Agence France Presse, MANAMA – The tiny archipelago of Bahrain, located just 150 miles (240 kilometres) off the Iranian coast, has a number of good reasons to keep its eye on international tensions over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Bahrain’s close geographical proximity — compared to the other six Arab countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (the others being Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) — makes it the most fearful of seeing Iran armed with nuclear weapons.
Adding to anxiety in the 60 percent Shiite Muslim country is the presence of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which is based in the kingdom.
"We want the Gulf region, and the Middle East, to be a zone free of all nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction. This is our main position," Information Minister Mohammed Abdel Ghaffar Abdullah told AFP.
A foreign observer speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that Bahrain doesn’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons because "they fear the power that would give the Iranians."
Until Bahrain’s independence from Britain in 1971, Iran under the shah had territorial claims on the archipelago. In the years that followed its 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini was hardly reluctant to meddle in Bahraini affairs.
"Our relations with Iran improved in the last four or five years… We have good relations," Abdullah said.
Normal relations were sealed by a visit to Tehran in August 2002 by King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa, the first by a Bahraini monarch since Iran’s Islamic revolution.
Reformist Iranian ex-president Mohammed Khatami followed in 2003 with a visit to Manama.
But Bahrain’s leaders have never overcome their mistrust of Iran, especially since ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president last year.
"The fact that you have a current president in Iran who is more bellicose, more aggressive… leaves a country like Bahrain potentially vulnerable to Iranian mischief if Iran wants to get back at the United States," the foreign observer said.
Bahrain is the United States’s "last line of defence," the observer said.
As an illustration of the diminutive kingdom’s privileged ties with the United States, Washington elevated Bahrain in 2002 to the status of "essential ally outside NATO", the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
But the American guarantee, symbolised by the presence of its naval fleet, could also make Bahrain a possible target in the event of a confrontation between the United States and Iran, observers say.
"I would be surprised" if Iran launched a military attack on the Fifth Fleet in reprisal for a preventive US raid on Iran, the observer noted, mainly because little US Navy command infrastructure exists in Bahrain.
"You’ve got (US ships) in Dubai," he said.
"I would much more imagine there would be some kind of terrorist act in a place where sailors hang out, or at the base itself," the observer added.
"A much better way for them would be to have 150,000 Shiites march on the base."
In 2004 Shiites protested in Manama against military operations by coalition forces in Iraq at the Shiite holy sites of Karbala and Najaf, and the observer believes that if they received the call from religious leaders, Bahrain’s Shiites would hit the streets again.
This fear mirrors the questioning by various Arab leaders of the loyalty of Shiites towards Sunni Muslim regimes in the event of confrontation with Shiite Iran.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak spoke his mind on this subject in April, saying: "Shiites (are) generally loyal to Iran, not to those countries in which they live."
His words, which incensed Shiites in the region, have not been forgotten in Bahrain.
Mubarak "should apologise", said Sheikh Mohammed Ali Mafoud, leader of the Islamic Action Association, the second largest Shiite grouping in Bahrain.
"There are very few Bahraini Shiites whose allegiance is to Iran," said Sheikh Ali Salman, the young leader of the main Shiite movement in the archipelago, the National Islamic Alliance.
"And it’s religious ties, not political ties."
Another foreign observer believes the Iranians could manipulate "small groups" within Bahrain’s Shiite community.
"They (the government) are being vigilant, and they are right to be so," he said.
But for Ibrahim Sharif, who heads the opposition left-wing National Democratic Action Association, "Iran does not need to attack Bahrain" if it wants to take on the Americans.
"The weak link of the US presence in the Middle East is Iraq. There are 130,000 men (US soldiers) in Iraq. It’s a sitting duck in terms of inflicting damage."
