Following are excerpts from an interview with Fahed Al-Shelaimi, chairman of the Gulf Forum for Peace and Security, which aired on Alaan TV on March 4, 2012 :

Fahed Al-Shelaimi : I have spent a lot of time with foreigners and have lived abroad. They view the Middle East as a den of terrorism. The foreigners have seen nothing good coming out of the Middle East since 1979. All they could see until 1990 was a bearded man hijacking a plane or carrying a bomb.

All these [terrorist] organizations are supported by Iran. In addition, the bombings in Lebanon were carried out by Shiite militias, supported by Iran – in other words, by Hizbullah. The terrorist attacks are carried out or sponsored by the Iranians – or rather, by some Iranian elements.

State-sponsored terrorism is difficult to identify. It has no signature. State-sponsored terrorism is like gas – you can smell it, but you can't see it. The same goes for intelligence activity carried out by countries, so long as there is no intelligence breach and colossal failure, which exposes the espionage.

Our brothers in Iran invest money and recruit agents. It is sad, however, that they recruit members of the Shiite community. This is one of the roles of the Intelligence Ministry and the IRGC. They take religious extremist Shiites and give them ideological and other training, so that they will work as operatives for them. Thus, they deny responsibility, saying that it was all done by locals, not by Iranians.

But if we trace their path, we discover that they were trained in Qom, in some other Iranian city, or in the South Beqaa Valley, in Lebanon.

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The Gulf countries have declared time and again that they don't want to be involved in the nuclear dispute between Iran and the international community. The Gulf countries do not want to intervene in the Israeli-Iranian dispute. But in the face of threats and insinuations, coming from the most junior military commander to the most senior politician – do you expect the Gulf countries to do nothing? No. The Gulf countries will not stand idly by if Iran continues with this policy.

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