In this episode, recorded during a media briefing, Richard Pater speaks with Dr Ahmed Al Khuzaie, who reflects on how the war with Iran is being experienced in Bahrain and across the Gulf. He examines shifting public attitudes towards Iran, the mounting concern over attacks on civilian infrastructure, the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz and the role of the IRGC within Iran’s decision-making.
Dr Ahmed Al Khuzaie is a political consultant working predominantly with politicians in the United States and with diplomats based in Bahrain. His work focuses on Gulf affairs, regional security, and public diplomacy, with particular emphasis on Iranian influence, the GCC, and the Abraham Accords framework.
Transcript
(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)
00:00:06:24 – 00:00:27:00
Richard Pater
Hello and welcome to the latest BICOM briefing and podcast recording. I’m Richard Pater, the director of BICOM, based here in Jerusalem. And today is Wednesday the 25th of March. Delighted to welcome our guest speaker today from Manama in Bahrain, Doctor Ahmed Al Khuzaie. Doctor Ahmed thank you very much indeed for joining us.
00:00:27:01 – 00:00:28:03
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Of course, it’s a pleasure.
00:00:28:06 – 00:00:52:24
Richard Pater
For the background doctor Khuzaie is a political analyst and commentator based in Manama. He is focusing on the Middle East and Arab affairs and splits his time between Bahrain and Washington, DC. Perhaps we can start and you can just describe to us what it’s been like in Bahrain, and perhaps through your contacts and network within the wider gulf of what it’s been like over the last few weeks.
00:00:53:00 – 00:01:16:22
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Of course, since we are closing in within two days to one month of war, which is something that never happened before in this part of the world, especially modern history. It’s been kind of weird. I mean, we got used to seeing the news around the world of wars happening, and then all of a sudden, we find ourselves in the middle of everything that is happening.
00:01:16:24 – 00:01:42:06
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
During the first week. It was very scary to everybody. And here I’m talking as a family man with wife and kids. It was weird and scary. Since we are not accustomed to the sounds, we didn’t know. Was it, was it, a rainstorm or was it, a missile or even a drone? It took us a week to understand or differentiate just a little bit.
00:01:42:08 – 00:02:15:18
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
The, the attack started changing the timings. On day eight, because on the first week they were on specific timings, three times before meals, apparently. And from there, when they started changing, I spoke to a few analysts, who are accustomed and basically seasoned the military, and they told me how this is a psychological warfare kind of manipulation where they remove certainty from people’s, behaviours, and then people get, irritated and so forth.
00:02:15:18 – 00:02:55:15
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Angry. Which we started facing on the second week. The third week somehow started picking up again. The first two weeks, it was somehow scattered targeting on media. They were targeting American interests in the Gulf, but in reality, they were targeting civilian and infrastructure. So, I mean, their buildings or, the projects and so forth between, between the Gulf states, the over the third week that changed the numbers, of the number of attacks was lowered by 95% from how it used to be.
00:02:55:17 – 00:03:29:20
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
And from there it started to be targeting infrastructure projects, such as the AWS, the Amazon, data centres, airports. We’re talking about, vital government buildings, as we’ve seen with the retirement fund of Kuwait, for example, or the, the gas and water desalination, plants around the Gulf. And then over the past two days, started to be more specific, targeting, niche.
00:03:29:22 – 00:04:01:15
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
And when I say niche, very specific. Niche data centres around the Gulf, which, somehow, made it impossible for residents in these regions to complete their government work, either applying to renew passports or something. So, from there, we can understand that this is targeted, and, we are looking at an escalation, not an escalation, even though there are talks about, the, the meetings in Pakistan.
00:04:01:17 – 00:04:06:02
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
But that did not stop them from escalating the way I just mentioned.
00:04:06:04 – 00:04:17:09
Richard Pater
So, we’ll come on to those talks, shortly. How would you characterize, public attitude again, both in Bahrain and the wider Gulf towards Iran? How that’s how that’s changed here.
00:04:17:09 – 00:04:50:11
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
We talk about two major factors. One is many people who are giving Iran and the benefit of the doubt, before are no longer doing that, although we have to acknowledge the segment within the communities which are, visible and Kuwait and Bahrain, since we have a good amount of population that are either Shiites and look at Iran as, spiritual and religious leaders and the, politicized, basically segment that look at Iran as its only leader.
