Iran: US Presence in Bahrain in the Crosshairs

Iran’s 29 January 2017 ballistic missile test—its tenth since signing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and UN Security Council passage of Resolution 2231 but its first since the start of the new US administration—reinvigorated international debate about whether Iran’s ballistic missile tests violated Iranian commitments under both agreements. At issue is whether Iran’s ballistic missiles are designed and can carry a nuclear warhead. Iranian officials argue that they are not designed to do so and therefore are permissible, while others argue that a capacity to carry a nuclear warhead makes any work on ballistic missiles illegal.

The 29 January test was met with augmented sanctions on individuals and firms involved with Iran’s ballistic missile program. Iranian officials responded with outrage. It is in this context that Hojjat al-Islam Mojtaba Zonour, a former advisor to the Supreme Leader’s representative to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), is important. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is not only Iran’s political leader but constitutionally he is also commander-in-chief, with the ability to hire and fire any military commander. He communicates with the IRGC through a permanent representative stationed with the IRGC’s top brass. Zonour’s statements, therefore, excerpted here from an Iranian website and newspaper closely affiliated with the IRGC, are more than simple bloviating, but rather likely reflect the hostility to the United States still present at senior levels of Iran’s religious and military hierarchy. While Western press mention of Zonour’s comments focused on his acknowledgement and implicit threat that Iranian missiles could reach Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, in seven minutes, his threats to attack the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain should be of concern.

Previously, it was conventional wisdom in both war games and in the academic and policy sphere that any military engagement with Iran—be it a limited skirmish with the United States or a hypothetical Israeli airstrike—might lead Iran to retaliate by means of its proxies in southern Lebanon and elsewhere. Zonour’s declaration suggests that in such a scenario, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could target directly not only the US presence in Bahrain but also bases in Afghanistan and elsewhere with missiles rather than only indirectly or by proxy as has often been assumed in the past.