Bahrain, a Persian Gulf monarchy and the smallest Arab country, has an outsized role both in U.S. national security and, since 2011, in the criticism it has received in Congress, from the State Department, and from human rights organizations.
The U.S. relies on Bahrain as Fifth Fleet headquarters host. What this means in practice is that almost every U.S. aircraft carrier or amphibious assault ship which deploys to the Middle East will at some point pull into the island. Even when they do not, Bahrain serves as a crucial base for resupply, personnel transit, fuel, and mail. But it’s not just ships and naval aviation which call Bahrain home: In times of crisis, Bahrain regularly hosts other U.S. aircraft. While many Qatar lobbyists urge a soft U.S. hand in the face of that country’s support for extremism largely because Qatar is home to Al Udeid airbase, Bahrain’s Sheikh Isa airbase hosted four times as many U.S. planes during Operation Desert Storm. In times of crisis, Bahrain stands with the U.S. not only in rhetoric but also in deed.
Human rights criticism toward Bahrain, meanwhile, dates back to the 2011 Pearl Monument uprising. In that episode, protests inspired by the Arab Spring and coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the National Action Charter, a series of reforms overwhelmingly supported by Bahrainis in a 2001 referendum but which many believed unfulfilled, turned bloody when Bahraini police fired on crowds of protesters, killing one. Over the next few days, an additional five protesters died. And, in subsequent weeks of protests and clashes, a few dozen Bahrainis died asphyxiating on tear gas while trapped in confined spaces or run over by security force vehicles.
Human rights groups and self-described activists rallied around protesters. Bahraini flags rose up in Occupy Wall Street camps, never mind that most Occupy Wall Street activists couldn’t place the island nation on a map. For human rights groups, Bahrain versus the protesters was a David versus Goliath story. The fact that the Bahraini government so closely partnered with the U.S. military was an original sin in the eyes of many human rights groups, most of whose employees lean left and are deeply skeptical of, if not hostile to, U.S. foreign policy.
That said, many Shiite grievances were real. They did (and do) suffer economic and political discrimination. An independent commission found both that Bahraini security forces acted excessively in response to the initial Pearl Monument protests and also said there was no proof Iran directed the initial uprising. The Bahraini government, however, was also right to be suspicious of some organized Shiite groups. In 1981, Iran did direct Shiite efforts to attempt to overthrow the Bahraini monarchy, and the Iranian government has worked actively to co-opt grassroots protest movements in the wake of 2011. The net result is that what may have begun as legitimate and perhaps spontaneous protests and what was an overreaction by Bahraini security forces has morphed into the opposite: The Iranian government increasingly threatens Bahrain and the main victims of violence today are Bahraini security forces rather than protesters.
While Amnesty International complains about U.S. arms sales to Bahrain (though the idea that the Bahraini government would fire TOW missiles, deploy F-16s, or use coast guard patrol boats against protesters is grounded more in fevered conspiracy and political spite than reality), the Bahraini government has intercepted a number of weapons shipments sent by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to proxies inside Bahrain. Improvised explosive devices are real, and a growing threat. And, even when the Bahraini opposition does not use sophisticated explosives, in the past couple years, some militants have jury-rigged fire extinguishers to fire rebar spears, causing a number of casualties. Some opposition activists can disavow such tactics, but in a small country, there is no excuse for failure to call out such extremists in their midst.
It is against the backdrop of growing Iranian aggression that the Bahraini Interior Ministry recently announced the arrest of 116 terror suspects. “The individuals arrested are suspected of a range of terror crimes, including planning and executing terror attacks as well as manufacturing, storing and transporting explosive devices,” the Interior Ministry declared, explaining that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-formed and directed network “was planning to target Bahraini officials, members of the security authorities and vital oil installations, with the objective of disturbing public security and harming the national economy.” In addition, Bahrain’s High Court of Appeals confirmed a guilty verdict against 19 suspects charged with “cooperating with a foreign country, in exchanging intelligence, establishing and joining a terrorist group, and receiving and providing funds to a terrorist cell to carry out hostile acts targeting the national interests of the Kingdom.”
It is fair to complain that the Bahraini government should have been more forward-thinking years ago with regard to reforms, and it is also true that security cooperation with the U.S. should never mean a free pass on human rights. It would, however, be naive of critics of the Bahraini government or U.S.-Bahraini security ties both to discount the very real and growing threat that Bahrain faces, especially given the precedent of Iranian efforts to sponsor insurgency or terrorism in countries like Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, or to believe that an opposition embraces terrorism or tolerates extremists in its midst would respect rights that Iran and its proxies treat with disdain everywhere they are in power. It is also counterproductive in a region increasingly intolerant toward religious minorities to throw under the bus a government tolerant of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other faiths. It also plays into the hands of extremists to complain about the lack of opportunity among Bahraini Shiites while simultaneously treating with respect groups which advocate for the dispossessed while actively seeking to undermine economic projects capable of shrinking the economic divide.
In short, Bahrain is too important to be a political football. It deserves bipartisan support. Both Democrats and Republicans should make clear they will not tolerate any regional aggression against what is arguably America’s most vital Persian Gulf ally. The brand of the U.S. should not be to throw allies under the bus in times of crisis or in the face of Iranian aggression.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
