US scholar sees Iran’s threat to Kingdom

Manama

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A research scholar at University of Maryland has highlighted the threat posed by Iran to Bahrain in his article “After nuke agreement, blocking Iranian aggression in Bahrain.”

Phillip Smyth, an adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute For Near East Policy, said that Bahrain, the Persian Gulf’s geostrategic hot seat, was the home of a growing Iranian-aided insurgency targeting the country’s government.

“Nuclear agreement or not, Tehran’s full-court press in the region shows no sign of relenting. There is every indication of gaining momentum toward their objective of acquiring more power and territorial control. They use sectarian proxy forces to achieve the ultimate goal of singularly dominating the Gulf and kicking Sunni Arab states to the curb,” he wrote in his article published in Washington-based daily The Hill.

He explained that Bahrain’s militant group, Saraya al-Mukhtar, which has taken responsibility for numerous bomb and small arms attacks, had been quite vocal in issuing more ominous threats.

According to Smyth, the US has also been facing threat from this terrorist group. “Recently, the group claimed to have developed a new rocket munition and avowed it would be used against the US naval base,” he said, adding, “In the past four years, their acquisition of weapons and growing expertise to use them has jumped from building simplistic Boston Marathon bombing-style pressure cooker bombs to the infamous Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP), a bomb which uses an advanced shaped charge to slice through armour.”

Phillip Smyth was in Bahrain recently as part of his research trip. He remarked: “Many of these weapons shipments have been smuggled by Iran into Bahrain by sea, and Bahraini military units have made a number of high profile seizures.”

He also cited the apprehension of a ship carrying suppresser-equipped Kalashnikov type rifles, more than 50 Iranian-made hand grenades, EFPs, Claymore type IEDs, hundreds of pounds of C4 plastic explosive and a belt-fed machine gun. 

Smyth urged the US to share more intelligence information with Bahrain to diminish the presence of militant cells.