Bahrain is in revolution. Since February 28 — the day US and Israeli strikes ignited the region — Saudi armour is said to be rolling in to crush it. You will not see this on CNN.
For three decades Washington told you the missiles are for the people (we have to commit mass murder to save them!) — for the oppressed, the voiceless, those living under theocratic tyranny. It funded colour revolutions. Cheered manufactured protesters in Iran. Ran Farsi-language CIA social media accounts urging Iranians into the streets. Every last word of it in the name of freedom. But where is CNN and the BBC demanding freedom and liberty for this popular uprising in Bahrain? Absolute hypocrites.
The majority Shia population of Bahrain are in the streets. Saudi tanks are crossing the King Fahd Causeway. Again. Where is the White House statement cheering on this popular uprising for liberty and freedom? Where is the State Department’s grave concern? Silent — because Bahrain hosts the Fifth Fleet, and the Al Khalifa family are the right kind of autocrats. The kind that price their oil in dollars. The wrong kind of autocrat is simply the one Washington doesn’t own. Washington loves brutal dictatorships and the feeling is mutual for the Sunni monarchs that are loyal to the empire’s exporting of actual terrorism.
On the morning of February 28, Iranian drones and missiles began hitting Bahrain roughly two hours after the first US and Israeli strikes on Tehran. The primary target was the headquarters of US Naval Forces Central Command — the Fifth Fleet itself. The same fleet whose presence is the Al Khalifa family’s entire justification for selling out their own Shia majority. Washington garrisoned Bahrain to project power over Iran. Iran made Bahrain pay for it.
Sitra Island is burning. Again. In 2011 it was where the crackdown was worst — two dead, over two hundred wounded, the Saudi boots already on the ground. Those same boots crossed the causeway again this week. As of March 3, demonstrators are throwing Molotov cocktails at security forces. Security forces are firing back. The Peninsula Shield Force is on the streets and the clashes have not stopped. The Shia of Bahrain have a fifteen-year memory. Washington has none.
Iranian strikes hit Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province on February 28. That is not incidental geography. The Eastern Province is where the oil is. It is also where the kingdom’s Shia population lives — forty years of fury, watching, waiting. Ras Tanura in the crosshairs. Riyadh condemned the attacks and reserved the right to respond. The Shia of Qatif watched those missiles arc overhead and drew their own conclusions.
This war may have been engineered in Israel but Mohammed bin Salman quietly lobbied Trump for this war. He pushed for the strike on Iran. He wanted the match lit. Now his embassy is on fire, his refinery is a target, and the population sitting on top of his oil fields is radicalised and watching Bahrain burn. He ordered the arsonist. He is surprised by the fire. This is not tragedy. This is invoice.
Now watch the boomerang.
The regime change virus they launched at Tehran is airborne and unguided. Bahrain shaking. Saudi Arabia’s Shia Eastern Province — sitting on top of the kingdom’s oil fields, furious for forty years — watching every frame of this. How stable is Kuwait? Qatar’s LNG offline. Every Gulf monarch who rented their soil to Washington is now a target not of Iran’s choosing but of America’s regime change boomerang.
And Israel. When historians go looking for what Operation Epic Fury actually produced, they may well find the regimes that fell were not in Tehran. The Likud fantasy of a redrawn Middle East may yet arrive — just not in the direction anyone promised the Israeli public. The Israeli regime itself has never looked so fragile thanks to predictable, natural consequences.
They wanted regime change in Iran. They may have lit the fuse on everything else. Darwinian level arrogance and incompetence.
Reprinted with permission from The Islander.
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