December 12, 2014
Forty-four years after closing all its military bases east of the Suez Canal, Britain will set up a new permanent military base on Bahrain to serve as a headquarters for ships that operate in the Persian Gulf.
The change in British policy after almost a half-century is a clear message to Iran that Britain will stand with the United States in confronting the Islamic Republic at sea.
Britain has frequently deployed warships in the Persian Gulf that are just there for several months and then sail back to Britain. The UK has four minesweepers permanently stationed in the region. They have operated from the Mina Salmon port in Bahrain, but the living quarters there are just makeshift and Britain does not operate any service facilities in the port. The new base, to open next year, will be able to service the minesweepers and handle much larger ships as well.
The new British base will be next to the US naval base on Bahrain at Manama.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond announced the new base and said the agreement with Bahrain would guarantee the Royal Navy’s presence in Bahrain well into the future. He didn’t say how many years are written into the agreement.
Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Britain would now be based in the Persian Gulf again for the long term.
Some in the media in Britain cited the rise of the Islamic State as a reason for the new base. But this is only a naval base, and the Islamic State is nowhere near the sea and has no naval assets at all. The UK focus is clearly on Iran and possible threats to shipping through the Persian Gulf.
Bahrain will pay most of the $24 million cost of construction, while the UK will pick up the ongoing costs of operating the base.
The chief of the UK defense staff, General Sir Nicholas Houghton, said the deal was strategically important. “Rather than just being seen as a temporary deployment to an area for a specific operational purpose, this is more symbolic of the fact that Britain does enjoy interests in the stability of this region,” he told BBC Radio.
“And the fact that the Bahraini authorities and government agreed to fund infrastructure within the country to base our maritime capability forward, both is a recognition from their perspective of the quality of the relationship with the United Kingdom, but also of our interest over time in maintaining the stability of this very important area.”
Bahrain Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al-Khalifa said the agreement underlined its commitment to work with the UK and other countries to address threats to regional security. The Bahraini government also undoubtedly welcomed the British base as yet another poke in the eye to Iran, which Bahrain accuses of funding and promoting the low-grade rebellion by the island’s Shia that is now in its fourth year.
Shias form a majority of the population of the island state, but the family that has ruled for more than two centuries is Sunni.
Britain moved its main regional naval base from Aden, in Yemen, to Bahrain in 1967. The following year the government said it would close UK military bases east of the Suez Canal by 1971.
Bahrain became independent from Britain in 1971 and signed a treaty of friendship with the UK. It also struck an agreement with the US that turned over Britain’s naval base to the US Navy. The US Navy had operated in the Persian Gulf from 1948, but had just shuffled ships halfway around the world with no local base support until 1971. The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which covers the Persian Gulf and much of the Indian Ocean, is based in Bahrain.