Following traditional Friday prayers, protesters chanting anti- Iranian slogans and waving Bahraini flags gathered in front of the heavily-fortified Iranian embassy compound in Manama, calling for the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador if the Iranian government failed to present a formal apology.

Some protesters also called for the liberation of Ahwaz, an Iranian city with a large Arab population.

Bahraini and Iranian embassy officials had played down the importance of the comments written in Iran’s hardline Kayhan newspaper by its publisher and adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hussain Shariatmadari.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki is also expected to arrive in Manama late Friday to clarify his government’s position, following repeated assurances from the Iranian embassy that the statements in the editorial did not reflect the government position.

Shariatmadari, who was appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had claimed in his editorial that public demand in Bahrain backed reunification of ‘this province (Bahrain) with its motherland,’ Iran.

The article also claimed that Bahrain was separated from Iran through an illicit agreement between the former Shah and the governments of Britain and the United States.

Though Iran’s population is primarily Persian, not Arab, they are predominantly Shia Muslims, as is more than 60 per cent of the population in Bahrain, which is ruled by a Sunni monarchy.