The view from Bahrain
An insecure and Shiaphobic monarchy struggles to face its worst fears
Even before the war started, it was easy to get thrown in a Bahraini prison for saying the wrong thing. In this small nation in the middle of the Persian Gulf, you could be arrested for contradicting the Quran, blowing the whistle on corporate malfeasance, or accusing the government of corruption. On January 8, Ebrahim Sharif, the former leader of the leftist Wa’ad party who was imprisoned after supporting the revolt against our monarchy in 2011, was sent back to jail: this time, he was sentenced to prison after saying that Arab states were not doing enough to support Palestinians.
Of course the vast majority of Bahrainis, like the vast majority of people in this region, support the cause of Palestinian liberation. Sharif’s convictions underline the deep contradictions at the heart of this little archipelago — home to the “Fifth Fleet,” a major United States military asset in the region, and an ally of Washington — Bahrain is governed by a Sunni ruling family with close ties to Saudi Arabia that systematically disenfranchises and represses the majority of its citizens. Quickly forgotten by Western liberals who praised the democratizing power of the “Arab Spring,” the country was home to an especially perverse and tragic chapter that revealed the true nature of power in the region. At the beginning of 2026, Sharif was put back in jail for saying something that almost everybody thinks.
Then, on February 28, the United States and Israel attacked Iran. This was deeply unsettling here, and not just because the Islamic Republic retaliated by striking the US Navy base near the capital, Manama. For hundreds of years, Bahrain’s royal family has viewed the native Shia majority with deep suspicion; since 1979, alleged sympathies for the Islamic Republic have been used to justify a crackdown on any dissident, whether Iran has anything to do with the issue or not. Now Iran has been made into the issue – by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu – and forced the government’s uneasy relationship with its own population into focus. Apparently, the population has failed to demonstrate the appropriate amount of sympathy for our putative allies, and the royals have responded with a deadly crackdown.
You may have seen a video of Iranian drones striking US assets in Bahrain in February, with nearby locals cheering on the attacks. After those clips went viral, the government started slapping weighty treason charges on everyday citizens, and the Public Prosecution is claiming that Bahrainis “conspired with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).” Locals have been arrested and tortured for social media posts.
There has not been, and there never will be, a reliable poll that asks Bahrainis the question: “Who do you want to win this war?” But our belief, based on the type of investigation that is possible, is that if forced to choose a majority of citizens would prefer that Iran “win” this conflict, over Israel and the United States. At the very least, it is easy to find people from all walks of life who say so. This is despite the fact that the IRGC is attacking Bahraini military assets and civilian infrastructure. One would expect the disenfranchised Shia majority to be especially disgusted with the attack on Iran, whether they “support” the Islamic Republic or not.1 But even members of the relatively privileged Sunni minority, more likely to support the government, have a hard time mustering any sympathy for Trump or Netanyahu.
“Without a doubt, I, and most Sunnis, would rather see the Iranians win,” said Abdulrahman, a 26-year-old Bahraini working in the local hospitality sector, who like every Bahraini in this article asked that real names not be used. “Sunnis are overwhelmingly on Iran’s side. I can say that even while they’re bombing us. Only utter loyalists on the fringes will pick America,” he said, quickly adding that he had no love for Iran’s system. “Also, why would anyone root for Israel to win anything?”
In this context, the royal family is prosecuting citizens for displays of sympathy for a close neighbor that has been attacked without provocation. Criticism of the US and Israel is now prohibited in the public sphere. Since the beginning of the war, the monarchy has imposed a media blackout and banned the sharing of images of explosions and their aftermath.
Ebrahim Sharif has spoken openly about his experiences in 2011, and his time in prison. In jail, he was tortured and forced to kiss the portrait of the kings of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.2 But he was not able to comment for this story. We, the two authors, are also using pseudonyms. One woman and one man, one Shia and one Sunni, we are afraid of how we might be punished for saying things that everyone knows.
This war began during Ramadan, which made everything especially surreal. Daily rhythms were already disjointed by the fast, when both fear and uncertainty were added to the mix. Each morning and night were punctuated with air raid sirens, the loud booms of intercepted drones and missiles, and shockwaves from the occasional hit.
