Iran Revives Its Claim to Bahrain After the War

Executive Summary

A June 21, 2026 Kayhan column by Hossein Shariatmadari “Let Us Not Keep Our Bahraini Compatriots Waiting” repeats, in sharper and more confident language than in past iterations, Iran’s claim that Bahrain is occupied Iranian territory whose people await “the first step” toward reunification with the homeland [Editor’s note: Kayhan is a Persian-language newspaper published in Tehran, Iran].

The column is not an isolated provocation. It lands after a war in which Iran struck Bahraini territory directly, accused Manama of hosting the U.S. 5th fleet HQ used against Iranian targets, and watched a wave of domestic Shiite sympathy for Tehran trigger an unprecedented internal security crackdown.

Combined with a sustained pro-Iranian opposition presence on social media, the column should be read as a renewed test of Bahraini and American tolerance for irredentist rhetoric at a moment when Iran has both the grievance and, potentially, the appetite to act on it.

Key Judgments

• Shariatmadari’s column is the latest in a recurring Kayhan series asserting Iranian sovereignty over Bahrain; what is new is the timing immediately after a war in which Iran fired on Bahraini soil and Bahraini Shiite citizens were arrested for celebrating it.
• The historical narrative Kayhan invokes (the 1970 referendum process, the Al-Khalifa as a “non-Bahraini” tribe, the U.S.-British-Shah “conspiracy”) tracks closely with material long used by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA) to document Iran’s irredentist messaging, suggesting Kayhan’s framing is doctrinal rather than improvised.
• Iran has both motive and a demonstrated wartime track record of striking Bahrain; whether under cover of a future war, a domestic Bahraini crisis, or a regime-survival gambit, Tehran is unlikely to treat the “14th province” claim as rhetorical only.
• A Bahraini Shiite opposition presence on X amplifying pro-Iranian, pro-Khamenei messaging gives Tehran a ready-made domestic audience and a low-cost vector for further incitement.

1. The Springboard: Shariatmadari’s Column, June 21, 2026

Hossein Shariatmadari, Kayhan’s editor and one of the most consistently anti-Bahraini-regime voices in the Iranian press, published “Let Us Not Keep Our Bahraini Compatriots Waiting” on Telegram and in Kayhan today. The column makes five claims in sequence:

• Bahrain’s government is intensifying torture and arrests of clerics, students, and ordinary Bahrainis on the charge of having supported Iran during the recent war against U.S. and Israeli aggression — a charge Shariatmadari treats as evidence that Bahrainis see Iran as their true homeland.
• Bahrain was separated from Iran 55 years ago through what the column calls an illegal arrangement among the late Shah and the U.S. and British governments; Mohammad Reza Shah, “notorious like his father for selling out the homeland,” allegedly proposed a referendum on separation at British urging, but the column claims no genuine referendum of the Bahraini population occurred — only a vote among non-Bahraini Arab tribes, foremost the Al-Khalifa, the current ruling family, said to have been engaged at the time in banditry in the Najd desert.
• In 1970, Italian diplomat and UN Deputy Secretary-General Vittorio Winspeare Guicciardi was tasked with the referendum mission; per Kayhan’s account, migrant Arab sheikhs opposed an actual referendum, fearing it would establish a precedent that Bahrain’s leadership must rest on popular vote, and a “good offices” mediation process was substituted instead.
• The episode is therefore presented as proof that Bahrain remains, by right, part of Iranian territory now lost to U.S. and Israeli domination — citing the Fifth Fleet’s presence and an open Israeli military and Persian-language footprint among the population.
• The column closes with an explicit call to action: Bahraini compatriots are said to be “awaiting the first step” from Iranian officials, and the writer states with claimed certainty and access to precise information that this is the expectation.

2. Historical Background

2.1 “Why Iran Is Pushing for a Shiite Victory in Bahrain”

This JCFA analysis sets out the longer arc of Iranian irredentism that Shariatmadari’s column draws on. It documents Iran’s historical claim to Bahrain as its “fourteenth province,” rooted in the 1602–1783 period of Persian rule, and Tehran’s sustained effort — well before the current war — to cultivate a distinct Shiite religious identity in Bahrain oriented toward the Iranian Supreme Leader as a source of religious emulation.

The analysis describes financial support, organizational assistance, and the channeling of weapons via Hizbullah to Bahraini Shiite networks, and frames Bahrain as a structural battleground between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, with Washington’s Fifth Fleet headquarters anchoring the U.S. stake in the outcome.