00:04:50:13 – 00:05:17:11
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
And to me, these are more dangerous than rockets and drones. They act as basically the fifth strike within our countries. And we’ve seen in the news, for example, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and even in Emirates, where they captured some, basically collaborators and, sleeper cells within these countries. And these to me are more frightening than, the drones and the rockets.
00:05:17:13 – 00:05:30:07
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
But the other segment basically looks for started to view Iran as, an enemy, which is something we’ve never seen before of, I mean, at least personally, I haven’t seen that.
00:05:30:09 – 00:05:46:12
Richard Pater
And I mean, for the view from Jerusalem, people are quite surprised that there hasn’t been any offensive, moves by the Gulf states to respond and react to the attacks. What do you think is the appetite again, within that, within the wider Gulf to respond to the Iranian assaults.
00:05:46:12 – 00:06:05:15
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
That yeah, that is attributed to three major factors here. The first is since the Gulf, feel that they were trapped in this war. It’s a war they did not call for. They don’t want to basically pick it up from here. And then us and Israel at the end of the day will say, you know what? We reached a ceasefire by, by.
00:06:05:18 – 00:06:30:21
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
And they will get stuck with Iran for the rest of our lives. I mean, that’s something nobody wants to be positioned as with Iran. That’s number one. Number two, our, our military capabilities are mainly defensive, not offensive. So even if we wanted to, what limits when we reach and how effective will that be? So that’s number two.
00:06:30:21 – 00:06:51:16
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Number three. And that’s the most important thing, is that the Gulf spent trillions of dollars, lots of hard work and many years to make the Gulf what it is today. I mean, everybody around the world knows what Dubai is. Doha. Riyadh, not so much in Bahrain, but everybody knows the formula One in Bahrain now. So, we’re on the map.
00:06:51:18 – 00:07:23:22
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
But in reality, if we calculate, for example, the, the average, nominal GDP per capita for Qatar, we’re talking about $77,000 per person compared to $5,000 per person in in Iran. You can see the vast difference. We don’t want to lose that. And if you if you, evaluate Dubai’s business estimation or economic estimation, we’re talking about $117 billion, and that’s just one city.
00:07:23:22 – 00:07:50:14
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
And, and, and the Gulf compared to 50,000, sorry, 50, billion dollars. And that’s the total estimation of Tehran. You can’t compare the size. I mean, Tehran is much bigger, but if you put that in and a competitive way for the rest of the Gulf, you’re talking about none. Endless supply of money. We don’t want to lose that over a war we did not call for.
00:07:50:16 – 00:08:19:00
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
And then as I just mentioned that we don’t want to as well find ourselves in the middle of it when everybody leaves, because we’ve been suffering from Iran for a long time and now is not a good time, basically to unleash another level of that. So, these are the main, the main reasons that the Gulf sees of why we’re not engaging yet, but it does not mean that we will never do it, because I think we’re calculating the bottom line.
00:08:19:02 – 00:08:44:16
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
We are losing a lot. I mean, it’s not that we’re not losing anything, but we still have hope for reconciliation or a ceasefire, at least for us to pick up where we left from. But the moment we reach, a point of no return that the losses are, are reasonable and there’s no coming back from it, I think maybe then that could change the leadership minds of the Gulf.
00:08:44:18 – 00:08:49:23
Richard Pater
And how concerned are you specifically about the, the closing of the Straits of Hormuz?
00:08:50:00 – 00:09:20:06
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Of course we are. It’s the vane for our lives here. It’s affecting everybody’s lives. We celebrated a few days ago, at the beginning of this week, which comes at the end of, of fasting for a whole month of Ramadan. So that’s something, joyful for the kids before the adults, right? It’s affected the lives of small children, especially those who started to order them eat some clothing online and have not received the I mean, amongst kids.
00:09:20:06 – 00:09:49:13
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
That became a talking point over it. Can you imagine how important that is for the big guys as well? If we’re talking about energy, we’re talking about income, we’re talking about, even security. It comes to food and water security. We’re talking about, endless supplies of food that are at the forefront of the Gulf but cannot enter, with the expat community, for example, I especially, the sale of alcohol is prohibited during the month of Ramadan.
