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

JNS.org – Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism and Hezbollah’s terrorist activity have reached a tempo unseen since the 1990s, according to the U.S. State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism 2012, released Thursday.

The report noted that on Feb. 5 this year, the Bulgarian government publicly implicated Hezbollah in the July 2012 Burgas bombing that killed five Israelis and one Bulgarian citizen, and injured 32 others. On March 21, a Cyprus court found a Hezbollah operative guilty of charges stemming from his surveillance activities of Israeli tourist targets, while Thailand was prosecuting a Hezbollah member for his role in helping plan a possible terrorist attack in that country. The Quds Force is suspected of directing planned terrorist attacks in Georgia, India, Thailand and Kenya in 2012, and is also implicated in a 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Additionally, both Iran and Hezbollah are providing a broad range of critical support to President Bashar al-Assad regime’s as it continues its brutal crackdown against the Syrian people.

Fourteen Israelis, meanwhile, were killed as a result of terrorist attacks in 2012. Gaza-based Palestinian terrorist organizations continued rocket and mortar attacks into Israeli territory, and multiple terrorist attacks were launched along the Gaza security fence as well as on the Israel-Egypt border.