Footage of the July 2012 attack on a tour bus carrying Israelis in Burgas, Bulgaria. Iran-funded Hezbollah has been implicated in the attack. Source: Fooyoh.com

Bahrain authorities say they foiled an Iranian-linked plot to conduct terrorist attacks in the country, according to Bahrain’s state news agency BNA and as reported by Yahoo! News.

“A secret terrorist plot aided by the so-called Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Hezbollah terrorist organization was foiled…It targeted the security of the kingdom of Bahrain by (plotting to) carry out a series of dangerous bombings,” reported BNA.

These developments come just two days after Bahrain joined its close ally Saudi Arabia in severing ties with Iran following recent escalations between the regional powers.

According to the report, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a main suspect, Ali Ahmed Fakhwari, $20,000 to assist the terrorist cell while Fakhwari visited Lebanon.

In November, Bahrain arrested 47 people accused of links to “terrorist elements in Iran,” who allegedly were planning to conduct imminent attacks in the country. The following month, Bahrain recalled its ambassador to Iran following a security forces raid on a bomb-making factory and arrests of individuals with suspected ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran has been accused of plotting terrorist attacks around the world in recent years — mainly through proxies like Hezbollah and the al-Quds Force of the IRGC — in countries such as Egypt, Cyprus, Georgia, Thailand, India, and others. In July 2012, a bus bomb widely attributed to Hezbollah killed five Israeli tourists and a bus driver in Bulgaria.

In October 2011, the United Stated foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, DC, and bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies in that same city.

The latest tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran may pose immense ramifications, as both countries are expected to intensify support for their respective armed proxies in various conflicts throughout the region — including Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Bahrain.

Steven Emerson is the Executive Director the Investigative Project on Terrorism (www.investigativeproject.org) where this article first appeared.