The designation comes in the midst of increasing evidence that Tehran is targeting Bahrain, where America’s most important naval base in the Middle East resides. 

The sanctions were announced by the State Department on March 17, identifying the two individuals as linked to the Ashtar Brigades, a Bahraini group, that has been said to have carried out terrorist acts targeting Bahraini, Saudi, and Emirati security officials. The sanctions are also a signal of support to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, whose leaders visited Washington three days before the State Department’s announcement.

In a report by David Andrew Weinberg, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Amir Toumaj,  Research Analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, they write, “The designations are even more important given a Washington Post report last month that Western intelligence agencies believe Iran has attempted to smuggle into Bahrain enough C-4 explosives to sink a warship, as well as equipment to manufacture explosively formed penetrators  that can tear through tank armor.”

The State Department described the two newly designated terrorists, calling the more prominent one “an affiliate” of the Brigades, who it said receives money and other support from Iran.

Weinberg and Toumaj write, “Sanadi is spokesperson and a central committee member of the Islamic Loyalty Movement (ILM), a radical Bahraini political faction. The Movement is virulently anti-American, with its recent messages on social media calling the US ‘the mother of terrorism,’ setting fire to images of President Donald Trump and the American flag, and displaying a cartoon of crosshairs targeting the Capitol Building.” They add, “In 2016, Bahrain’s government accused Sanadi and the ILM of having links to the Bahraini terrorist cell called the Basta Group, which ILM denied. According to Bahraini authorities, Basta also had ties to the Ashtar Brigades and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Bahrain’s government alleged that Basta’s leadership constituted the ILM’s armed wing, with terror capabilities under Sanadi’s command.”

The recent US action, accusing a leader of the ILM of links to terrorism, appears to confirm that some of Bahrain’s more radical political opposition is complicit in acts of violence against the state. Weinberg and Toumaj believe that if, “Bahrain’s claims about Sanadi’s activities are correct – which the new US action appears to at least partly corroborate – then he is a key leader in the country’s terrorist insurgency.”

Ten days after the US sanctioned Sanadi, Bahraini authorities accused him of co-directing a terrorist cell linked to a February bus bombing that injured five police officers. The bombing came after Sanadi’s announced that his movement was “beginning a new stage” by “seizing the public square and grasping the trigger.”

According to Manama, the cell’s fourteen members plotted assassinations and traveled to Iran nearly 70 times in three months. Six members are accused of receiving IRGC training in Iran, and five others are accused of being trained in Iraq by the US-designated, Iranian-proxy terrorist group Kata’ib Hizballah. Reuters reported that the Brigades announced an alliance with Kata’ib Hizballah earlier this year.

Bahraini authorities previously accused Sanadi of playing a role in terrorist plots in 2015. A July 2015 bombing killed two policemen and injured six others. Bahrain’s Interior Ministry identified him as one of the plotters, calling him a “religious leader for several Bahraini terrorist groups”, and asserted that he “receives monthly payments from the IRGC”.  Manama described Sanadi as one of the IRGC’s coordinators for a plot to smuggle explosives from Iraq into Bahrain, and from there into Saudi Arabia, weeks earlier.

Sanadi’s Islamic Loyalty Movement’s ideology reflects Iran’s efforts to export its revolution. Sanadi told a pro-Hizballah Lebanese newspaper in 2014 that the ILM’s “ideology is modeled after that of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder and first supreme leader of the Islamic Republic”. The ILM website features 30 statements from Khomeini’s successor Ali Khamenei described as “golden commandments for a jihadist administration.” The group also promotes a book by Lebanese Hizballah’s deputy leader that teaches its approach to military jihad and vilayat-e faqih. In fact, in speeches delivered in Qom in 2015 and 2016, Sanadi himself embraced vilayat-e faqih and recognized Khamenei as amir al mu’minin, or leader of the faithful. According to Weinberg and Toumaj, who add, “He also authored an anti-American article on Khamenei’s official website in December 2016. Other than a brief appearance in the Iraqi city of Karbala in late 2013, virtually all of Sanadi’s public appearances for propaganda purposes seem to have been made from Qom, including as recently as March of this year.”

Sanadi gave a lecture last year, on Bahrain to the Masoumieh Religious Seminary, an institution for training clerics to serve in Iran’s military and security services, including the IRGC. 

According to Reuters, in September 2016, Sanadi was allowed to deliver a Friday sermon at the most prestigious mosque in Qom. “His activities in Qom highlight the overlap between Iran’s extremist ideology and his Bahrain-oriented activism.

Iran has been known to host other IRGC-backed violent extremists in Qom, including Abu Dura, an Iraqi national designated by the US Treasury who was known as “the Shiite Zarqawi,” a reference to former al-Qaeda in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Laith Khazali, an Iraqi who was imprisoned on charges of leading an operation that killed five American soldiers in the Iraqi city of Karbala, reportedly was hosted in Qom immediately upon his release in 2009. Another suspected leader in the 2007 Karbala attack, Azhar al-Dulaimi, purportedly received his training beforehand from Lebanese Hezbollah under IRGC supervision near Qom, according to Weinberg and Toumaj.

Manama claims Sanadi co-directed Bahraini terror cells in 2015 and 2017 with Qassim Abdullah Ali, who it said is based in Iran and Iraq, where he allegedly coordinates the training of Bahraini terrorists by Kata’ib Hizballah. Manama also asserts that leaders of the Ashtar-linked Basta Group received $20,000 from Lebanese Hizballah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah to support the ILM and launch attacks in Bahrain.

Sanadi is not the only Bahraini individual Manama accuses of playing a top role in the Ashtar Brigades, and the group is not the only Bahraini extremist group aligned with Iran, these allegations suggest.

The State Department indicated in its 2013 Country Reports on Terrorism that “Manama intercepted a speedboat with arms and explosives linked to Iran and thought to be bound for the 14 February Youth Coalition, a radical Shiite opposition faction that has praised Khamenei.”

According to Caleb Weiss, groups such as the Saraya al-Karar and the Revolutionary Struggle Organization have used imagery based on the IRGC logo of a hand reaching up to grasp a Kalashnikov rifle. Another Bahraini terrorist group, Saraya al-Mokhtar, has demonstrated support for numerous IRGC proxies inside Iraq, Weiss added.

Weinberg and Toumaj write, “When the State Department sanctioned Sanadi, it took care to discourage Manama from perceiving its action as carte blanche for a domestic crackdown on the country’s Shiites, who form the majority of the population but are marginalized by its Sunni monarchy. Indeed, the announcement urged Bahrain’s government ‘to clearly differentiate its response to violent militia groups from its engagement with peaceful political opposition’.”

Given that the head of Bahrain’s main opposition party, al-Wefaq, is serving a four-year prison sentence for acts the US describes as “peaceful expression,” this is particularly relevant. The State Department could undermine its own message if it moves ahead with its plan to drop human rights conditions from a proposed $2.8-billion sale of US fighter jets to Bahrain, however. 

“Bahrain’s regime has yet to address its serious domestic challenge from nonviolent Shiite opposition groups and a disaffected Shiite-majority public. But it also faces a genuine security threat from violent extremists. Washington’s recent counterterrorism sanctions against Sanadi and its confirmation of Tehran’s support for the Ashtar Brigades confirms one of the pivotal pieces in the Bahraini government’s narrative about Iran’s role sponsoring terrorism inside the kingdom. But if Bahrain’s rulers don’t find a constructive outlet for legitimate Shiite dissent, then they risk driving more of the opposition into Iran’s arms,” Weinberg and Toumaj conclude.