Iran's Axis of Resistance Claims New Front Against Israel

A militia based in the Arab island nation of Bahrain has claimed its first-ever attack on Israel, marking what would be a fifth front opened by forces of the Iran-aligned Axis of Resistance coalition since the beginning of the nearly 7-month-old war in the Gaza Strip.

The group, known as the Al-Ashtar Brigades and styling itself as the Islamic Resistance in Bahrain, issued a statement Thursday announcing that it had targeted the headquarters of the Israeli company Trucknet Enterprises—said to be "responsible for land transportation in the Zionist entity"—in the southern Israeli port city of Eilat, also called Umm al-Rashrash, last Saturday with a drone.

The attack, according to the group, was conducted "in support of the Palestinian cause and in support of our people resisting in Gaza."

"The Islamic Resistance in Bahrain confirms that it is continuing its movement and support at all levels for our patient people in the resistant Gaza," the group said, "and that it will not stop its operations unless the Zionist aggression against Gaza stops."

The statement closely mirrored language that has been issued from other Axis of Resistance factions, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, the Iraq and Syria-based Islamic Resistance in Iraq and the Ansar Allah, or Houthi, movement of Yemen. The Al-Ashtar Brigades later shared a heavily censored video purporting to show footage of the preparations and execution of the attack at an undisclosed location.

The clip prominently featured a portrait depicting four men: Reda al-Ghasra, Mustafa Yousef and Mahmoud Yahya, who were killed by Bahraini security forces while attempting to escape from prison to Iran in 2017, as well as Ahmed al-Malali, who was executed in 2019. All four were accused by Bahraini authorities of terrorism and are hailed by the Al-Ashtar Brigades as martyrs.

Newsweek has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Trucknet, which have yet to confirm the attack, as well as the media wing of the Al-Ashtar Brigades for comment.

The Bahraini Embassy to the United States shared with Newsweek a report by the state media outlet Bahrain News Agency, which cited National Communication Center spokesperson Mohammed al-Abbasi saying that the government considers the Al-Ashtar Brigades to be a terrorist organization that operates outside of the kingdom and that this designation is shared by other countries including the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

The Al-Ashtar Brigades is a Shiite Muslim militia that is opposed to the Sunni Muslim monarchy that rules majority-Shiite Bahrain. The group has claimed attacks in Bahrain since at least 2013, including a number of bombings targeting security personnel, and it, along with other Shiite Muslim self-styled resistance militias in Bahrain such as the Al-Mukhtar Brigades and Waad Allah Brigades, has been accused by authorities of being directly backed by Iran.

The drone seen in the Al-Ashtar Brigades bore similarities to models recently employed by Ansar Allah, with resemblance to Iran's Samad line of long-range unmanned aerial vehicles.

As with a number of Axis of Resistance militias across the region, the Al-Ashtar Brigades' flag bears a clenched fist raising a Kalashnikov-style rifle set beside a globe and Quranic verse, following a pattern set by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

While not nearly as active as some of the more prominent Axis of Resistance factions in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the presence of the Al-Ashtar Brigades and other revolutionary Shiite Muslim militias has proved a lingering security concern for the monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula as well as for the U.S., which has a number of key bases in the region. Bahrain's capital city of Manama hosts the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.

In March, the U.S. State Department announced a coordinated action alongside Bahrain to issue sanctions against "three Iran- based operatives and a financial facilitator linked to Al-Ashtar Brigades, a U.S.-designated terrorist group."

The statement said the move underscored that "the U.S. government's commitment to target destabilizing forces and threats emanating from Iran, including those threatening our regional partners," and that the U.S. "will continue to target Al-Ashtar Brigades operatives and financial sources wherever they are located."

"These designations highlight the critical role Iran plays in providing support to Al-Ashtar Brigades," the State Department said at the time. "In 2018, the government of Bahrain prosecuted numerous individuals for terrorism-related activities. A number of these individuals fled Bahrain to evade prison sentences and settled in Iran, which has long supported and continues to serve as a safe haven for terrorist groups."

Speaking at a press briefing Thursday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters he had not yet seen the reports of the Al-Ashtar Brigades attack but that, when it comes to mounting regional tensions over Gaza, "it has been our goal to prevent this conflict from spreading."

"We've seen a couple points since October 7th where there has been serious potential of it spreading and having it escalate, and you've seen us work quite intensively during that period," Miller said, referring to the recent direct clashes between Iran and Israel as "one of the most intense periods."

"So it continues to be our goal, and it is something that you have to work on every day," he added. "When you see the conflict in Gaza continue, obviously it adds to tensions in the region, and so it's one it is a type of thing that you can never rest on, in terms of trying to prevent the conflict from spreading."

Bahrain, a close ally of neighboring Saudi Arabia, is one of four Arab nations that established ties with Israel through the Abraham Accords process that began in 2020, with the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco also normalizing ties. The decision elicited anger from opposition groups within the country and continues to prove divisive as critics accuse the IDF of war crimes in the ongoing war in Gaza, something Israeli leadership has roundly rejected.

The Bahraini Foreign Ministry has criticized Israel's actions in Gaza and those of its citizens on a number of occasions since the conflict began, however, including a statement Thursday that "strongly condemned and denounced the attack by extremist Israeli settlers on two Jordanian aid convoys carrying food and relief supplies to the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Abu Salem crossing and Beit Hanoun-Erez crossings, in a violation of international humanitarian law, international covenants, and all humanitarian and moral values."

Still, relations between the two nations appear to be intact. A November statement issued by Bahrain's lower house of parliament claimed that Israel's ambassador to the kingdom had left the country, Bahrain's envoy had returned home and all economic ties between the two had been suspended, but no official confirmation followed, and the Israeli Foreign Ministry later denied the report.

Bahrain is also the only Arab nation to have joined the U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian coalition established in December to counter an unprecedented maritime campaign launched by Ansar Allah against commercial vessels accused of shipping goods to Israel via the Red Sea and surrounding waters. Ansar Allah has also claimed direct strikes on Eilat in recent months.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed attacks on Eilat as well, most recently on Thursday in an alleged drone strike. The militia coalition went on to claim follow-up cruise missile strikes against Beer Sheva and Tel Aviv.

The Al-Ashtar Brigades is also not the only ostensibly Arabian Peninsula-based group to have claimed a drone attack on southern Israeli port city. In November, roughly a month after the Palestinian Hamas movement's surprise attack on Israel sparked the current conflict in Gaza, a previously unknown group calling itself SWAT Arabian Island claimed to have struck Eilat with two drones.

Weeks earlier, the Alwiyat Al-Waad al-Haq militia, styling itself as "the sons of the Arabian Island" and believed to have ties to Islamic Resistance in Iraq factions such as Kataib Hezbollah, threatened to strike U.S. military installations in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates as a result of U.S. support for Israel throughout the war.

Speaking with the Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen in January, Kataib Hezbollah military spokesperson Jaafar al-Husseini suggested that Bahrain and other countries in the Arabian Peninsula would see greater Axis of Resistance activities in the coming stages of the crisis still gripping the Middle East.

"The resistance in Bahrain also has a role in the Axis of Resistance, although it is not clear at the current stage," Husseini said at the time, "but its features will become clearer and clearer in the coming years and in the coming confrontations."

Update 05/02/2024, 6:02 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include reference to a report shared by Bahrain's embassy in Washington, D.C.

Update 05/02/2024, 7:45 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include comments by U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.