Your level of panic would depend on both your background and your location in the country. Shia are more used to conflict here, in general; but those living in the Sunni stronghold of Riffa were shaken by a large number of explosions, because interceptors were launched from Isa Air Base. Residents of Juffair, home to the all-important Fifth Fleet, are generally foreigners. Many “expats,” especially those from the West, quickly left the country.
On the first day of the conflict, things felt almost too normal. A few of us didn’t believe it was really going to happen. Some people went to work before the strikes here began (around 11:48am) and the government suspended all schools and instructed its employees to work from home. They set up an emergency warning system, which made everyone’s phones blast “doot! doot! doot!” It wasn’t long before we learned to turn these off, so that we could sleep.
Black humor began to abound in personal conversations, but online, discussions were stifled by the media blackout. Many people shared generic statements like, “May God protect this nation,” an obvious performance to pre-empt any suspicions of sympathizing with Iran. It was clear we had to prove that we are not secret traitors. Some citizens started adding their names to lists pledging allegiance to the King. On official media, the government began to repeat the statement: “If you are neutral, you are siding with the enemy.”
On March 9, homes on Sitra Island were damaged, and dozens were wounded by what state media claimed was an Iranian drone strike. A rare retraction was issued on March 21, however, when the government admitted that the explosion was in fact caused by a misfired Patriot missile. A source in the Bahrain Defence Force (BDF) has claimed that the March 5 attack on Bapco, the national oil company, did not originate from Iran, and that this fact is known by authorities. The speculation is that it was Israel, but there is no way for us to know.
In March, the government began arresting people, and publicly shaming others for posting videos of attack sites. Full names and photos of alleged offenders went up on the Ministry of the Interior’s website and social media. On March 19 Mohamed al-Mosawi, 32, went out with his friends, was arrested at a random checkpoint and later died in police custody.
Whether or not they have posted anything online, Shia fear 2011-style reprisals: mass firings, targeted harassment campaigns and general discrimination. “I’m really worried about being fired from my job,” Noora, a teacher and Shia Muslim, said. “I worked so hard to get this position, studied for years at my personal expense and worked my way up the ranks. What if they suddenly decide to let go of the Shia in this school?”
Bahrain has a lot of malls, and a lot of freeways. If you ignored the population, it might look more like suburban Arizona than the version of the “Arab” world you see in Hollywood movies. Until the April 8 ceasefire, people tried to live their normal lives as much as possible, preferring to stay close to home. Air raid warnings would advise “citizens and residents” to stay clear of roads. Even with Bahrain’s reliance on imports for most basic commodities, the shelves have stayed mostly full at the grocery store, though prices are increasing.
But in a more profound sense, the situation is obviously precarious. The economy has been plunged into crisis. And a new wave of sectarian tension is on the rise – just the kind of thing the government has always cultivated in moments in which it feels threatened. No matter how this war ends, it will disrupt the fragile, cruel and stupid order imposed on the country after the uprising in 2011.
In 1782 the Bani Utbah Sunni tribal confederation, led by the Al-Khalifa clan, invaded the islands now known as Bahrain. They quickly established dominance over the majority Shia archipelago. Khalifa rule was reinforced by the British in 1820, when they signed an agreement making Bahrain a protectorate.
That arrangement held for 150 years until 1971, when the British granted Bahrain formal independence. The State of Bahrain was born, and Isa bin Salman al-Khalifa ascended to the throne soon after. A new constitution, adopted in 1973, paved the way for elections to the National Assembly. This experiment in democracy was cut short, however, when Isa introduced a draconian State Security Law. The law was designed by Ian Henderson, the British head of Bahrain’s General Directorate for State Security and a veteran of the Mau Mau Crisis.3
At the time, Bahrain had a strong leftist movement, composed of Maoists and orthodox Communists. In response to the State Security Law, leftists and Islamists came together in the Assembly and refused to ratify the legislation. Isa suspended the Constitution and abolished the National Assembly. He passed the security law by decree, and ruled in the same way going forward.
