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Hugh Fitzgerald: The Boldness of Bahrain

Mar 14, 2019 10:00 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

Bahrain is a small Gulf Arab state that first stood out from its neighbors by appointing a Jewish woman, Houda Nonoo, in 2008 as its Ambassador to the United States. When other Arabs objected to this choice, claiming she could not adequately represent Bahraini interests, the ruler, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, dismissed their concerns. Nonoo proved her worth in Washington, and was kept on as ambassador until 2013.

Since then, while it still does not have formal relations with Israel, Bahrain has demonstrated an increasing sympathy with the positions taken by the Israeli government, especially with regard to Iran and Hezbollah. For though the people of Bahrain are 70% Shia, the rulers, the Al Khalifa family, are Sunnis. The Shi’a first erupted in violent protests in 2011, demanding an end to their marginalization, demands which might have led to a democracy, and that in turn, would certainly have resulted in an overthrow of the Sunni regime. It took a full month to suppress the rioters, and both Pakistani and Saudi troops had to be called in to help the Bahraini police.

Seeing Iran’s aggressive hand behind the Shi’a uprising, Bahrain’s ruler have become ever more convinced, as has Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, that Iran is a mortal threat and Israel is a most useful ally in the wider war against Iran. In recent years, the ties between Israel and Bahrain have become steadily closer. At the end of 2017, the Bahrainis sent an interfaith delegation to Israel, bringing unbidden a message of peace from King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

In May 2018, the Bahrainis defended large-scale Israeli air raids on Iranian bases in Syria. The foreign minister, Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, tweeted that “as long as Iran breaches the status quo in the region and violates states with its troops and missiles, any state in the region, including Israel, has the right to defend itself by destroying the sources of danger.”

When Israel announced that it had found and destroyed Hezbollah tunnels, Bahrain was completely on Israel’s side:

“Is Terrorist Hezbollah’s digging of the tunnels under Lebanon’s border not a flagrant threat to Lebanon’s stability, which it shares responsibility for? Who bears responsibility when neighboring countries take upon themselves to eliminate the threat they face?” Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa wrote on his Twitter account, in Arabic.

In November, Bahrain Foreign Minister Khalifa praised Netanyahu for his tweet about Khashoggi’s murder:

“Despite the ongoing conflict, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a clear position on the importance of stability in the region, and the role of Saudi Arabia in ensuring that stability,” Khalifa tweeted in response to Netanyahu’s reaction to the killing of Khashoggi.

Netanyahu had stated that the murder is “horrendous and it should be duly dealt with,” according to Israel’s i24 News, but that at the same time “it is very important for the stability of the world, for the region and for the world, that Saudi Arabia remain stable.”

In December, the Bahraini Foreign Minister tweeted that “These words are irresponsible,” in reference to the Arab League’s condemnation of Australia’s decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to West Jerusalem.

“Australia’s position is without prejudice to official Palestinian demands, the first of which is East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, and it does not contradict the Arab Peace Initiative and the Arab League,” he continued.

Bahrain appears to be a stalking-horse for Saudi Arabia, staking out pro-Israeli positions to see what reaction they bring, and letting the Saudis judge for themselves whether they deem it advisable to follow suit.

Bahrain deserves both praise and something more tangible than praise, for its open support of Israel. While Bahrain already hosts an American naval base, the largest American military base in the  Middle East is the airbase of Al Udeid, in Qatar. But Qatar has ties to terrorist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood. It has also maintained warm relations with Iran, infuriating its Arab neighbors. Last March, the House of Representatives, alarmed at those terrorist ties, was considering a proposal to move the American base from Qatar, with four alternatives under consideration: Al Dhafra in Abu Dhabi, Al Zarqa in eastern Jordan, Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, and Bahrain. For now, the Congressional unhappiness with Qatar seems to have died down, perhaps because of the announcement by Qatar that it would be spending several billion dollars on improvements to the air base. That may keep the Americans in place, at least until the treaty giving the Americans the right, and obligation, to use Al Udeid ends in 2023.  But if some attack by a terrorist group linked to Qatar should occur before then, the Americans should give both Qatar its comeuppance and Bahrain its due, by moving our main airbase from the former to the latter. That might help persuade Bahrain to take one more step in the right direction, and to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. And after that, can Saudi Arabia and the Emirates be far behind?

