HMS Jufair

HMS Jufair Mina Salman Support Facility (until commissioning)
Juffair, Manama, Bahrain
Mina Salman Support Facility Location within Bahrain
Coordinates	26°12′20″N 50°36′55″E / 26.20556°N 50.61528°E / 26.20556; 50.61528
Type	Naval Facility
Site information
Owner	United Kingdom
Controlled by	Royal Navy
Site history
Built	1934/5 2015/7
In use	1935-1971 November 2017-

Juffair, Manama, Bahrain

HMS Jufair was a British Royal Navy base first established in Bahrain on 13 April 1935, as part of the port at Mina Salman. In 1950 the United States Navy leased space in HMS Jufair and following Bahraini independence in 1971, took over the base. In 2014, it was announced that HMS Juffair would be reestablished as a permanent Royal Navy base. It was due to be fully operational by mid-2017 but has slipped to November 2017.

The first presence of the Royal Navy in the Persian Gulf came about from the need to control pirates raiding the British Empire ships east of the Gulf of Suez, especially the East India Company routes to India. In the early 1820s the rulers of Bahrain, Salman and Abdullah Al Khalifa, signed an agreement to try and limit piracy in the area. This was strengthened in 1835 through an agreement signed specifically with the Royal Navy, which addressed the need to stop pirates operating in the area, and limit the slave trade. In 1902 the first oil was discovered in the area, but commercial extraction did not begin until 1925 when Frank Holmes was given the first license, with the first oil not exported from Bahrain until 1932.

After the death of Sheikh Isa in 1932, having handed control of the state in 1921 under British diplomatic pressure to his son Hamad, his advisor Charles Belgrave with whom he had modernised the state systems and key infrastructure, suggested that they should come to an agreement with the British to open a permanent Royal Navy base within the state. HMS Jufair opened on 13 April 1935, as part of the port at Mina Salman. It was bombed by the Italian Air Force during World War II, as part of an Axis Forces effort to cut-off one of the three Allied Forces sources of oil in the Persian Gulf.