbling block.
Where are we in the scheme of things . Firstly plan A was to obtain finance in parallel for the P1 plant and the mine operations, on not achieving this outcome in previously expected time lines, Plan B was put in place to sequentially get the mine going to help provide an income stream and then reattack the instigation of P1 financing.
I believe we cannot sell the stockpiles at their current grade because of economic concerns with lepidolite refining in China, which would have been our only possible outlet of sales.
I am guessing but I think we have now fallen back to plan C to sequentially complete the arrangement of finance for P1 first, find a strategic partner and fund lender due diligence.
Why we needed to raise at this time to do this I am not sure, I think they are keeping this reason close to their chests.
Perhaps they thought it better to raise now than risk raising if there was a possibility of the share price falling to 0.1 cent in which case it would be probably impossible to raise.

In any event it seems more than likely this plan is the closing stages of LPD's effort to achieve the finance required. Each shareholder needs to decide to fight on or bailout.