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Filed Under: Bahrain, Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald Tagged With: Al Udeid, Houda Nonoo, Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa


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Comments

  1. Tom says

    Mar 14, 2019 at 10:23 am

    Good to know we have an ally in the middle east and Islamic world. Now if only they would completely reject the Islamic Jihad which is based on Mohammad’s time spent in Medina. Medina was the most violent phase of his life and the one which all violent Islamic jihadists and their supporters take as representing the true Islam.

  2. Mac-101 says

    Mar 14, 2019 at 10:47 am

    It would be interesting to see a study comparing the standard of living between Bahrain’s Shia’s population and Iran’s. I suspect Bahrain’s would be much higher. Is there any doubt what the standard of living drop to with Democracy and becoming an Iranian Provincie?

  3. James Lincoln says

    Mar 14, 2019 at 11:42 am

    I spent some time in the late-1990s at the US Naval Support Activity Bahrain as a flight surgeon attached to CENTCOM.

    At the time, the local Muslim population seemed quite westernized and I did not feel particularly threatened. Or perhaps I was naïve, I’m not certain, but I did not personally experience any threatening behavior.

    Interestingly, on weekends, the Saudi’s would dutifully arrive to partake of the “forbidden fruit” that was not available in their home country.

    Do any Jihad Watch readers have a more recent experience regarding the local “climate” in Bahrain?

    • MTMLA says

      Mar 15, 2019 at 10:22 am

      Forbidden fruit? Please , be more specific.. Sex, alcohol, all the above?? I know they are a bunch of hypocrites. That’s where Michael Jackson went to hide after the scandal with abusing boys.. As I know muslimes love boys, maybe he was handed a few on a silver platter…

      • James Lincoln says

        Mar 15, 2019 at 6:35 pm

        MTMLA,

        I can only personally corroborate the heavy use of alcohol by Saudi men in Bahrain.

        I have heard many rumors about the sexual stuff, etc.

  4. CRUSADER says

    Mar 14, 2019 at 11:56 am

    Maybe now christianblood can see the reasoning here:

    >> the Bahrainis defended large-scale Israeli air raids on Iranian bases in Syria. The foreign minister, Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, tweeted that “as long as Iran breaches the status quo in the region and violates states with its troops and missiles, any state in the region, including Israel, has the right to defend itself by destroying the sources of danger.”

    Iran and Russia are destabilizing forces in the Middle East.

    • Wellington says

      Mar 14, 2019 at 1:19 pm

      “Iran and Russia are destabilizing forces in the Middle East.”

      Agreed, CRUSADER, and I will await christianblood once again going on a screed about how wonderful Russia and Iran are (Hezbollah too) and how nasty America and her allies are the real trouble makers. It will be self-parody time once again, compliments of christianblood, assuming that he responds on this thread.

      • lebel says

        Mar 14, 2019 at 4:56 pm

        I think the main difference between CB’s views and that of other jwatchers is that you start from the premise that whatever is good for Israel is good in the absolute whereas CB’s viewed are more nuanced.

        He’s also less self-contradictory. Bahrain is a Muslim country which according to you is essentially the same as a Nazi country. Does it make sense for Israel to ally itself with a Nazi country?

        • Wellington says

          Mar 14, 2019 at 5:07 pm

          lebel: Did it make sense for America and Britain to ally itself with the extraordinarily brutal regime of the USSR against Nazi Germany?

          As for christianblood being nuanced, if you really believe this then you are in even worse mental condition than I thought.

          Respecting the matter of Israel and what is good for it, well, since Israel is the only free country in the Middle East, and where Israeli-Arabs enjoy far more freedom than they do in any of the over twenty majority Arab nations, the overwhelming amount of time what is good for Israel, either tactically or strategically, is good for the better part of mankind, for the better angels of our nature.

          Your turn.

        • gravenimage says

          Mar 14, 2019 at 7:43 pm

          lebel wrote:

          I think the main difference between CB’s views and that of other jwatchers is that you start from the premise that whatever is good for Israel is good in the absolute whereas CB’s viewed are more nuanced.
          …………………….

          *Nuanced*? christianblood constantly screams “God bless Hezb’allah!”, applaud’s Hezb’allah’s Jihad terror museum in Lebanon, and lauds Iran’s threatening to “wipe Israel off the map”.

          christianblood also calls for God to allow Muslims to invade and conquer the West, and on one occasion when I spoke critically of this, he demanded that God start with me. When I said this would likely involve my being gang raped and beheaded, he had no problem with that, but said that my resisting this fate was denying the Truth of Christ.

