Territorial Disputes in The Persian Gulf - Iranian Claims On Bahrain

Iranian Claims On Bahrain

Iran has often laid claim to Bahrain, based on its history of being a part of the Persian Empire and its seventeenth-century defeat of the Portuguese and its subsequent occupation of the Bahrain archipelago. The Arab clan of the Al Khalifa, which has been the ruling family of Bahrain since the eighteenth century, has many times shown loyalty to Iran when disputes with British colonizers were brought up by raising the Iranian flag on official buildings during the last years of the 19th century. Iran in return reserved a seat in the Iranian parliament in early 1900s for its 14th province which was Bahrain. The last shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, raised the Bahrain issue with the British when they withdrew from areas east of the Suez Canal but withdrew it in 1971.