Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait launched sweeping security campaigns and arrested dozens of citizens for being traitors loyal to Iran after Tehran retaliated for U.S. Israeli strikes by launching thousands of missile and drone attacks at Gulf states.
In Kuwait, security forces arrested a group accused of plotting assassinations and stripped several citizens of their nationality. In the United Arab Emirates, authorities charged more than 28 people with belonging to terrorist organizations and deported large numbers of Pakistani workers. In Bahrain, authorities arrested dozens of citizens and revoked their citizenship.
In all these cases, those targeted were overwhelmingly members of the Shiite minority. Across the Arab Gulf states, Shiites have long faced a complicated relationship with governments that often view their religious ties to post-revolutionary Iran through a sectarian and security lens.
After Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini adopted a policy of exporting the revolution to neighboring countries. While discrimination against Shiite communities in the Gulf predated the revolution, researcher Geneive Abdo told MBN, Khomeini’s doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih, or Guardianship of the Jurist, intensified official suspicions toward Shiite communities and further strained their relations with Sunni-led governments.
On Sept. 26, 1989, after Saudi Arabia executed 16 Kuwaiti Shiite militants, masked members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah held a news conference threatening Saudi interests. Behind the speakers hung portraits of Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei, alongside Hezbollah’s emblem promoting the Islamic Revolution.
Abdo, whose research focuses on shifting political and religious alliances within Shiite communities across the Middle East, recently published The New Shiites of the Arab World, which examines the condition of Shiite communities in the Gulf and their relationship with state authorities.
A Long History of Marginalization
Abdo describes a long history of discrimination against Shiites across much of the Arab world, particularly in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE.
In Saudi Arabia, she said, the situation has improved in recent years, particularly in the kingdom’s Eastern Province.
“Shiite communities have been given significantly greater economic opportunities under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reforms,” she said.
Bahrain, by contrast, has moved in the opposite direction.
“Frankly, the situation has become much worse since the 2011 uprising,” Abdo said, referring to a series of predominately Shiite protests.
Bahrain occupies a unique position in the Gulf. Although Shiites form a majority of the country’s population, they are governed by a Sunni ruling family and are often viewed as a vulnerable minority within the broader Gulf political order. The Gulf Cooperation Council has repeatedly intervened to support Bahrain’s government during periods of unrest, most notably during the Arab Spring, when the Peninsula Shield Force entered Bahrain in 2011 to help suppress the protests.
According to Abdo, Bahraini authorities have repeatedly pledged over the past 15 years to address discrimination against Shiites, but conditions on the ground have changed little.
“Shiites remain economically and politically marginalized,” said Abdo, a frequent visitor to the island country. “People have had their citizenship revoked, clerics have been punished and imprisoned, so the situation has not improved.”
War Brings Renewed Pressure
Conditions for Shiite communities in Bahrain and the UAE have deteriorated sharply since the war with Iran, Abdo said.
“People are being arrested, but it goes beyond that,” she said. “In the UAE, Shiites have been targeted not necessarily because they committed crimes, but because of their sectarian identity. This is religious discrimination that has been well documented by human rights organizations. It is not limited to arrests. It also includes deportations.”
While acknowledging that some of the authorities’ allegations may be legitimate, she said the broader response has been marked by discrimination and human rights violations.
“In the UAE, Pakistani Shiites are being deported back to Pakistan,” she said. “Authorities also subject detainees to degrading treatment, including forcing them to strip after being transferred to detention centers. This is not just about arrests. It is meant to humiliate.” She said similar practices occurred in Bahrain.
Reuters has reported testimony from deported Shiites in Dubai, including a Pakistani engineer who spent 16 years in the UAE and served as a manager for Dubai Metro.
Describing his first hours in detention, he told Reuters: “Everyone I saw there was either Pakistani or Afghan, and all of them were Shiite. No one had a criminal record, and no one faced any charges other than being Shiite.”
Michael Page, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters that reports of the deportation of Pakistani Shiite residents from the UAE were “deeply concerning” and said the organization was investigating what he described as “these serious allegations.”
Security Concerns or Political Repression?
In many cases, Abdo argues, the measures appear to be driven more by politics than genuine security concerns.
“In Bahrain, for example, some Shiites are accused of spying,” she said. “After Ali Khamenei was assassinated during the war, some Shiites in Bahrain publicly expressed grief. Bahraini authorities arrested people who displayed any signs of mourning and charged them with espionage.”
There were more provocative incidents, too. Some Bahraini Shiites publicly celebrated Iranian missile and drone strikes targeting Bahrain during the conflict.
Many human rights advocates argue that expressions of sympathy for Iran do not, by themselves, amount to treason, espionage or other broad national security offenses that authorities have increasingly used to justify arrests across the Gulf.
Amnesty International cited Kuwaiti media reports that authorities had issued rulings against 204 defendants on charges including expressing sympathy for what officials described as the “Iranian aggression,” inciting sectarian discord and spreading false information.
The organization also documented the arrest of more than 1,000 people across the Gulf in a broad crackdown on war-related expressions of opinion, including Shiites who publicly expressed sympathy with Iran.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