          At other times christianblood has condoned or even praised the hanging of gay people, their being put in concentration camps and murdered, wife beating–he has said that women have no right to go to the police or courts, but should instead protect their abusers, “Honor Killing”, and stoning women to death.

          *This* is what lebel considers “nuanced”. *Ugh*.

        • gravenimage says

          Mar 14, 2019 at 7:47 pm

          Oh, and just yesterday christianblood refused to say anything critical of forced veiling, despite being urged to half a dozen times.

        • Wellington says

          Mar 14, 2019 at 8:36 pm

          Gravenimage: Of all the rot, stupid devil’s advocate positions, idiotic moral equivalency thinking, and overall deceit lebel has spewed over the years, I would vote his contention that christianblood is “nunanced” as “worthy” of first place among the “lebel Oscars.”

          Just sayin’. And I would add this: Defeating those who in any way stand up for Islam is like shooting fish in a barrel.

          Gettin’ any of this, lebel? Probably not—but you should.

        • gravenimage says

          Mar 14, 2019 at 8:40 pm

          Agreed, Wellington.

        • CRUSADER says

          Mar 15, 2019 at 4:36 am

          Bravo, Wellington

          Kudos, GravenImage

  5. lebel says

    Mar 14, 2019 at 5:41 pm

    “lebel: Did it make sense for America and Britain to ally itself with the extraordinarily brutal regime of the USSR against Nazi Germany?”

    Great, so there are perfectly good reasons to ally oneself with Nazis to protect one’s interest. Glad we agree on that although I am pretty sure this only works if the west (or Israel) does it but automatically evil when done by Muslims.

    • Wellington says

      Mar 14, 2019 at 8:56 pm

      Not “perfectly good reasons,” lebel, but arguably reason enough for matters related to self-preservation and defeating the greatest iniquity du jour. Again, you set up a straw man and knocked it down. This is your wont and it is very cheap of you but not nearly as awful as your overall deficiency in moral intelligence. But I digress.

      And of course any Islamic regime is ipso facto evil, lebel, just as any Marxist regime was (is), any fascist regime of whatever stripe was (is), but we don’t live in a perfect world where freedom reigns in every nation and thus free polities must often make alliances with non-free polities against other non-free polities. This is simple Geopolitics 101 but I am not surprised that you don’t grasp this in the least.

      Per my recent 8:36 P.M. post above, dealing with you effectively is about as difficult as shooting fish in a barrel. I wish you provided more intellectual stimulation than you do but, alas, you do not.

      • lebel says

        Mar 15, 2019 at 4:00 am

        Right, although one could say that self-preservation is a perfectly good reason as well. Not sure what the problem is outside of you trying to find yet another opportunity to denigrate the other debater (although that’s par for the course on jwatch. Tell me do you think geopolitics is a good enough reason to help groups like Al-Qaeda? also are Muslims allowed to be geopolitical because when the mufti allies with Hitler it’s evil, evil,evil. I am not expecting much apart from the usual double standards but worth a shot. It would be nice however to get an answer without the obligatory paragraph about how easy it is to defeat me for such a high moral intelligence individual as yourself.

        • CRUSADER says

          Mar 15, 2019 at 4:40 am

          lebel

          You forgot to close the parenthesis in your paragraph…. )

        • Wellington says

          Mar 15, 2019 at 1:05 pm

          “Debaters” as deficient as christianblod deserve to be denigrated. So do you, lebel, since you don’t seem to comprehend how iniquitous Islam is. No, not all Muslims are evil, though many are, but an ideology should be judged by what it says and not by the fact that some adherents of that ideology don’t fully implement its tenets or are nice people in their daily life. One could have found some engaging Nazi Party members in the 1930’s or affable Communists during the Cold War but it didn’t make Nazism or Communism OK. Ditto for Islam.

          And no, I would not go as far for geopolitical reasons to cooperate with an outright terror group like al-Qaeda that has already gone after America and Americans but working with certain Islamic regimes against other Islamic regimes is the stuff of Realpolitik, ditto for alliance with mujahideen elements in Afghanistan to counter the Soviet invasion of that country beginning in December of 1979, though this came back to bite America in the butt just as Stalinist and post-Stalinist Russia did after WWII when we were allied with Russia. These are the kind of chances and results a polity, and especially a great power, has to take and put up with from time to time.

