The governments of Iran and Bahrain announced on Sunday that they agreed on negotiations to normalize their diplomatic relationship after nearly a decade of strain.
Bahrain is one of the few Muslim countries in the Middle East that maintains diplomatic ties with Israel — as per the Abraham Accords that American former President Donald Trump spearheaded in 2020 — and one of the few to condemn Iran’s proxy terrorist organization, Hamas, for its unprecedented terrorist attack on Israel in October. Its leaders have, nonetheless, recently indicated publicly that they hope to find a path toward reestablishing a relationship with Iran in the near future, potentially complicating the progress made with the Abraham Accords.
Notably, Bahraini government officials have commented on normalizing relations with Iran to officials in Russia and China, the most powerful members of the anti-American BRICS international coalition. Iran joined BRICS in January, alongside longtime rival Saudi Arabia, after communist China brokered a normalization plan between Tehran and Riyadh.
Bahrain applied to join BRICS in 2022 but was not invited during the group’s first round of major expansion in January. Bahraini officials attended a BRICS foreign minister summit in early June, however, and emphasized their interest in joining the bloc.
The government of Iran published an official statement on Sunday, announcing that Bahraini Foreign Affairs Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani met with the top diplomat of Iran, Ali Bagheri Kani, on Sunday in Tehran and agreed to start talks.
“During the meeting, the two sides agreed to create necessary mechanisms to start negotiations between the two countries on how to restart political relations,” the statement read, according to an English-language translation from the Iranian state propaganda network PressTV.
The Bahrain News Agency (BNA), also a state news outlet, confirmed the report on Sunday, citing a joint statement that both countries signed. Normalizing relations, the statement reportedly read, was important, given the “fraternal historical relations between the Kingdom of Bahrain and the Islamic Republic of Iran and the bonds of religion, neighbourliness, joint history and common interests that connect them.”
Bahrain officially cut ties with Iran in 2016 in solidarity with Saudi Arabia, which similarly did so in response to a mob storming the Saudi embassy in Tehran and attempting to burn it down, with seemingly no attempt at intervention from Iranian authorities. Iran-Saudi relations soured further after they cut diplomatic ties as Saudi Arabia became embroiled in a proxy war against Iran in Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthi terrorists took over the nation’s capital, Sana’a, from the legitimate government there in 2014.
Riyadh and Tehran restored their relations in a shock Beijing summit in March 2023, where Chinese officials revealed they had been working behind the scenes to normalize the two countries’ ties for months. In addition to facilitation by the Communist Party, Riyadh agreed to a truce with the Houthi terrorists in April 2022 that has largely held; the Houthis have since refocused their efforts toward bombing random commercial ships attempting to navigate the Red Sea, allegedly as a way of supporting Hamas.
BRICS invited both Iran and Saudi Arabia to join months later, a move that would likely have been impossible before the normalization of relations. BRICS countries support each other at international venues — such as the U.N. — help each other overcome the effects of human rights and other sanctions on their economies, and work to undermine the United States in pursuit of what international leftists refer to as the “multipolar world order.”
With tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia resolved, Bahrain’s objections to ties with Tehran no longer hold, King Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa suggested during a visit to Russia in May.
“We had problems with Iran but not anymore,” he said at the time. “We see no reason to delay the normalization of relations with it … We are trying to establish normal diplomatic, trade, and cultural relations with it.”
In early June, Bahrain officially requested that Russia send a message to Iran stating that Manama was seeking to restore relations with it. The king similarly mentioned the prospect while in China, and Bahrain participated in the BRICS foreign minister summit in mid-June.
In addition to China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, the BRICS coalition unites Brazil, India, South Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Preceding the king’s stops in Russia and China, Bahrain officials emphasized in public statements the importance they placed on being invited to join BRICS.
“It is very important to be among those countries [BRICS members] to play a decisive role in the economy and the region’s development,” Bahraini Ambassador to Russia Ahmed Abdulrahman Al Saati said in an interview with the Russian state outlet Sputnik. “It will help to establish peace and security in the region and in the world through economic development.”
“It is good to add to our portfolio membership in different organizations, including in BRICS,” he added.
One potential complication in friendship with Iran could be Bahrain’s relationship with Israel. Bahrain normalized its relationship with Israel, alongside the UAE, in 2020 as part of Trump’s Abraham Accords. Bahrain has maintained diplomatic relations with Israel even in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack, which many Muslim states reacted to by condemning Israel for its subsequent self-defense operations. Following the attack, the Bahraini government issued a statement condemning Hamas:
The attacks launched by Hamas constitute a dangerous escalation that threatens the lives of civilians. The Ministry also expressed the Kingdom of Bahrain’s denunciation of what was reported in some reports of the kidnapping of civilians from their homes as hostages, calling for an end to the escalation and the avoidance of violence that threatens regional security and stability and portends dire consequences for the region.
The BRICS coalition did not condemn Hamas for the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians on October 7 and has since opposed Israel’s self-defense operations.
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