There is an unfolding crisis in Bahrain. It began when the country’s government, perhaps with Saudi urging, stripped the citizenship of Isa Qasim, the leading ayatollah resident on the island. Qasim had Bahraini citizenship but trained and studied in Qom, the Iranian city that is the home of Shia scholarship. In recent years, he grew increasingly close to Iran. He also served effectively as the spiritual leader for al-Wifaq, the country’s main Shi‘ite opposition party, which the Bahraini government suspended a week ago.
It is against this backdrop that the Iranian government and media have begun to increasingly advocate on behalf of Qasim and against the Bahraini ruling family. Qassem Soleimani—as head of the Qods force, he is Iran’s master terrorist—threatened Bahrain directly earlier this week. Yesterday, Ayatollah Qasim’s Iran-based representative gave a press conference in which he reported that Qasim was under house arrest but, if Bahraini forces entered his house, “it would be a bloodbath.” General Hassan Firouzabadi, Iranian armed forces chief of staff, meanwhile questioned the legitimacy of the Bahraini royal family to rule.
Let’s put aside the question of whether or not the Bahraini government has just cause to crack down on Qasim or, for that matter, shutter al-Wifaq. While it is indisputable that Iran has interfered in Bahraini domestic politics, it is also true that the Bahraini Shi‘ite community has legitimate grievances and that Bahraini Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa’s sectarian policies have long done more harm than good. Overenthusiastic crackdowns often backfire.
Iran’s advocacy on behalf of Isa Qasim, however, is utterly hypocritical. After all, more ayatollahs suffer under house arrest, if not imprisonment, in Iran than in any other country. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had placed Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari under house arrest for questioning clerical rule. Shariatmadari remained a prisoner until his death in 1986. In 1997, Iranian authorities put Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri under house arrest after he had questioned Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s authority. Then there’s the case of Ayatollah Kazemeini Boroujerdi. After Boroujerdi had criticized Iranian regime extremism a decade ago, government security forces surrounded Boroujerdi’s house, clashing with his supporters, before dragging the Ayatollah off to Iran’s Evin Prison.
More recently, Iranian authorities have condemned Saudi Arabia’s execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, Saudi Arabia’s leading Shi‘ite cleric. Again, this was cynical. Nima had opposed Khomeini-style religious rule and so the Iranian government refused to advocate on his behalf when he was imprisoned. Only after his death did Iranian authorities mention his name, for they no longer had to worry about a released Nimr challenging their own authority.
Iranian leaders posture masterfully, but their advocacy on behalf of Bahrain’s embattled Ayatollah is not motivated by altruism or an embrace of religious freedom. Rather, Isa Qasim is just the latest wedge by which Iranian authorities seek to subvert Bahrain. No one should take Iranian complaints about the Bahraini crackdown seriously until Supreme Leader Khamenei opens the prison doors of Iran and releases all ayatollahs and lesser clerics who essentially are prisoners of conscience under the Islamic Republic’s religious dictatorship.
