Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Photo: Screenshot

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah – the leader of the Shia Islamist Hezbollah organization in Lebanon – has dropped any pretense of independence from his paymasters in Iran with his offer to open Lebanese borders to Shia fighters from around the region, a leading Israeli national security analyst said on Monday.

In a briefing published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), former IDF officer Brig-Gen. (ret.) Dr. Shimon Shapira said that Iran had “received an open invitation to fight Israel with the ‘Shi’ite Legion’ which was established under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ Corps Quds Force commander, Qassem Soleimani, who is now fighting in Iraq and Syria.”

In a recent speech marking “Al Quds Day,” Nasrallah “threatened that during the next war with Israel he would open the borders of Lebanon to tens of thousands of fighters from Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq,” Shapira said.

Nasrallah is again “threatening to violate Lebanon’s border once again toward Israel in the south, and he is inviting foreign, non-Lebanese, forces to take part in the war with Israel,” Shapira said.

Already, Shapira noted, Iran has established in Lebanon “an extensive military industry based on missile manufacturing and production of other weapons.”

On Monday, the head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate, Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevi. confirmed reports leaked to a Kuwaiti newspaper, Al Jarida, that an Iranian weapons factory in Lebanon was established on the instructions of the IRGC, and not Hezbollah.