How the Iran war is bringing back 'citizenship as a weapon'

Jawad Fairooz found out that he no longer had a country while watching television.

"I was on a short trip to London," Fairooz, a former politician in Bahrain's parliament, told DW, "when the Ministry of Interior decided to revoke the nationality of people in the opposition. They read 31 names on TV. Mine was one. It was such a shock because I never called for the government to be overthrown."

That was in November 2012. Fairooz had resigned from parliament in protest at security forces killing demonstrators during the so-called Arab Spring. He was arrested, tortured, and then had his citizenship revoked. And he was not alone. Bahraini authorities would eventually withdraw citizenship from close to 990 people.

Made stateless, Fairooz applied for asylum, became a UK citizen and now runs the organization, Salam for Democracy and Human Rights. But he's worried that what happened to him is about to happen to many more Bahrainis, as a result of the Iran war.

Weaponizing citizenship 

The war began in late February when Israel and the US attacked Iran. But besides Israel, it was Gulf states like Bahrain, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia that Iran targeted in response. 

Politically Bahrain is in a particularly difficult position. Like other Gulf states, the country is a monarchy and represses most political dissent. But in contrast to other Gulf countries, Bahrain's royal family are Sunni while estimates suggest the majority of the population — just over 50% — is Shiite. 

Iran is a Shiite theocracy, and in March, there were as many as 250 arrests in Bahrain of people who allegedly posted anti-war messages online, expressed "sympathy" with Iran or participated in demonstrations. Bahrain says it also arrested spies working for Iran. Then, in late April, the government said it would be reviewing the citizenship of anybody "disloyal" to the country. Fairooz believes Bahrain is weaponizing citizenship again for security reasons but also because authorities know they can use it to suppress dissent.

"I am hearing about arrests of citizens perceived as siding with the enemy state," says another Bahraini who lives in the US but whose family remains in Bahrain, which is why they could only comment anonymously. "In particular, people of Persian, or mixed Arab and Persian descent, are being associated with Iran, regardless of their actual views on the conflict. These dynamics affect a range of communities — not only Shia minorities, but also Sunni citizens of Persian descent."

Kuwait could be one of the worst offenders. In March 2024, the Kuwaiti government launched a campaign to revoke citizenship and sources say it's highly likely that, since then, over 70,000 Kuwaitis have lost their nationality. The true number could be as high as 300,000 because dependents like wives, children or grandchildren also lose Kuwaiti citizenship.

If correct, that's almost one-fifth of the native population, as there are only around 1.56 million Kuwaiti citizens. In mid-April, Kuwait issued another set of changes to its citizenship law and over 2,000 more people lost Kuwaiti nationality.

"Kuwait's evolving nationality regime reveals how citizenship can be transformed ... into a political instrument of control," the research network Global Citizenship Observatory wrote in a2026 report on Kuwait.

"It is potentially too early to identify if there is an increased trend related to the recent conflict with Iran," says Thomas McGee, the Observatory's expert on the Middle East. "What we are seeing now is a number of Gulf states potentially using the Iran war as justification to intensify existing citizenship and nationality controls, rather than inventing the practice from scratch."

Another Gulf state, Oman, changed its citizenship laws in February 2025. Parts of the law say Omani nationality could be withdrawn if citizens "committed a verbal or physical offense against the Omani Sultanate or the Sultan himself" or joined an organization that might harm the country.

Rights activists argue that because there's no definition of those acts or organisations, the government can use the law against its opponents.

The UAE was recently accused of doing similar things to Iranians who live there. Some found their residency permits had been revoked. Emirati authorities denied this, saying the ex-pats were part of their community — but media outlets like the New York Times interviewed Iranians who had had permits rescinded.

There are warnings of similar action in Iran. Last week, a politician there threatened to strip diaspora Iranians of citizenship if they were seen cooperating with "hostile countries."

Europe and US also use citizenship as a tool

This kind of activity is not limited to the Middle East either. Last week in the US, the Trump administration again pushed its Justice Department to denaturalize hundreds of Americans and has issued new guidelines on vetting political opinions of people seeking residency.

Last year Human Rights Watch criticized a leaked working paper on migration by conservative political parties in Germany. This suggested dual nationals could be stripped of German passports if they were deemed "supporters of terrorism, antisemites and extremists." 

Experts say citizenship is being weaponized because, over the past two decades, it's become more acceptable to treat it as a privilege, not a right.

This was not the case after World War II, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was first written. Article 15 says nationality is a fundamental human right and this was partly a response to the Nazis making tens of thousands of Jews and political opponents stateless with their 1933 "denaturalization law."

"States have been weaponizing citizenship for a long time," says Lindsey Kingston, a professor of international human rights at Webster University in Missouri. "But the nature of that weaponization is changing."

A 2022 study by the Global Citizenship Observatory and the Netherlands-based Institute for Statelessness and Inclusion, or ISI, found that in the two decades after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US, "the use and scope of citizenship revocation on security grounds has expanded." 

"Terror attacks like 9/11 prompted many people to rethink ideas about legal nationality," Kingston told DW. "People began to see citizenship as impermanent, something that had to be earned and continually justified."

Stripping a person of citizenship became more acceptable, she says, "even when it was in blatant violation of human rights laws."

Iran war's impact

While the weaponization of citizenship is not new, the Iran war seems to be making things worse, experts say.

The conflict has resulted in a slowing of reforms in Gulf countries, analysts at the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argued in early April. The war has upset "the fragile balance that had been emerging in the Gulf between controlled reform and political stability," they wrote. 

This includes the weaponization of citizenship, observers say.

"Military conflict can be a catalyst," Luuk van der Baaren, a legal researcher at the European University Institute who focuses on citizenship law, confirms. "A long-standing ground for citizenship stripping is treason and this logic is now being invoked in some Gulf countries." The same has been seen in Russia and Ukraine, he adds.

Additionally, citizenship policies often follow strong regional patterns," the researcher told DW. "Countries tend to adopt similar approaches to their neighbors, which may explain recent changes across countries of the Arab Gulf."

Amal de Chickera, co-director of the ISI, believes it's important to look at the bigger picture.  

"If you look at Bahrain, there was a spike in citizenship strippings post-2013, and then there was a lot of international pressure that the Bahraini government should right those wrongs," he explains. "And they did course correct, to a degree."

Now it seems Bahrain is going back to that practice. But, as de Chickera argues, that may not be surprising.

Oman: Iran's quiet Gulf mediator under strain

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"I think a wider lens is needed," he argues. "With Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, invasion of Lebanon, and the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, with the way Western nations have doubled down to afford Israel a degree of impunity and their unwillingness to hold America accountable, we are seeing a shredding of international law," he told DW.

The International Court of Justice in the Netherlands has been investigating Israel's conduct in Gaza since South Africa launched a case in December 2023, alleging that it amounts to genocide. Israel’s conduct in the war has been found by many international rights organizations and a United Nations commission to be a genocide. Israel denies this. 

De Chickera thinks all that is connected: "In a world in which international law means nothing, the Bahraini government has probably calculated it can get away with this again."

Edited by: Rob Mudge