Earlier today, Saraya Al-Ashtar, an Iranian-backed Shiite militia in the Kingdom of Bahrain, claimed its forces carried out a drone attack on the Israeli city of Eilat last week.
No open source evidence has been reported that a drone attack took place in Eilat last week, so the claim cannot be independently verified.
And while there is no evidence that this attack actually happened, it marks the first operation claimed by the militias since at least December 2017, according to data documenting militia attacks in Bahrain by FDD’s Long War Journal.
In a statement, Saraya Al-Ashtar claimed that a suicide drone attack had “targeted the headquarters of the company responsible for land transportation of the Zionist entity (Trucknet) in the city of Umm Al-Rashrash (Eilat), occupied Palestine.”
For reference, Israeli shipping company Trucknet signed an agreement earlier this year to transport oil between Israel and Arab countries.
He also said the drone attacks were in support of the Palestinian cause and “resistance forces in the Gaza Strip.”
Saraya al-Ashtar, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization because of terror attacks in Bahrain and its ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has long threatened attacks on Israel, Zionists and Jewish people more broadly.
For example, in February 2019, Al-Ashtar openly threatened attacks on Israeli targets in Bahrain. A spokesman for the group said in a video that denounced “the Khalifa regime’s tolerance of Zionists,” adding that “the Zionist presence on the island is a legitimate target.”
Other IRGC-backed Shiite militias in Bahrain have also directly threatened Israel in the past. Just two days after the Hamas-led invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, Saraya Waad Allah praised acts of violence and called for further attacks on Israelis and Jews, including inside Bahrain.
Earlier in 2020, it said it had created a specialized subunit to target Israeli interests in Bahrain, and claimed the group was behind threats against an Israeli delegation that met with Bahraini officials in 2019.
Saraya al-Mokhtar, another group designated a terrorist organization by the United States for its ties to the IRGC, also threatens Israelis and Jews in Bahrain.
Despite all the talk, however, Iran-backed militias have not actually followed through on these threats.
Though doubtful, Saraya al-Ashtar’s claim marks the first time these militias have attempted to signal that the Bahraini contingent of Iran’s so-called Resistance Axis is an active participant in the ongoing conflict with Israel.
Joe Truthman is a senior research analyst for FDD’s Long War journal, focusing primarily on Palestinian armed groups and non-state actors in the Middle East.
