Does Obama’s Reckless Silence on Bahrain risks blow-back remenicent of Iran 1979?

Is Bahrain Creating a New Terrorist Threat?
By leaving no room for peaceful dissent, the Bahraini monarchy is creating the conditions for a violent revolt.
BY HUSSEIN IBISH | APRIL 14, 2011
[excerpt]
A campaign of violence by opposition extremists might seek and receive support from Iran or other regional Shiite powers such as the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. But it would not require it. Iran and Hezbollah might, for their own reasons, strongly urge any Bahraini Shiites considering such action to restrain themselves. But would all of them heed such a call? Modern urban terrorism only requires a tiny handful of people with rudimentary knowledge, armed with a combination of readily available household items and both deep ruthlessness and extreme recklessness, to begin the process.

Such a movement need not initially be particularly ambitious in its destructive acts to have a powerful impact. A handful of people with crude devices acting around the same time in strategic locations is capable of stoking extreme panic. The goal of a modest opening salvo of urban terrorism is typically to provoke an overreaction on the part of the authorities, and in this case that seems virtually guaranteed. The calculus would then be that the overreaction would seem to justify these violent acts in the eyes of many people who otherwise might have been disapproving, allowing the movement to gain strength and develop over time to the point that it becomes a real threat to national security and political stability. The Bahraini government and its allies have already succeeded in turning what should have been a manageable political situation into an unmanageable one. How likely is it that they would react in a more rational and prudent manner to a violent security threat, however limited and symbolic?

The total crackdown in Bahrain has plainly opened the door for just such a scenario. If this situation continues for an extended period of time, it is probably more a matter of when rather than if some group eventually walks through that door. Largely because of their own actions, all the worst fears of Bahrain’s royal family and the Sunnis of both the island and the rest of the Gulf are perfectly positioned to begin to come true, and the opportunity to avoid this is dwindling by the day. …full article