2.2 “Normalization with Israel Accelerates the End of the Bahrain Regime”

Published after the 2020 Abraham Accords, this analysis documents how Bahrain’s normalization with Israel sharpened Iranian rhetoric rather than created it.

It records IRGC statements threatening “harsh revenge” against the “executioner ruler of Bahrain,” Kayhan’s own incitement of Bahrainis to “pick up arms,” and Iran’s continued sponsorship of the Saraya al-Ashtar (“al-Ashtar Brigades”) as an armed Shiite opposition network modeled on Lebanese Hizbullah.

It also notes Iran’s practice of amplifying Bahraini opposition statements, including from groups such as the Coalition Youth of the 14 February Revolution, as a deliberate instrument of pressure on the Al-Khalifa government.

Read together, the two JCFA analyses show that today’s column is not a rhetorical escalation invented for the moment; it restates a claim and a method (financial support, armed proxies, and amplification of local opposition voices) that Iran has pursued continuously since at least the Arab Spring, and that hardened further after the Abraham Accords.

The war has supplied Tehran with a new and more emotionally charged pretext: Bahraini state repression of citizens accused of pro-Iranian sympathies during the conflict.

3. The War’s Bahrain Front: Iranian Fire and the “Hostile Base” Narrative

Beyond the historical claim, Shariatmadari’s column is also a response to events of the past several months. During the recent war, Iran struck targets in Bahrain directly — among them facilities associated with the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, which Tehran has long treated as a legitimate military target precisely because of the American military presence the column itself cites as evidence of foreign domination.

Iranian messaging throughout the war justified these strikes on the grounds that Bahrain, by hosting American forces and infrastructure used against Iran, had made itself a participant in the war rather than a neutral bystander — a framing that converts the kingdom’s alliance commitments into, in Tehran’s telling, an act of aggression deserving retaliation.

That framing met an unanticipated domestic complication for Manama: visible sympathy for Iran among segments of Bahrain’s Shiite population, including instances of people expressing relief or satisfaction at the targeting of U.S.-linked sites on Bahraini soil.

The government’s response — an arrest campaign targeting individuals accused of celebrating Iranian strikes, sympathizing with Tehran, or circulating related material online — has, in Shariatmadari’s column, been folded directly into the irredentist argument: the arrests are cited as proof that ordinary Bahrainis identify with Iran rather than with their own government, which the column treats as self-evidently disqualifying for Bahraini sovereignty claims rather than as an internal security and social-cohesion problem for Bahrain to manage.

This is a textbook case of Iran converting a wartime security crackdown by a third country into supporting evidence for its own territorial narrative.

4. The Online Amplifier: A Bahraini Shiite Opposition Account

Iran’s messaging machine does not operate only through Kayhan. The opposition account on X functions as a Bahraini Shiite opposition platform  that consistently valorizes Iran, Khamenei, and the broader Axis of Resistance framing, and amplifies grievances against the Al-Khalifa government and the Fifth Fleet presence in language that closely parallels Kayhan’s own. Such accounts give Tehran an indigenous-seeming voice inside Bahrain’s information space, allowing Iranian state media to cite “the Bahraini people themselves” — exactly the rhetorical move Shariatmadari’s column makes when it claims to know, “with certainty and on the basis of precise information,” that Bahrainis await Iran’s first move. Direct content from the platform could not be retrieved for verification in this report; the account is flagged here as a node in the broader Iran-aligned opposition ecosystem and merits continued monitoring.

4.1 The Ashura Crackdown on the Eve of Khamenei’s State Funeral

The amplifier dynamic described above is unfolding against a live security episode. In the days immediately preceding Iran’s state funeral for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (July 4-9, 2026, following his assassination on February 28, 2026, during the U.S.-Israel war), Bahraini security forces sharply escalated restrictions on Shiite Ashura (Muharram) commemorations on June 25-26. Authorities confined processions and gatherings to registered ma’atams (mourning halls), imposed curfews generally ending at midnight or 2 a.m. in the capital, banned processions originating from mosques, and required that flags and banners carry only ma’atam names, with “political” slogans prohibited.

Dozens of preachers and eulogists were barred from participating. Security forces removed black flags, banners, and Ashura symbols in multiple Shiite villages; in one notable incident, around June 17, forces raided a mourning ceremony in Abu Saiba village near Manama to remove symbols and used tear gas after residents resisted, with footage circulating on social media.

