DAMMAM: Hezbollah has established a rivalry with Daesh on their chosen recruitment pools. According to investigators, Daesh continues to recruit citizens from the Gulf states and Hezbollah has followed suit due to the region’s intellectual links to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Informed sources have pointed to the specific involvement of a group of GCC citizens with Hezbollah, who are believed to be members of the Abdali cell, local media reported on Monday.

The recruitment of GCC citizens is seen as highly valuable to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard due to the easy travel between GCC countries without visas. However, this has not prevented the participation of foreign nationals such as Lebanese or Iranian citizens.

Sources said the operation in the Kuwaiti area of Adan on Sunday was an extension of the operation carried out last week, noting that the coming days will be challenging for Hezbollah and its affiliates in the Gulf.

As security authorities in the GCC intensify coordination efforts, arrests are expected to span across more than one location, in addition to the arrests of those involved in terrorist operations in Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, they said.

Meanwhile Kuwaiti security forces are continuing their investigations into Hezbollah-affiliated cells, after detecting the Abdali cell last week. On Saturday, security forces seized weapons, maps and wireless devices from a house in Adan, though the Interior Ministry has not yet issued a statement about the operation.

According to the head of the Gulf Forum for Peace and Security, Fahd Alshleymi, recruitment efforts by Hezbollah-affiliated groups in the GCC countries rely on modern means of communication and 25 TV satellite channels funded by Iran and broadcast in Arabic, English and Spanish.

“There are operations rooms administered from Iran around-the-clock on Twitter, which target citizens of Gulf states for recruitment,” he said, pointing to the need for joint Gulf efforts directed against Iran to combat these efforts.