The United States took over the military assets left by the British. More generally, the power of the local monarchy was buttressed by Washington’s support for Saudi Arabia. In 1995, the Pentagon chose to resurrect the “Fifth Fleet” on Bahraini territory.
In 1999, Isa died, and the succession of his son, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, seemed to offer a path to conciliation with the population. He pardoned political prisoners, allowing opposition leaders to return from exile, and abolished the hated security law. His reform package came together in the National Action Charter, which passed by referendum in 2001 with massive popular support. The Charter proposed universal suffrage and an elected Council of Deputies. An absolute monarchy would transition to something more like a constitutional monarchy. But soon, Hamad watered down many of the Charter’s more expansive provisions, leaving the promise of the Charter unfulfilled.
These issues were compounded by a government policy of naturalization, whereby Sunnis Muslims from other countries were offered citizenship, so that the power of the native Shia would be gradually reduced. Immigrants from Pakistan, Jordan, Syria and Yemen receive generous benefits in exchange for staffing the lower ranks of the army and police.4 Shia are blocked from filling positions in the security services, as well as many other important (and lucrative) public sector jobs.
“The Al Khalifa have always felt that they were the rightful owners and dominators of the indigenous population,” said Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor at Northwestern University in Qatar. “And of course, there has always been a sense of fear of Persian involvement…so the Al Khalifa always rely on having a divided opposition. They don’t want the Sunnis and Shia to be united against them.”
This systematic Shiaphobia and marginalization of the native population bred resentment, even as Bahrain cultivated its image as a stable financial hub for Western investors. In January 2011, the government of Tunisia fell, and protests exploded in Egypt. The wave of protests soon spread to Bahrain.
On Monday February 14, 2011, exactly a decade after the referendum for the National Action Charter, demonstrators flooded the streets, converging on the Pearl Roundabout in the capital. To the horror of the government, this was not just a “Shia” uprising. Sunni and secular leftists like Ebrahim Sharif were supporting the protests, and a clear majority appeared to be united against the government.
Police stormed the camp, killing protesters, until the local government relented. But negotiations faltered as the Khalifas refused to cede any real power. To break the stalemate, the King’s uncle and then-Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman called Saudi Arabia for help.
And that was it. On March 14, the forces of the Gulf Cooperation Council marched over the bridge connecting Bahrain to Saudi Arabia. The crackdown was swift and brutal. Troops from Saudi Arabia and the UAE killed dozens of people, and thousands of Bahrainis were arrested in night-time raids on Shia villages. Major Western powers accepted the brutality of their ally as a fait accompli, as they launched wars and regime change operations elsewhere. It was later reported that a deal was made: Saudi Arabia allegedly secured the acquiescence of the Obama administration in exchange for supporting US plans for intervention in Libya.5
The crackdown cast a long shadow on Bahraini society. Police were everywhere, and people were anxious. Citizens began to self-censor more strictly out of fear of being reported. Invisible sectarian divisions became more real. At the same time, the monarchy worked hard to rebuild its public image. In September 2020, Bahrain announced the normalization of ties with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords mediated by the first Trump administration. Discontent was widespread, but the arrest or exile of most opposition leaders and many more citizens made mass mobilization impossible. After October 7, 2023, local riots would erupt from time to time in protest of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, but were quickly contained by the security forces. This uneasy order held until Donald Trump attacked Iran.
Amid the tenuous ceasefire, the war on Bahrainis has intensified. It seems that Iran’s strikes have confirmed the ruling family’s worst fears. Security guarantees offered by the US or the UK cannot stop Tehran from attacking Bahrain at will, and a significant portion of the Bahraini population will somehow sympathize with Iran (even if they have to hide it in the face of ruthless oppression). Amidst endless proclamations that national unity is required, the government began to foment sectarianism and literally expel Shia citizens from the body politic.
