Bahraini Al-Ashtar Brigades Claims Responsibility for Drone Attack Against Israel

On April 27, Al-Ashtar Brigades raised its public profile by claiming a drone attack against the Israeli city of Eilat. The militant group was designated a terrorist organization by the United States in 2018. It is a paramilitary branch of the Islamic Resistance of Bahrain, which is aligned with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The drone attack itself has yet to be confirmed, and it is unclear if Al-Ashtar Brigades has indeed been involved in any such attack. However, an article by centrist Metropolises News Agency, quoting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s May 1 statements, made a significant, if vague, threat to the government of Bahrain.

• May 2: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps mouthpiece Mashregh News released a public statement by Al-Ashtar Brigades claiming responsibility for an alleged drone attack against the Israeli city of Eilat on April 27. Neither the alleged drone attack, nor Al-Ashtar Brigades’ complicity in it, can be independently verified. It is also not known where the drone would have been launched from.
• May 2: In a separate story, Mashregh News released video footage allegedly showing the launch of the drone.
• May 5: Centrist Iran’s Metropolises News Agency’s background article, which appears to be based on articles in Wikipedia’s Arabic entry about the group and Newsweek’s May 2 article on the subject, explaining the motives behind the alleged drone attack, wrote:
  • Diplomatic “relations between Bahrain and the Zionist regime are intact, despite reports on expulsion of the Israeli ambassador from Bahrain and suspension of economic relations between Bahrain and Israel since November. However, the policy has not been officially announced, and the Israeli Foreign Ministry has dismissed the reports … Separately, we must not forget that Bahrain was the only Arab state joining the Anglo-American alliance to counter the activities of the armed forces of Yemen in the Red Sea. As Islamic Resistance of Bahrain, the latest group in the axis of resistance in the region, has begun a new phase in its activities, we must expect new dynamics in this country,” a reference to Bahrain, “which is among strategic allies of the Zionist regime. As the supreme leader of the revolution pointed out when receiving schoolteachers: ‘There are those who think they can force neighboring countries to normalize their relations with the Zionist regime, after which all the problems will be solved. No, they are mistaken. Imagine different countries around us, for the most part Arab states, normalize their relations with the Zionist regime. This will not solve the problem. This will merely change public attention to these governments. Governments that are turning a blind eye to the crimes of the Zionist regime shake the hands of this regime in friendship despite its crimes. The nations will attack these governments. The same nations here in the region, who are against the Zionist regime, will rise against their own governments.'”

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