Iran's Deadly Ambition. Ilan Berman
opening was demographic in nature. The majority (some 70 percent) of Bahrain’s 1.3-million-person population was Shia, while the country’s ruling al-Khalifa family was Sunni. This was an inversion of the prevailing demographic in the overwhelmingly Sunni Gulf region—and one that provided the Islamic Republic an opportunity for leverage.
Beginning in February 2011, inspired by similar protests in Tunisia and Egypt, Shiite Bahrainis took to the streets to protest systemic inequalities and repression and torture carried out by the al-Khalifa regime.20 The regime’s heavy-handed response, including the imprisonment of opposition activists and large-scale crackdowns on protesters, only generated new momentum for Bahraini activists to advocate the government’s overthrow.
They were not alone. Tehran was quick to voice its support of these protests and threw its weight behind the ouster of the al-Khalifa government. “All Islamic countries, as long as they’re not themselves involved in the crime, bear responsibility to support the Bahrainis in their fight,” Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the hard-line imam of Tehran, said in a public sermon that spring.21 Iran did not content itself with rhetoric alone, launching a covert campaign to destabilize the Gulf kingdom. The extent of this effort was made public in April 2011, when the Bahraini government submitted a confidential report to the United Nations (which was subsequently leaked to the press) in which it accused Iran’s terror proxy, Hezbollah, of actively plotting the overthrow of the regime and of training Bahraini militants in both Lebanon and Iran for this purpose.22 Just three months later, Bahrain’s high criminal court sentenced three defendants—one Bahraini and two Iranians—for spying for the Islamic Republic and passing along sensitive information regarding military installations to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.23 That fall, these developments led Bahrain’s foreign minister, Khaled bin Ahmad al-Khalifa, to charge Iran with seeking to subvert Bahrain and make it the “crown jewel” in its larger campaign to penetrate the Persian Gulf.24
Iran’s efforts at subversion made waves in Washington. “We already have evidence that the Iranians are trying to exploit the situation in Bahrain,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters in April 2011. “We also have evidence that they are talking about what they can do to try to create problems elsewhere as well.”25 For Washington, this was not insignificant, because Bahrain plays an important role in America’s military posture in the Middle East, hosting a key naval base for the U.S. Fifth Fleet. As a result, Bahrain’s instability had a direct effect upon American plans and raised the possibility that if the al-Khalifa monarchy fell, the United States could find itself shut out of a vital defense arrangement that anchors its regional presence.
Bahrain’s Gulf neighbors were even more worried. Understandably, they saw Iran’s interference as an existential threat—a challenge to their religious authority and an insurgent effort to revise the geopolitical workings of the Gulf. Or, as the New York Times put it in March 2011, Bahrain had become “the latest proxy battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for regional dominance.”26
The Gulf monarchies responded accordingly. Using the auspices of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a six-member security bloc dominated by Saudi Arabia, Gulf states sent approximately 1,000 troops into Bahrain to quell protests.27 The deployment, ostensibly in response to a “request” by the Bahraini monarchy, was intended to immediately stabilize the government in the capital city of Manama. But just as important was the force’s secondary mission: to protect the country from Iran’s insurgent fundamentalism, by force if necessary. As the commanding officer told the London-based Saudi daily newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, his mission was “to secure Bahrain’s vital and strategically important military infrastructure from any foreign interference.”28
The deployment had its intended effect, blunting Shia protests against the al-Khalifa regime and deterring more significant—and overt—Iranian intervention. In such a way, the GCC succeeded in preventing Iran’s attempts to subvert Bahrain at the height of the Arab Spring. And yet, three years later, Iran’s destabilizing hand was still evident in the Gulf kingdom. In January 2014, Osama al-Oufi, the country’s chief prosecutor, formally charged the Iranian Revolutionary Guards with continuing to provide Bahraini opposition fighters with explosives training. The accusation came on the heels of the Bahraini government’s arrest of five suspected militants and intelligence reports of Bahraini fighters based in Iran planning “terrorist bombing operations targeting institutions and places vital to the sovereignty and security of the kingdom.”29 Tehran, it seems, still has designs on Manama.
TIPPING THE SCALES IN SANA
In today’s Middle East, there is perhaps no more volatile country than Yemen. While Iraq and Syria have captured international headlines of late for their roles as the crucible for the Islamic State’s radical jihadist campaign, it is the impoverished southern Gulf state of Yemen that has the potential to become the region’s next great flash point. And there, as elsewhere in the region, Iran’s destabilizing presence is being felt in dramatic fashion.
Today’s Yemen teeters on the brink of being a failed state—home to not one, but three interlocking security challenges. Most prominently, there is al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), al-Qaeda’s most capable regional franchise, which has long sought to overthrow the government in San
The Houthis, who are Shia Muslims of the Zaydi sect, traditionally enjoyed considerable political and ideological independence, presiding over their own “imamate” from the ninth century until the 1962 officers’ coup that forged modern Yemen. Since then, they have periodically pushed back against the traditional authority of the Sunni elite in San
A decade later, this rebellion is on the march. In 2004, the Houthi movement was modest in size, estimated at just 2,000 fighters.30 Since then, it has expanded in both size and geographic scope. In late 2011, its leadership claimed to command more than 100,000 members.31 Today, those numbers are estimated to be larger still.
The Houthi rebellion’s resilience and the political and territorial gains it has made despite a massive, sustained crack-down from authorities in San
Nonetheless, Iran’s covert involvement has been unmistakable. A 2012 expose by the New York Times described how Iranian smugglers, backed by the Quds Force, the elite paramilitary unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, were shipping AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, and other weapons to the Houthis.33 The following year provided even more concrete proof of Iranian meddling, with the interdiction by Yemeni authorities of an Iranian dhow carrying weapons, including ten Chinese