Key facts
- Bahrain's public prosecution said the clerics tried to run a terrorist group seeking to overthrow the ruling order with help from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
- The clerics' relatives and lawyers denied the charges that they sought to overthrow the state or acted for Iran.
- Al Hassan denied that Bahrain targets Shiite citizens, calling most of them law-abiding and loyal.
- Iran's UN mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
- A Manama-based researcher, speaking on condition of anonymity, said authorities must distinguish Shiite identity from Wilayet al-Faqih.
Bahraini authorities have arrested more than 50 Shiite Muslim clerics and religious orators and stripped citizenship from 69 citizens of Iranian heritage, in a crackdown officials describe as a response to Iran's attacks on the island kingdom and to domestic support for them.
Lt. Gen. Tariq Al Hassan, head of Bahrain's Public Security agency, told Reuters in an interview that the government was confronting an ideology that demands obedience to Iran's leadership above Bahrain's sovereign authority. He said Wilayet al-Faqih, or the Guardianship of the Jurist, Iran's official ideology, had fostered allegiance to a foreign state within parts of Bahraini society, and that authorities determined the issue had to be addressed at its roots. He denied that Bahrain targets Shiite citizens, most of whom he called law-abiding and loyal.
Bahrain's public prosecution said the clerics, arrested between May and June, tried to run a terrorist group that sought to incite rebellion and overthrow the ruling order with help from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, partly by promoting followers' subordination to Iran's supreme leader. The clerics' relatives and lawyers say authorities are trying to criminalize belief and deny the charges.
On Friday, 20 rights groups including Human Rights Watch and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy released a statement raising allegations of torture, coerced confessions and other due process violations in the case. A verdict is expected on November 8, and the kingdom is bracing for potential protests. Iran's UN mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US and Israel launched the Iran war on February 28, and Tehran responded with drones and missiles on neighboring Gulf states including Bahrain. Western diplomats and Gulf officials said the strikes were worryingly accurate for Bahraini authorities, hitting a hotel shortly after US military personnel arrived there after fleeing their base, home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet. Officials were further alarmed by social media posts from some Bahrainis praising attacks seen as targeting US interests after US strikes killed Iran's supreme leader.
Around a dozen people have been sentenced to between five and 10 years in prison for allegedly expressing support for the attacks. The crackdown has reversed a trend of internal and regional detente: the government had freed hundreds of prisoners jailed for political activity via royal pardons in 2024, rights groups said, and the same year Bahrain and Iran began talks to restore diplomatic relations severed since 2016.
A Manama-based researcher on Islamist movements, speaking on condition of anonymity, said authorities must distinguish between Shiite identity and Wilayet al-Faqih, and that Bahrain's strongest answer to Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards is a sovereign state with secure religious freedom for all.