Introduction
The Kingdom of Bahrain is an archipelago consisting of Bahrain Island along with nearly 30 smaller islands. Its name means two seas in Arabic which symbolically refers to the island’s location as one of the heartlands in the Gulf waters. It has a population of less than 1.5 million and territorial size of 786 km2, yet its geopolitical position provides the Kingdom long-standing military alliances with the U.S. and the United Kingdom.1