Can Iran Expand the War to the UAE and Bahrain?

A Question of Control, Not Conquest…

The dominant Western framing of a potential Iranian expansion into the Gulf rests on a narrow and outdated assumption: that power projection must take the form of conventional invasion. This lens, shaped by memories of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein, fails to account for how power is actually exercised in the Persian Gulf today.

Iran does not need to invade Bahrain to control it. The strategic question is not whether Tehran can replicate a 20th-century territorial annexation, but whether it can reshape the political alignment of Bahrain from within, leveraging demography, geography, and asymmetric doctrine.

The Kingdom of Bahrain presents a structural vulnerability rarely acknowledged in mainstream geopolitical analysis. Unlike most Gulf monarchies, Bahrain is a Shia-majority society ruled by a Sunni monarchy, the House of Khalifa.

This imbalance is not incidental—it is historical. Bahrain’s modern political architecture emerged under British imperial influence, and later Anglo-American security guarantees, which ensured that a monarchy aligned with Western and Gulf Sunni interests remained in power despite the demographic composition of its population.

From Tehran’s perspective, this is not merely a neighboring state—it is a politically contested space with latent alignment potential.

Iran has never needed to formally claim Bahrain as territory in modern times to view it as strategically relevant. The logic is similar to its posture in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein: influence without occupation, alignment without annexation.

Iran’s strategic doctrine is often misunderstood because it does not conform to conventional military benchmarks. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has refined a model of indirect control, built on: Political influence within Shia populations, support for aligned non-state actors, intelligence penetration and ideological networks, and precision deterrence through missiles and drones.

This model has been demonstrated across multiple theatres, including Lebanon and Iraq, where Tehran exerts decisive influence without deploying conventional occupation forces.

The comparison to annexation of Crimea is instructive—not because Iran would replicate it exactly, but because it underscores a broader point: modern territorial control can be achieved through ambiguity, deniability, and internal leverage, rather than massed troop movements.

Much has been made of the Persian Gulf as a natural barrier to Iranian expansion. But this argument assumes that expansion must take the form of amphibious invasion—a scenario Iran is unlikely to pursue.

Instead, the Gulf is a zone of constant Iranian operational reach. Through naval asymmetry, missile coverage, and drone capabilities, Iran already exercises a form of area denial across critical waterways.

Bahrain’s proximity to Iran—far closer than the strategic depth enjoyed by the United Arab Emirates—makes it uniquely exposed not to invasion, but to sustained political and security pressure.

The presence of the United States Fifth Fleet in Bahrain is often cited as an absolute deterrent. In reality, it is a double-edged sword. While it provides regime security, it also: reinforces Bahrain’s identity as a forward operating base for US power, makes it a primary target in any US–Iran escalation and deepens domestic tensions by associating the monarchy with external military dependence.

Iran does not need to neutralise the Fifth Fleet directly. It only needs to raise the cost of its presence, politically and militarily, to the point where Bahrain becomes internally unstable or strategically compromised.

The United Arab Emirates presents a far more resilient target. Its demographic composition, economic diversification, and internal security architecture make it less susceptible to the kind of internal leverage Iran could exploit in Bahrain.

However, even here, Iran’s objective would not be conquest. It would be deterrence through disruption—targeting infrastructure, energy flows, and maritime security to compel strategic recalibration.

The central misunderstanding in current discourse is the equation of power with territorial conquest. Iran’s strategic culture operates differently.

Tehran does not need more land. It needs: strategic depth, regime-aligned buffers and reduced encirclement by US-allied states.

In Bahrain, this could translate into the emergence—gradual or abrupt—of a political order more aligned with Iranian security interests. Such a shift would not require tanks in Manama. It would require time, pressure, and the activation of existing internal fault lines.

The idea of Iranian troops storming Gulf capitals is, indeed, implausible. But dismissing Iran’s ability to reshape the political map of the Gulf is equally flawed.

The real risk is not invasion. It is transformation.

And in Bahrain, more than anywhere else in the Gulf, the conditions for such a transformation are not hypothetical—they already exist.

CityNews

Photo – Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Credit Anadolu Agency (Anadolu Ajansı)