TEHRAN — In a dramatic overnight escalation, Bahraini security forces have arrested dozens of the country’s most senior Shia clerics, storming homes hours after midnight and continuing a weeks-long campaign of repression against citizens expressing solidarity with Iran.

The Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society reports that by early Saturday morning, the number of detained scholars had risen to 41, though their whereabouts and conditions remain unknown.

Simultaneously, Bahrain’s Interior Ministry claimed it had detained 41 individuals on charges of maintaining links with Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, a familiar pretext used by Manama to criminalize legitimate religious and political expression.

The current wave of arrests began two weeks ago with the detention of Ayatollah Sayed Majid al-Mish’al, head of the Bahraini Ulama Council. His arrest marked the opening salvo of a systematic crackdown launched in the wake of the American-Zionist war of aggression against Iran and the martyrdom of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khamenei. Since then, Bahraini authorities have specifically targeted Shia citizens who condemned the foreign attacks and expressed sympathy and solidarity with the Iranian people, branding them spies and traitors to their own homeland.

According to Al-Wefaq, more than 300 Bahrainis have been swept up in the unbridled security campaign. The crackdown has already claimed the life of Mohammad al-Musawi, a detainee who was martyred under interrogation through torture. The fate of many others remains shrouded in uncertainty, while several have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms in closed-door trials.

Observers say the al-Khalifa regime is exploiting the current regional crisis to violently suppress the island’s Shia majority and sever their deep religious and cultural bonds with the Islamic Republic. The arrests of scholars—guardians of the community’s faith and identity—are being widely denounced as a desperate attempt to crush internal dissent and align Bahrain ever more closely with the U.S.-Israeli war coalition.

Iran has repeatedly called for the protection of Shia rights in Bahrain and warned Manama against stoking sectarian flames. With the latest mass detentions, pressure is mounting on international human rights bodies to break their silence over the systematic persecution of Bahraini Shias.