Bahrain Issues First Threat Alerts Since September After Iran Claims Attack on US Base

Bahrain issued two alerts warning of potential threats on Sunday, marking the first such warnings since September, after Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed it had attacked a US military installation in the Gulf country. The move comes as uncertainty persists over a US-Iran agreement aimed at ending a conflict that has now lasted nearly nine months.

According to Iran's Fars news agency, the Revolutionary Guards said the strike was retaliation for what it described as hostile American actions. Iranian state-run Press TV reported that six drones were launched at a US air-defense radar located at the Al-Rifaa helicopter base in Bahrain. Neither US nor Bahraini authorities immediately confirmed the claims.

Bahrain's interior ministry urged citizens and residents to stay calm and move to the nearest safe location, without releasing further details about the nature of the threats. The kingdom hosts the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, making it a strategically significant location in the region.

The reported attack follows a similar claim two days earlier, when the Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted a US early-warning radar in Bahrain. The US military denied that account, stating that it had intercepted two Iranian drones without sustaining any damage.

Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict have yet to yield a breakthrough, although Washington and Tehran have refrained from direct attacks in a war that began with US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28 and subsequently spread across the region, with Tehran launching missile and drone attacks on US bases in Gulf states. President Trump has indicated he might hold off on attacking Iran if the US faces no new provocations from Tehran or the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, while maintaining a US naval blockade.

Separately, the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition continued to exchange attacks. The coalition said on Sunday it had intercepted two Houthi ballistic missiles launched toward Riyadh and three drones in the kingdom's oil-rich Eastern Province.