In Kuwait, officials arrested six people who they said were plotting to assassinate the country’s leaders. In the United Arab Emirates, the authorities accused 27 men of belonging to a secretive terrorist organization. And in Bahrain, the government has stripped dozens of their citizenship.
The allegations may be different, and in many cases vague, but all these men have one thing in common: They are Shiites, members of one of two major branches of Islam, according to their governments and human rights activists.
After the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began on Feb. 28, Iran retaliated by launching thousands of attacks at Gulf states that host U.S. military bases. Some of those countries have since arrested dozens of Shiite citizens, calling them traitors loyal to Shiite-led Iran.
Scholars and rights activists say there has been a surge in nationalist rhetoric in the region that has echoes of past eras when sectarianism was more widespread. It also underlines the ways that the war has accelerated a shift toward deeper authoritarianism in several of the Gulf monarchies.
“It is understandable that at times of war, nationalism increases, but this is a form of rabid nationalism that is exclusionary and subjugates a significant minority of citizens who have complained for years about discrimination,” said Ala’a Shehabi, a Bahraini academic and pro-democracy activist.
Gulf governments typically reveal little information about cases related to terrorism and national security. Such trials are rarely open to journalists, and counterterrorism laws are broad enough to encompass political dissent. That makes it difficult to determine the details of the accusations levied against the men who were arrested, or the veracity of the charges.
Sectarianism has often played a role in the political tensions between Iran and its Arab neighbors. Iran is majority Shiite, with Twelver Shiism as its state religion. Most of the royal families on the Arab side of the Gulf are Sunni, members of the other main branch of Islam, and rule over Sunni-majority populations, with Shiite minorities. Other countries in the Middle East, like Iraq and Lebanon, also have mixed Sunni and Shiite populations.
Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Iranian government has often portrayed the Gulf’s royal families as puppets of Western imperialism, and in some cases, has sought to stoke dissent among local Shiites.
While the status of Gulf Shiites differs from country to country, many have long complained of marginalization and discrimination. In Bahrain — where a Sunni royal family rules over a Shiite-majority population — the government violently crushed a pro-democracy uprising more than a decade ago.
Yet in recent years, rhetoric portraying Shiites as a “fifth column” seeking to undermine the state had largely faded away, and several Gulf governments had been working to repair their relationships with Iran, viewing it as a pragmatic way to foster regional stability.
The war has shattered that fledgling diplomacy. As Iran’s attacks struck energy installations, hotels and residential towers, killing at least 19 civilians, Gulf countries have accused some of their own citizens — largely Shiites — of undermining national security.
The authorities in Kuwait announced they had foiled at least three terrorism cells linked to Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group in Lebanon that is backed by Iran, including one that officials said included five Kuwaiti citizens plotting to assassinate the state’s leaders. The Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Announcements of arrests in the Emirates and Bahrain have been more opaque.
In Bahrain, the authorities announced on April 27 that they were withdrawing Bahraini citizenship from 69 individuals, including dependents, whom they accused of “glorifying or sympathizing with the hostile Iranian acts, or engaging in contacts with external parties.” All of them were Shiite Bahrainis of Persian descent, according to the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, a human rights group in London, which researched their backgrounds and interviewed some of them.
And on Saturday, Bahrain’s interior ministry announced the arrest of 41 people, saying that they had belonged to an organization linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. The same human rights group said in a statement that the arrests had included 37 Shiite clerics, and called the accusations of links to Iran “a blatant pretext for launching an ugly campaign of persecution against the Shia faith in the country.”
Ms. Shehabi, the Bahraini academic and activist, said that “hate speech is becoming so acute that some Sunnis with Shia names have published statements declaring their sect and loyalty to the ruling families.”
“The harder that Iran hits a Gulf state, the harder it cracks down on its Shia citizens, treating them as a fifth column and accusing them of terrorism,” she said.
In a statement to The New York Times, the Bahraini government said that it “is rightly acting against those few individuals in Bahrain who pose a threat.”
“Under Bahraini law, all persons are subject to equal treatment, without regard to personal characteristics, gender, or religious background,” the government added.
It said that all of those arrested were “suspected of committing violence, inciting violence” or of “threatening national security, including by sharing sensitive information or intelligence to hostile actors.”
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Shiite militants were blamed for attacks in several Gulf countries — “real terrorism in a sense, real bomb attacks,” said Toby Matthiesen, a senior lecturer in global Islam at the University of Bristol.
Since the war with Iran began, none of the Gulf countries have reported any domestic terror attacks, Mr. Matthiesen said, although such attacks could not be ruled out. Without more clarity on the substance of the charges, he added, the discourse around the arrests suggested a return to state-sanctioned sectarianism, combined with a hyper-nationalistic message to “rally around the flag.”
That trend has been most visible in the Emirates. In April, the authorities announced that they had arrested 27 men who belonged to a “secret Shiite terrorist organization” affiliated with Iran. A statement published by the official Emirati news agency accused them of engaging in “activities to harm national unity and destabilize the country,” saying that they had tried to recruit Emirati youth, “incite against the U.A.E.’s foreign policy” and “portray the country negatively.”
An official video accompanying the announcement purported to show materials confiscated from the men, including a small drone and wads of cash. The display also included everyday symbols of Shiism, including turbans worn by Shiite clerics, academic books and decorative banners commemorating the martyrdom of the prophet Mohammed’s grandson, Hussein, whom Shiites revere.
The government published the detained men’s photographs alongside their first and middle names — unusual in a country that typically only releases the initials of defendants to protect their privacy. On social media, pro-government commentators swiftly began to name and shame the men, in some cases calling them traitors who deserved to be executed.
“The fact that the state decided to release images of arrested individuals before they have undergone a fair trial suggests a verdict has already been reached to villainize them and their communities,” said Mira Al Hussein, an Emirati sociologist based in Britain.
Ms. Al Hussein lamented “the state of paranoia” that the Emirates has descended into as it has become more politically repressive in recent years.
She said that a Shiite friend back home had told her that the community was “on a knife’s edge” and that “if society rejects us, we don’t know what to do.”
Shiite religious leaders in Pakistan also estimate that as many as thousands of Shiite Pakistanis have been deported from the Emirates since mid-April, as Pakistan’s ties to the Emirates have deteriorated.
The Emirati foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
On April 24, a religious sermon televised across the Emirates warned listeners against people who betray their nation.
“Have they not realized that wise leadership has cared for them, and encompassed them with goodness,” said the preacher, Abdullah Ibrahim Abdul-Jabbar.
He urged worshipers to report anyone they suspect of betrayal — “even if that person is among those closest to him.”
“The homeland is more precious than everything, and love for it does not admit division between two loyalties,” he said.