00:09:49:15 – 00:10:08:13
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
So, And the war started in Ramadan and the Strait of Hormuz, which was somehow disrupted during the holy month of Ramadan. And then everybody started talking about no alcohol and flow for it and later. So, you can see that it touched everybody’s lives and everybody’s concerned about that.
00:10:08:15 – 00:10:18:22
Richard Pater
If we can turn to the to the big picture and, and diplomacy. What’s kind of your initial assessment of, of the comments by, by Trump? And what do you know about the 15-point plan?
00:10:18:24 – 00:10:49:07
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Okay. If you allow me, I’ll just go two steps back just to give context, and then we’ll dive into it. Now, prior to all of this, last year, there was, three rounds of negotiations between Iran and the United States of America that, Donald Trump gave them a deadline. And the moment that deadline was over, and it was by midnight the moment the clock ticked, marking the start of a new day, they started attacking Iran.
00:10:49:09 – 00:11:12:20
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
The second round happened lately, and the same thing a deadline was given. Iran have always mastered the art of basically buying time and delaying everything. That worked well for the Democratic White House, but apparently not working well with Trump. So same thing. He gave a deadline. They did not meet it, but then he started basically changing and playing with the time and then hit the moment.
00:11:12:20 – 00:11:39:14
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Tax cut. That brings us to now. Four days ago, an Iranian official gave a statement to Alameddine TV channel, which is based in Lebanon, but it is Iranian speaking in Arabic or broadcasting in Arabic, giving them six points of what it would be like for Iran to get into negotiations. It was believed that this official was credible.
00:11:39:18 – 00:12:04:03
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
The speaker of the House. Now, two days later, we started seeing that there’s a movement on the, on the negotiations again in Pakistan. And then, the US side, or at least Donald Trump gave 15 points out of which, 16 points of what I’ve mentioned. And then so with these six points, it’s exactly the opposite of what Iran wants.
00:12:04:05 – 00:12:23:07
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
And then the rest of them, just to make sure that it’s not just the points they wanted, were reasonable. And we’re going against them. No, no, we’re adding a bunch on top of that, which says a lot about that. If Iran agrees to it, they are surrendering. But if they are not, it means not before as well.
00:12:23:10 – 00:12:47:17
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Continue with the discussion on that. A couple of days back, the, Japanese Prime minister, had a visit to the white House and Donald Trump was greeting her. And then all of a sudden, he started bringing up Pearl Harbor. And then the Japanese, as a remark was, the Japanese did not see it coming. And then part of that remark, he hinted that Iran wouldn’t see it coming as well, which says a lot about what we are about to see.
00:12:47:17 – 00:13:06:13
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
It’s either that the five days’ time limit that he gave a couple of days back will be over, reaching somewhere, which I don’t see happening. I wish we are seeing it happening, but I don’t see it happening, which means we’ll see, at least a ceasefire and de-escalation. But from the way Iran is behaving, they’re trying to show muscle.
00:13:06:15 – 00:13:33:09
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
They expanded the attacks on Israel and the Gulf lately, especially over the past few days. On the other hand, if they reach the five days, limit and reach nowhere, which is more probable. Probable? We’ll see that, what he promised over the past two rounds of negotiations, how serious he is. And the hands he gave at the, the Oval Office with the Japanese prime minister about.
00:13:33:15 – 00:13:42:11
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
They won’t see it coming. We will see it coming. And apparently it would be massive. So, these are just analysis. We don’t have any facts.
00:13:42:13 – 00:14:01:03
Richard Pater
Now, but I appreciate that. Thank you. Also, there’s a big question here kind of in Israel and, in the discourse in the West over who exactly that, the, the, the Americans can be talking to. What’s your sense of what’s left of kind of the decision making? Powers that be within Tehran.
00:14:01:05 – 00:14:23:07
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Today, who’s running the show all over Iran is the IRGC. There have been for a while, but after the demise of the late Ayatollah, they became evident that they are the running the show. Even though they claim that Khamenei junior is appointing people or firing people or issuing statements. I don’t believe he exists. I haven’t seen him with my own eyes.
