Rentier state theory (RST) has long maintained that oil and gas-rich states are vulnerable to the fluctuations of international markets, even those states that have diversified their wealth into sovereign wealth funds. Yet extant literature offers little insight into their vulnerability to international political pressures, short of violent conflict and foreign invasion. This paper argues that rentier states are far less politically insulated than typically assumed. It takes an in-depth case study of Bahrain, with comparative analysis to the rest of the Arab states of the Gulf, all assumedly archetypal ‘rentier states’. Drawing from over 120 personal interviews conducted across the Gulf region and among exiled communities in the UK, the paper traces the emergence of an internationalised opposition in Bahrain, and how this opposition places political pressure on the state even as RST emphasises state autonomy. In so doing, opposition can, to an extent, compensate for their weaker domestic position vis-à-vis the state and also ensure a greater (though still limited) level of protection for domestic dissidents. The existence of an internationalized opposition community, formed largely of political exiles from previous uprisings and their extended families, helps to sustain these international advocacy networks, and allows them to continue to influence Bahraini state-society relations even where they have not returned home for decades. What this means, from a theoretical perspective, is that opposition may have domestic roots, but it acts internationally. This is not a relationship typically captured within RST works, yet the use of international advocacy networks has been an important element of Bahraini state-society relations since 2011 and is also relevant to state-society relations in other Gulf rentier states with active exiled oppositions, particularly Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. This dynamic is particularly important where the state has repressive relations with groups in society, or otherwise where the ability of societal groups to press for reform is limited in the domestic sphere. The role of transnational opposition built from exiled communities also generates interesting implications for RST: it highlights the importance not only of transnational variables but also a dynamic understanding of state-society relations, where repression against previous incidents of unrest may result in the formation of an opposition in exile over time. In terms of an evaluation of RST, most critically, greater appreciation of how opposition regularly interacts with and acts through the international sphere needs to be integrated into the theoretical literature on the ‘rentier state’.