          During the Cold War we somewhat embraced Tito as a counter to the USSR and Richard Nixon opened up relations with Communist China for several reasons, one of them being to drive a further wedge between said country and the USSR. Likewise, because Latin America has been so dysfunctional, America had to ally with unsavory regimes like that of the Somoza family in Nicaragua as a counter to Communism And so it goes in a very imperfect world where few nations are free once you leave the orbit of Western Civilization. Wish the entire world were free but wishin’ ain’t gettin’.

          And one knows or should know by now that Islam implemented “in full flower” is a guarantee that freedom will not exist. About no other major religion can this be said. Wish you got this but you haven’t yet. You just seem content to denigrate Jihad Watch even though JW exists to inform people of just how effed up Islam truly is, as examples, death for apostasy and being the only major faith that calls for war to be made upon mankind “until all religion is with Allah.” {Sura 8:39} You ought to wise up, lebel, but you won’t.

    • Tom says

      Mar 15, 2019 at 11:35 am

      When it’s a matter of self preservation, and indeed it was for the Brits and USSR, not so much at that juncture for the USA, when ones very existence is threatened the old saying “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” becomes very much the way of things. Churchill had great doubts about Russia under Stalin and was very vocal in his criticism of Stalin. It was in fact Churchill that coined the phrase “The Iron Curtain” when speaking of Stalin’s Russia.

      That said, in the very strange alliance that was necessary to defeat the Nazi’s in Europe, the USA played the role of peacekeeper between Churchill, who never really trusted Stalin, and Stalin, who was himself, like Hitler, a megalomaniac who killed his own people without thought. It was only the threat of losing Russia to the Nazi’s that forced Stalin to agree to an alliance with the UK and USA.

      Circumstances of that time in history created strange bedfellows for the common good, which certainly wasn’t the case once the threat to Russia was abated.

      In the fight for survival even a drowning man will clutch at a straw knowing that it may not be his salvation, but clutching at least gives hope.

  6. gravenimage says

    Mar 14, 2019 at 8:07 pm

    Hugh Fitzgerald: The Boldness of Bahrain
    …………….

    I do understand Israel, which is so beleaguered, hoping it can consider Bahrain to be an ally against the mass of Muslim polities which want to destroy her.

    But Bahrain has a fairly terrible human rights record. At best, Israel should hold them at arm’s length.

  7. Guy Forester says

    Mar 14, 2019 at 11:11 pm

    A few points to consider:

    1. The Sunni rulers of Bahrain and the KSA both know that if the Shia get control of either country, the Sunni rulers will be promptly taken to Chop Chop square on the first available Friday for festivities after the Shias take over.

    2. A quick look at a map will quickly point out that the AFB in Qatar will remain as long as there is a USN base in Bahrain. If the Qataris get too cozy with Persia/Iran, look for the KSA to take action.

    3. I suspect that somewhere along the line, the Al Khalifa clan and the Al Saud clan are joined in marriage at least once, if not more. Abdul-Aziz had many wives from various tribes and clans to cement political alliances.

    4. Bahrain is joined to the KSA by a long bridge/causeway link, so the two are literally joined at the ear lobes like Siamese twins. Don’t look for any kind of changes that would put any other clans or religions in charge.

    5. The only force keeping Persia/Iran where they are comes from Israel. The Sunni rulers know this and plan to keep their heads and countries for as long as possible.

    6. The only Sunni powers that could challenge Persia/Iran are Turkey and Egypt, and I doubt that anyone wants either of these two placing large numbers of troops outside of their respective borders.

  8. lebel says

    Mar 15, 2019 at 4:03 am

    “Just sayin’. And I would add this: Defeating those who in any way stand up for Islam is like shooting fish in a barrel.”

    I like this self-congratulatory approach. In honor of you, I’m going to start including a paragraph on how easy it is to debate with jihadwatchers and how I’m kicking their ass all over the place.

    • CRUSADER says

      Mar 15, 2019 at 4:41 am

      YAWN

    • CRUSADER says

      Mar 15, 2019 at 4:42 am

      (lebel, you are boring.)

    • Wellington says

      Mar 15, 2019 at 1:07 pm

      You are indeed a legend in your own mind, lebel.

  9. DP111 says

    Mar 15, 2019 at 8:06 am

    The enemy of y enemy is my friend etc.

    I would not place my trust in Muslims, as they can revert any moment to the unchanging principles of the koran.

  10. UNCLE VLADDI says

    Mar 15, 2019 at 1:18 pm

    Meh. Just another temporary “enemy of my enemy” hudna “truce.”

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