The 40-day war between Israel and the US and Iran shook the Gulf states, which endured missile and drone barrages and a naval blockade from Tehran. Yet nowhere did anxiety rise as sharply as in Bahrain, the small archipelago monarchy that normalized ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords. During the Bahrain saw local support for the Islamic regime in Iran, reflecting social tensions that, combined with a preexisting economic crisis, now threaten to undermine its monarchy.
Bahrain has fewer than one million citizens, yet its society is the Gulf’s most complex. The Sunni Al Khalifa dynasty rules a mostly Shi’ite population, having migrated with its Sunni elite from the Arabian Peninsula 250 years ago, while the Shi’ites have inhabited the islands for centuries.
The migrated elite monopolized state resources, public-sector jobs, and economic opportunities, leaving the indigenous Shi’ites with higher unemployment and poorer conditions.
Whenever socio-economic protests erupt in Bahrain, almost once a decade over the past century, sectarian and historical grievances resurface.
Protesters deem the monarchy a “foreign occupier” and a Saudi proxy.
The regime, in turn, labels Shi’ite opponents as Iran’s fifth column seeking an Iranian-style theocracy, citing Bahrain’s past as an Iranian province – a claim Tehran continues to revive intermittently.
Over the years, both narratives became somewhat self-fulfilling: The opposition came to be led by Shi’ite clerics exiled in Iran, while during the 2011 Arab Spring, Saudi forces crossed the causeway linking the countries to help suppress protests.
The most tangible representation of this tension is the American military base in Juffair, next to the capital Manama. Until 1971, it served Britain, the notorious colonizer, before becoming the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet, which oversees the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula.
For Washington, the base is a strategic asset to counter Iran and the Houthis; for many Bahrainis, it is a colonial remnant protecting their oppressing regime and the “selling” of Muslim land to foreign powers.
Demonstrators have repeatedly demanded the removal of American forces and even attacked the base; the Shiite opposition calls it a “nest of colonialists.”
Normalization with Israel in 2020 was viewed similarly: an arrangement lacking public legitimacy that abandoned Muslims – the Palestinians – for Al Khalifa’s self-preservation. This sentiment intensified after Israel signed a defense pact with Bahrain in 2021 and stationed military representatives in Juffair. Unlike Israel’s warm peace with the UAE, Bahrain kept normalization low-profile. Relations also barely produced economic “peace dividends,” reducing already limited public support.
Bahrain’s exiled opposition, who tried to inflame the public online, is often portrayed as paralleling Bahrainis with Palestinians as indigenous peoples under foreign occupation and repression.
Iranian attacks on Bahrain released all these tensions at once.
Sectarian fault lines under pressure
On the war’s first day, a drone struck the US base in Juffair; videos circulating online showed a passerby cheering the smoke rising from the base with a Shi’ite battle cry. In Shi’ite strongholds, mourning processions for Ali Khamenei turned into clashes with security forces. From exile in Iran, senior Bahraini Shiite cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim called for jihad against the Bahraini monarchy, the United States, and Israel alike.
The pro-Iran demonstrators numbered only dozens or hundreds from Shi’ite circles that routinely protest repression and normalization with Israel. Yet the paranoia of Bahrain’s rulers about a Shi’ite uprising against them has a life of its own. Hence, security forces spread across the country as though the threat came from within.
Bahrain was among the Gulf states most heavily targeted during the war, some saying in retaliation for its ties with Israel, enduring the highest volume of fire relative to its size. Though only about four people were killed, the damage was severe, given that Bahrain is among the world’s most densely populated countries, with some dilapidated infrastructure. Thousands were displaced, often without state-provided alternatives.
All this came atop a deep economic crisis predating the war: Bahrain was the Gulf’s first oil exporter, but also the first whose reserves could no longer sustain it. For the past decade, it has survived on Saudi and Emirati bailout packages and was recently forced to sharply cut water and electricity subsidies.
The war deepened this crisis. Bahrain was forced to suspend operations in its oil and aluminum industries, the sources of most state revenue, as well as development work on Khalij al-Bahrain, a shale oil and gas field discovered in 2018 that is Bahrain’s main hope for economic stabilization.
Iranian strikes also hit Manama’s financial district and an Amazon AI data center, delaying key projects in Bahrain’s search for new revenue.
When the dust settles, all Gulf states will face questions about the potency of their governance and the presence of American bases on their soil. In Bahrain, however, these questions are loaded into a powder keg of historical frustration and economic distress, while the regime lacks the funds needed to “buy” quiet.
Over the past few years, trust between the regime and Shi’ites, shattered in the Arab Spring, has gradually improved: Parliament was restored in 2018, broad pardons were granted to political prisoners, and the government has promoted Bahraini nationalism that is inclusive of Shiites. Yet the war has reversed this relative openness.
Alongside mass arrests, authorities began revoking citizenship from those accused of supporting Iran – an old tool for repressing the Shi’ite majority.
The Sunni-Shi’ite divide is also expected to deepen amid suspicions about Shi’ite loyalty to Iran, even though Shi’ites themselves were among the war’s victims. One Shi’ite woman was killed in Manama, and a drone injured 32 people and caused extensive damage in the Shi’ite town of Sitra, whose residents had demonstrated in support of Iran.
Bahrain’s inability to address economic distress, wartime destruction, and social tension could converge into domestic collapse and unrest.
Although this does not presently endanger normalization with Israel, those ties further damage the monarchy’s detached public image.
Meanwhile, the wealthy UAE signed a $5.4 billion currency-swap agreement with Bahrain to stabilize its finances: Bahrain’s neighbors fear its collapse would further puncture the region’s tranquil “bubble,” already shaken by Iran.
The writer is a guest contributor at Mitvim, a historian specializing in politics and society in the Gulf states, and a research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.