ABSTRACT

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has mounted ideological, strategic and security challenges against Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the three countries hosting the largest Twelver Shia communities on the Arabian Peninsula. Assessing the nature, extent and potency of Iran’s networks of influence in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait is more challenging than elsewhere. Before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iranian support for Shia political movements in the Gulf was limited to calls for reform, social change and religious tolerance. From 1979 until 2011, Iran attempted a friendly take-over of the Iraqi-origin Shia networks in the Gulf. Da’wa also pursued the goal of exporting the revolution and dominated the Shia political space in Kuwait and Bahrain from the 1970s, although it failed to make significant inroads in Saudi Arabia. The Bahrain government maintains that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps supports the armed groups, a finding corroborated by US government analysts.