ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Bahrain on Wednesday announced the arrest of more than a dozen individuals accused of “acting as field operatives” tasked with influencing citizens to commit incriminating acts, the Manama’s interior ministry said, adding that the case is linked to previous arrests of individuals reportedly connected to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The Bahraini ministry detailed that 15 individuals were arrested “based on the findings of security investigations and reports regarding previously apprehended individuals in the case of Iranian agents in Bahrain,” who are allegedly linked to the IRGC.
The latter suspects had acted as “field operatives tasked with executing inciting directives by attempting to influence citizens,” specifically targeting teenagers and young adults to encourage them to engage in “legally criminalized acts.”
The ministry had in mid-March reported that the affiliated General Directorate of Criminal Investigation and Forensic Science “managed to arrest four Bahraini individuals and identify a fifth suspect who is a fugitive abroad” over their involvement in “communicating and coordinating” with the IRGC through “terrorist elements located in Iran.”
The arrests come as regional tensions have been broiling for months since the onset of the Iran war.
The US and Israel launched a large-scale aerial campaign against Iran in late February, striking thousands of targets across the country during six weeks of hostilities.
Tehran responded with thousands of missile and drone attacks across the region - particularly Gulf Arab states - targeting what it said were US assets, and carrying out retaliatory strikes against Israel.
Bahrain - which hosts the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet - has since the eruption of the six week war been a primary target of the Iranian retaliatory strikes.
The US and Iran agreed to a Pakistan-mediated ceasefire that took effect on April 8, creating an opening for negotiations, however, a final resolution to the conflict has yet to be reached.
Manama’s measures on Wednesday also came hours after the US military reported that Iranian missile attacks that targeted the Gulf kingdom at dawn the same day were either intercepted or failed.
Iran's foreign ministry later condemned what it said were overnight attacks by the US against an Iranian oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and a telecommunications tower on Qeshm Island, which it said were launched from "two countries in the region” that it later identified as Bahrain and Kuwait.
"These aggressive actions not only violate the [Pakistan-mediated] ceasefire agreement” but “also constitute a flagrant violation of the fundamental principle prohibiting the use of force under Article 2, Paragraph 4 of the United Nations Charter and international law," the ministry said.
For his part, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a Wednesday statement on X that Iranian armed forces “are conducting self-defense strikes on sites the U.S. is permitted to use to attack civilian shipping and violate the ceasefire.”
He further warned that “any hostile act will be met with an immediate, decisive response.”