On April 27, the King issued an extraordinary decree to revoke the citizenship of 69 Bahrainis for “sympathizing with hostile Iranian acts,” without due process. On April 28, the criminal court gave 5 people life sentences for espionage, while dozens more were given 5 to 10 years in prison for uploading videos of attacks. Bahraini influencer Sayed Baqer Al-Kamel was given ten years for posting an Instagram Reel mourning the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The result is a climate of fear. Layla, a 30-year-old Shia pharmacist in Manama, says that her family “signed onto the pledge to get our names on the list and protect our reputation” despite their political sympathies with the opposition. “People need to be seen as loyal.” To pledge allegiance to the King, you can send a telegram, submit your name to a newspaper or a social media page, or pay to run an ad with your family’s name — and more and more people around us have felt the pressure to do so. The anxiety has even traveled beyond Bahrain’s borders. “My parents have repeatedly warned me against going to protests here,” said Maryam, a 33-year-old Bahraini doctor in the US. “They keep saying that they are tracking Bahrainis abroad too, but I don’t know if that is even true.”
Early in the morning on May 9, authorities arrested 41 of the country’s top Shia religious figures for allegedly “conspiring” with the IRGC, shocking the native majority. The Ministry of the Interior blamed one of the tenets of Shia Islamism, wilayat al faqih, for the alleged acts of terrorism.
If 2011 marked the beginning of a strange new era for the country, then 2026 is most likely its endpoint. What is unclear is what comes next, and if it is even stranger. Clearly, our future is beholden to both regional and global powers. It is they, after all, who helped ensure that this family still rules as a monarchy, nearly 250 years after they first arrived.
This month, local outlets began publishing stories about the outpouring of support for the monarchy. One headline, posted by Al Ayam, read: “His Majesty the King receives pledges of loyalty and support from a number of honorable Bahraini families and clans.” Next, they published a full list of everyone who signed the pledge, making it very easy to identify those who did not.
Among Shia, support for Iran varies, and some degree of sympathy does not imply a desire to be ruled by the Islamic Republic. But the repeated accusation that the population is loyal to a hostile foreign power is understood as a clear sectarian attack.
See Marc Owen Jones, Political Repression in Bahrain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) and Vincent Bevins, If We Burn (New York: Public Affairs, 2023), 74-77 for Ebrahim Sharif’s story; the Saudi and Bahraini families have intermarried, and the House of Saud has long been understood as the chief guarantor of Khalifa power in the smaller country. In 2011 and afterwards, portraits of both kings were often spotted in monarchist counter-revolutionary demonstrations.
Caroline Elkins, Legacy of Violence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022), page 625: “Ian Henderson, who had worked on the front lines of intelligence gathering, was hailed by one general as having ‘probably done more than any single individual to bring the Emergency to an end’; he left for the British oil-producing protectorate of Bahrain, where he oversaw the general directorate for state security investigations from 1966 to 1998. Known as the ‘Butcher of Bahrain’ for his use of torture, village burning, and violation of numerous human rights accords, Henderson was never prosecuted. Despite demands from international organizations, Britain refused to release documents pertaining to his Bahraini activities due to ‘national security’ concerns. He did, though, receive a CBE from the queen in 1984 to go with the George Medal he received from her thirty years earlier.”
“The running joke in Bahrain is that you can expect to be arrested by a Pakistani, interrogated by a Jordanian, tortured by a Yemeni, and judged by an Egyptian, but at least you can expect your fellow prisoners to be Bahraini.” The Struggle for Information: Revelations on Mercenaries, Sectarian Agitation, and Demographic Engineering in Bahrain by Nazgol Kafai and Ala’a Shehabi; Like other Gulf countries, Bahrain relies on migrant labor from South and Southeast Asia, but the political and economic culture is different than that in much more wealthy places like Qatar or the UAE. Bahraini citizens, especially Shia, work service jobs. In the region, only Kuwait has a comparable history of politicization, labor militancy, and civic activism.
Ala’a Shehabi and Marc Owen Jones, Bahrain’s Uprising: Resistance and Repression in the Gulf (London: Zed Books, 2015), 9.
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Beautiful, perceptive, clear and chilling. Thank you. Upgraded my subscription.
Great work. Where can I find more info on the the establishment of the monarchy?