00:14:23:11 – 00:14:55:10
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Seeing is believing as they say. So that being said, or you see, are running the show. So, the president is a moderate compared to the others, or that’s how they portray him and everything he said ever since the beginning of the war, proved to be wrong. So, he does not have the closest person to running the show as a face compared to what we just said would be the speaker of the House calibre, because it was reported as well that he’s the one who travelled to, to Pakistan to, to take part of the negotiations.
00:14:55:10 – 00:14:59:16
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
So, I think that would be the face of the regime at the moment.
00:14:59:18 – 00:15:14:15
Richard Pater
Thank you. Just going back, can we be talking just offline before I was, I was saying that we if we have an alert here, I don’t need to go to my safe room. But you don’t have that. What is what happening in in Bahrain when, when there are alerts? What, what’s the protocol?
00:15:14:17 – 00:15:36:21
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
That’s part of what makes it scary? Basically, whenever, an alarm is sounded, basically everybody is advised to go to a safe place, which means it’s a parking place, an underground parking place, or if you’re within a house, you go to the safest area and that place, since we don’t have bunkers around the Gulf, I just said in the beginning that this war is unprecedented.
00:15:37:01 – 00:15:51:24
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
We have never saw it coming, and we never thought that in our lifetimes we’d go through this. So, for example, in my house, we’d go on the first on the ground floor, under the ladder or under a door frame, at least just in case.
00:15:52:01 – 00:16:18:01
Richard Pater
And the, I mean, in a, in more peaceful times or in the context of the Abraham Accords, Bahrain was the site of kind of the naval bases and activity. There were even reports of, of the Israeli Navy sending a representative there to be coordinated. Have you seen much activity then? They naval in is that’s kind of an element of the, of Israel in the US approach within the waters of the Gulf?
00:16:18:03 – 00:16:45:01
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Well, at the, at the American base in Bahrain, which is known as the Fifth Fleet, was established in Bahrain 1975. Four years before the establishment of the Islamic revolution’s regime per se. So even the claims that they, they put forward that, the, the US or the Gulf are placing these, these bases. So, I mean, to give us a hard time is, is not real.
00:16:45:06 – 00:17:09:03
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
As per the activity, these activities can never be visible, here in this part of the world. I mean, they take a certain part of the island. It’s somehow, isolated. But when we’re talking about activities, what was visible to us is, two months prior to the war, it was evident that there were, big movements, especially with the ships.
00:17:09:03 – 00:17:32:01
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
I mean, the U.S announced that there are no ships or vessels, in the Gulf and the Gulf bases that are in place. All of them are deployed either within the Gulf or in the and the Arab Sea, outside of the, of the Gulf. So ever since that was announced, these, activities were somehow minimal to none.
00:17:32:05 – 00:17:35:05
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
At least that’s what was visible to us.
00:17:35:07 – 00:18:01:21
Richard Pater
Okay. Just, was a comment you made earlier. I just want to pick up on you talking about kind of the hardships of, like, no alcohol coming in during Ramadan. It just got me thinking that it’s kind of fascinating inside of kind of an when it’s non-Ramadan times kind of how widely available alcohol is. Your kind of is there are them are there Muslims drinking alcohol even though technically it’s forbidden what you just described to us, the, the dynamic culturally.
00:18:01:21 – 00:18:25:22
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
That Bahrain, Bahrain is an island. And throughout history, it was occupied by all, all, all religions and all walks of life. So, it’s considered as a secular state. And in Ramadan, it’s forbidden to do it, for example, to consume alcohol or to, to, consume, food and beverages in public. But in private places it’s allowed for everybody.
00:18:25:22 – 00:18:56:05
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
There are hotels and some restaurants who are offering that. The context here is that since the war started in Ramadan and the sale of alcohol, like, for example, you have the, the alcohol shops are closed, but five-star hotels and some restaurants are offering it, but it’s not visible yet. The problem that happened was since the disruption of shipments and the Strait of Hormuz was, somehow disrupted and Saudi offered to bring everything through the Red sea.
00:18:56:05 – 00:19:03:00
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Alcohol is forbidden in Saudi, and that is one of the reasons it’s causing it to.
