ABSTRACT
Bahrain's rulers have executed a complex balancing act in pursuit of security and autonomy for the new state. In the first place, the regime has been engaged in a continuing effort to define the character of its strategic relations with the dominant extraregional power in the Gulf. The Islamic Republic, have advanced claims to sovereignty over the Bahrain archipelago on the basis of patterns of territorial control that long antedated the British Raj. Iran's relations with Bahrain have changed dramatically over the course of the last two decades. The Iranian authorities lodged a formal protest against the British government's policy of treating Bahrain as an independent state having special ties to Great Britain. The Bahrain kept a low profile in regional diplomacy during the first winter of the war. The government protested Iranian air attacks on Kuwait in mid-November 1980 and met privately with Iraqi leaders prior to the Arab summit conference in Amman later that month.
