after a decade and a half of trying diplomacy with the Arab states of the region.
If true, it would mean a dramatic about-face for the Islamic Republic, which halted subversive schemes in the mid-1990s and stopped terrorist actions apart from support for Palestinian groups and Iraqi Shia militias.
Bahrain’s Interior Ministry announced Saturday that it had arrested five Bahraini nationals who were about to go to Iran to “receive military training” from the Pasdaran for the purpose of attacking the Saudi embassy in Manama, the Bahraini Interior Ministry and the causeway that links the island of Bahrain to Saudi Arabia.
The Islamic Republic has been highly critical of Bahrain since the outbreak of Shia protests last spring. Bahrain has accused Iran of fomenting the protests. US officials have said in recent months that Iran had nothing to do with the outbreak of protests and ha given only nominal concrete support, such as sending fewer than a dozen rifles to one protest group.
Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Islamic Republic supported subversive groups in most of the Persian Gulf Arab states, chiefly by backing Shias with military training and supplies of arms and explosive. In 1995, however, the State Department publicly announced that Iran had stopped such subversion.
It also stopped assassinations about the same time. It had carried out numerous murders in countries around the world, mostly of Iranian dissidents but also of several Saudi diplomats. It has been assumed those killings were halted because a few of them had been traced back to Iran and the political harm then became substantial.
It remains unknown if the Islamic Republic has now made a general shift back to the old policy or if Bahrain is just considered a unique challenge for Iran. However, the recent exposure of an alleged plot by Iran to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington added to the latest Bahraini arrests will undoubtedly spark suspicions that Iran is returning to the bloody aggressiveness of its foreign policy in the first decade and a half after the revolution.
It must be noted that the Bahraini assertions remain unconfirmed. Bahraini suspicions of Iranian doings have been exaggerated in the past. But this time, Bahrain is citing specific arrests and not just very general suspicions.
On Sunday, a Bahraini Judiciary spokesman fleshed out what the Interior Ministry said the previous day. The Judiciary spokesman said some of the arrested suspects had confessed. They said they had been contacted and recruited by two Bahrainis living abroad, Abdur-Rauf al-Shaieb and Ali Mashaima.
The spokesman said those two men “coordinated with military organizations abroad, including the Pasdaran and Basij in Iran, to train the recruits of the group in handling arms and explosives.”
The spokesman said some Bahrainis had already been sent to Iran before the latest cell of five men was nabbed.
One such person, who was not named, “went to Iran where he met with a certain Assad Qassir, linked to the Pasdaran and Basij,” the spokesman said. He received military training and “sums of money from Iranian elements to finance the organization.”
The Interior Ministry said four members of the latest cell were discovered in Qatar and sent to Bahrain November 4 where the fifth cell member was shortly apprehended.
The Interior Ministry said it had seized “documents and a computer containing information of a security nature as well as details on certain vital sites,” presumably intended targets.
“They then confessed that they had left Bahrain illegally at the instigation of others” with plans to travel to Qatar, then on to Syria and Iran where they would be “organized to commit armed terrorist acts in Bahrain.”
Iran rejected the allegations as “baseless and fabricated” and urged Bahrain to focus instead on the “deep schism” between its Sunni monarchy and Shiite majority.
After the Bahraini announcement, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the organization of five Persian Gulf Arab states—all but Iraq—urged its members to exercise “caution and vigilance” because of the Bahraini arrests.
While there was no evidence that Iran had resumed subversive activities in other states beyond Bahrain, the GCC assumed the worst, with GCC chief Abdul-Latif az-Zayani saying the Bahraini plot reflects “desperate attempts … of continuous interference in the internal affairs of the Kingdom of Bahrain and other GCC countries.”
A day after Bahrain aired its charges, state television in Iran reported that two Kuwaitis had been arrested in Abadan “in possession of spying materials.” Last March, Kuwait sentenced three people to death and two to life in prison after conviction for spying on behalf of Iran.
The Arab League, meanwhile, made a surprise decision Saturday to suspend Syria’s membership in the group because of the violence the Syrian regime is using against its own people. That decision opens wider the schism between Iran and most of the Arab world as Iran is the sole regional state vocally supporting the Syrian government.
Only Syria, Lebanon (whose foreign policy is effectively under Syrian control) and Yemen (which is also in trouble for the extent of violence it is using against its own people) voted against the suspension. Iraq abstained.