For anyone who gets out of Bahrain’s airport or the U.S Naval facility on the island, it’s hard not to fall in love with the country. While many of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries have difficulty defining themselves as more than “tribes with flags,” Bahrain was actually host to an ancient civilization. Geoffrey Bibey’s Looking for Dilmun, about the Danish archaeological mission’s efforts to identify the original of the grave mounds which at one point occupied ten percent of Bahrain’s territory, is a fascinating read for anyone interested in archaeology, ancient civilizations, and the Middle East. It’s a common assumption that everyone in the Persian Gulf is rich in oil and gas; this also is not true for Bahrain. The small island might have been host to the first oil well in the Arab world, but its oil fields are long since depleted and it extracts only about 50,000 barrels per day, putting it below Bolivia, Italy, and Germany in terms of oil production. While Bahrain receives an allotment of oil from Saudi Arabia to refine and sell, the poverty of its own fields have meant that Bahrain years ago diversified its economy, transforming itself into a regional banking hub and manufacturer. The more diverse economy has meant that Bahrainis — even wealthy ones — tend to be more down to earth and have more of a work ethic than many of their peers in other Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Bahrain has its share of expatriate labor, but it is no Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or the United Arab Emirates.

That said Bahrain has long been troubled by sectarian unrest and a lack of political reform. Some Sunni sectarians and some (not all) elements of the Bahraini leadership dismiss much of the Shi‘ite unrest in Bahrain as the work of Iranian Fifth-Columnists. That’s often inaccurate and, regardless, the reality is far more nuanced. In short, Iran was behind the 1981 coup attempt, but Bahraini Shi‘ites rose up in the mid-1990s and 2011 because of legitimate political grievances. In recent years, however, the Islamic Republic of Iran has sought to co-opt Bahraini unrest to its own purposes. The younger generation of Bahraini activists may not realize how Iran is using them, but the result is the same. Nor has the Bahraini protest movement been as peaceful as some activists claim. During a 2012 protest march I witnessed, Shi‘ite protesters used Molotov cocktails against security forces using rubber bullets and tear gas. Molotov cocktails may be no match for the Bahraini security forces’ superior firepower, That is not to absolve hardliners in the Bahraini system of counterproductive policies or the king himself of failing to fulfill promises he made as crown prince, but rather to recognize that Iran’s ideological expansionism — its conceptual ‘export of revolution’ is real. Over the past few years, Bahraini authorities have intercepted weapons shipments that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has sought to infiltrate into Bahrain (and the largely Shi’ite Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia).

Since President Obama has begun his outreach to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iranian attempts to destabilize Bahrain have accelerated. There have now been four weapons caches seized in country, and two interceptions of smuggling attempts by boat, and two by bus. Forensic analysis pointed directly to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy operating in Iraq. Tehran no longer tries to hide or deny its role. On July 18, for example, just days after President Obama triumphantly announced the deal, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said, “[Regardless of] the Iran deal text, approved or not, we won’t stop supporting the oppressed nation in Palestine, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, and Lebanon.” Ten days later, the Bahraini opposition apparently used C4 for the first time, killing two policemen.

The Iranian escalation does no one any good. If the United States and other states are forced to decide between reform and security in the face of Iranian provocation, reform is going to be cast by the wayside. Ordinary Bahrainis regardless of religion or religious sect will be caught in the crossfire if Iran transforms Bahrain into a proxy battleground.

At the same time, the increasing Iranian aggression toward Bahrain simply foreshadows the immediate future with Iran’s hardliners empowered by a deal which does little to constrain Iran’s nuclear program but much to empower the Iranian hardliners bent on regional transformation. Increasingly it seems that Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” speech really was little more than Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s “East of Suez” speech all over again.