At least ten documented cases of summonses, short detentions, or arrests involved ma’atam heads, mourners displaying flags or slogans such as “Ya Hussein,” and vendors of related items. Force, including tear gas, sound grenades, and rubber bullets, was reportedly used against some peaceful gatherings in residential areas, and the standing travel ban to Iran and Iraq remained in effect.

Bahrain’s Interior Minister, Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, framed the measures at a pre-Ashura security meeting as necessary to preserve the “religious nature” of Ashura against what he termed “politicization.”

He stated explicitly that mourning for Khamenei would be “prohibited and punishable” during the Ashura period, urged adherence to “older Bahraini rituals” rather than “Iranian revolutionary ones,” and described the security environment as shaped by Iran’s alleged “political project wrapped in a religious guise.”

The episode sits inside a broader post-war pattern: Bahrain has arrested dozens of citizens since February 2026 (41 in May alone) on allegations of IRGC links, espionage, or pro-Iran sympathy.

The government denies sectarian targeting and accuses Iran of interference; human rights organizations, including the Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB), characterize the Ashura measures as an escalation of religious-freedom restrictions targeting Shiite identity and expression.

The timing is the analytical point: Ashura fell just before Khamenei’s funeral processions in Tehran, Qom, and Mashhad, and Bahraini authorities evidently judged that Shiite mourning rituals could double as vehicles for pro-Iran sentiment or public grief for the slain Iranian leader, at a moment when Bahrain has positioned itself firmly against Iran in the war.

The crackdown therefore functions as a pre-emptive move to prevent Ashura from becoming, in effect, a domestic Bahraini wake for Khamenei — which would hand Kayhan and accounts such as the one referenced above precisely the kind of “the Bahraini people mourn with us” imagery that feeds the annexation narrative in Section 1.

Coverage of these events comes from human rights organizations (ADHRB, and reportedly HRW), opposition outlets, Iranian state media (PressTV, Kayhan), Bahraini state media and officials, and is being actively documented by Iran-aligned opposition accounts on X, including the one flagged in this report.

Assessment

Iran’s Bahrain claim is not new, but the current convergence of factors gives it unusual weight: a war in which Iran has already demonstrated willingness and capability to strike Bahraini soil; a domestic Bahraini crackdown that Tehran can frame as confirmation of popular alignment with Iran; a doctrinal historical narrative kept alive continuously since at least 2011 through financing, armed proxies, and online amplification; and a senior Kayhan voice now stating, in the most explicit terms used in this series to date, that Bahrainis are “awaiting the first step.”

None of this guarantees an Iranian move against Bahrain. But it indicates that Tehran is deliberately keeping the option rhetorically and organizationally alive, and that the threshold for converting rhetoric into action would likely be set by an opportunity — a future war, a Bahraini domestic crisis, or a moment of perceived American or Saudi distraction — rather than by any change in the underlying Iranian claim itself.

Shariatmadari’s tone itself is an indicator. The column is written not in the defensive register Iran used after earlier setbacks, but in the language of a regime that believes it emerged from the war as the stronger party: Iran’s claimed sense of victory and post-war euphoria, and a renewed self-confidence about its capacity to set the terms of regional escalation, run through the piece’s certainty that Bahrainis are simply “awaiting the first step” from Tehran.

That same self-assurance is visible in how Iran has continued to fuse the Lebanon/Hizbullah front and the threat to close the Strait of Hormuz into a single, flexible leverage instrument — used during the war to pressure Washington and Israel simultaneously, and retained afterward as a combined card Iran can play again.

There is no structural reason that instrument is limited to the U.S.-Israel theater: the same Hormuz-closure threat that Iran wielded over Lebanon could, in a future Bahrain-specific crisis, be redeployed as coercive leverage against Manama and the Gulf states backing it, given Bahrain’s proximity to the Strait and its hosting of the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

Read this way, the column is less an isolated outburst than a signal that Iran’s wartime confidence has lowered, rather than raised, its threshold for testing the Bahrain claim through coercive means.

Israeli and Gulf policymakers should treat the recurrence and escalation of this messaging, especially in combination with demonstrated wartime targeting of Bahrain, as a standing indicator requiring sustained attention rather than a recurring rhetorical irritant to be dismissed.

Sources used in this report are limited to the materials supplied by the author: the Kayhan/Shariatmadari column, the two referenced Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs analyses, and the referenced X account. Contextual material on wartime events is drawn from the author’s standing analytical record of the conflict.