00:19:03:02 – 00:19:23:16
Richard Pater
Okay. That’s fascinating. Thanks for, thanks for clarifying that. And just a I’m back to a strategic question. Sorry to be jumping topics. There’s a suggestion, that the kind of in a postwar reality within the Gulf, there would be some form of realignment and, accommodation within Israel in the context of the Abraham Accords.
00:19:23:19 – 00:19:29:15
Richard Pater
Do you think that’s, overly optimistic, or is that, a realistic scenario of how Israel will be perceived?
00:19:29:17 – 00:19:51:15
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
I think when we when you say optimistic, you’re talking to the wrong person. I’m the most enthusiastic person in this, and then this, and this situation when it comes to the Abraham Accords. See, I think it’s an amazing chance for the Abraham Accords to come back on the front lines, especially that when we look at the public and how they perceived the Abraham Accords.
00:19:51:15 – 00:20:18:08
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
And in relation to Israel, the, Israelis, it was up to 95% negative. When the war erupted, basically, and people started to see things as black and white. It’s either I stand with Iran or I stand with, Israel. But that’s not the notion. It’s either you stand with your home country in the Gulf, or you stand with Iran.
00:20:18:12 – 00:20:40:18
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
And when you stand with one of them, you will have to pick and choose who’s your ally. And it’s evident who’s your allies today, right? Whoever is firing rockets at you and your family, that’s the enemy, whoever is not. And on the on the contrary, actually, and whoever is fighting somehow, somehow on your camp, let’s put it that way.
00:20:40:20 – 00:21:23:10
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Then that started to make a major shift within the way of thinking and became, a subject of debate on social media platforms where you see an increasingly number of people, who are taking sides saying that if I’m not with Iran, then I’m standing with Israel. If that’s the case, I’m standing with them. Even if that’s not the real notion, I think whoever is pushing for the Abraham Accords should take that as a mental note and start capitalizing on it if they want to see, a better future in the region, especially if we’re talking about countries like Qatar and Oman and in previous days, how where they’re behaving and how they
00:21:23:10 – 00:21:42:07
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
are behaving today in a proper unity. Not so much for a minute, but at least for Qatar, in a proper unity with the Gulf states, I can see that there’s a better future for the region, given that Iran, whoever is running Iran today, the IRGC all over that. I’m not talking about the Iranian people. I’m talking about the regime.
00:21:42:11 – 00:21:57:12
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Whoever is being sidelined or at least put in a box for now, how do we capitalize on that to create appropriate unity in the Gulf and better peace process in the Middle East? That includes Israel, right.
00:21:57:17 – 00:22:16:16
Richard Pater
One last question in kind of that same token, could apply to the attitudes of the Iranian people that when they see their country under attack, that may kind of kind of create a vibe of, rallying around the flag. Where do you see the Iranian public? Kind of in the biggest the big question of whether the conditions will be met for changing the regime.
00:22:16:18 – 00:22:39:16
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
That’s an almost impossible question to address. We’ll go back before this war. It’s known that the Iranians are very proud of their country. Even if they are opposing the regime, they would still stand with the country, especially those people who are in diaspora and the, the amazing people of Iran within the borders of it.
00:22:39:18 – 00:23:06:11
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
Now, with these rockets firing everywhere in Iran, you we might see, because they are cut off the internet for, for the past at least one month now. Completely. So, it’s hard to tell yet. I would go off Olympia and say, even if they were for this war, I don’t think with these living conditions and continuous bombardments, no gas, no electricity, no fuel, nobody would like that.
00:23:06:11 – 00:23:32:10
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
So, we might see a movement, we might see a movement that could put the, the anti-regime movement on hold for now until they weather this war and then pick up where they left. But even if that happens, and that’s something that the Iranian regime has always been cashing on and then put it to bed forever. So, it’s complicated what’s happening within Iran.
00:23:32:10 – 00:23:37:14
Ahmed Al Khuzaie
And we have to separate what’s happening within compared to the movement outside of Iran in diaspora.
00:23:37:17 – 00:23:50:02
Richard Pater
Fantastic. I’m going to stop the recording now, if that’s okay. And if people would like to ask questions, please raise a hand, either physical or virtual, and we’ll call on you. But that was terrific. Thank you very much indeed.