While these underground factories have been making the news across the Middle East for a while, the Intelligence Online article revealed two new pieces of information: the location of the factories and the type of weapons being produced at each.

One factory, located near the town of Hermel, in Bekaa Valley, northern Lebanon, will produce the Fateh 110, a medium-range missile.

This has a range of approximately 190 miles (300 kilometres), far enough to hit almost anywhere in Israel, and can carry a half-ton warhead.

The other factory, which is being built between the towns of Sidon and Tyre in southern Lebanon, will be used to make smaller munitions.

Earlier this month, Israeli Defence Minister Avidgor Liberman issued a warning to Hezbollah and the Iranian Regime over the development of rocket manufacturing installations inside Lebanon.

He said: “We are fully aware [of the rocket factories]…We know what needs to be done… We won’t ignore the establishment of Iranian weapons factories in Lebanon.”

In June, an Israeli intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Herzl Halevi said: “Iran has been working for the past year to set up indigenous infrastructures for producing precise munitions both in Lebanon and Yemen. We can’t ignore that, and we won’t.”

First Reports of the factories

The news of these underground weapons factories was first reported by the Kuwaiti Al-Jarida newspaper, back in March.

They reported that Iran was building multiple facilities about 50 meters below the earth’s surface and protecting them from potential Israeli air attacks with multiple layers of defence, according to an unidentified deputy head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Then Al-Jarida quoted an Iranian general, who claimed that the decision to produce rockets and other weapons inside Lebanon came after Israel bombed weapons factories in Sudan and supply routes in Syria for Iranian rockets.

The general said that the new factories would dramatically upgrade Hezbollah’s ability to build more precise rockets, in larger numbers, than ever before.

According to the Kuwaiti report, Hezbollah has already used some of these rockets in battles in Syria against the democratic resistance forces, who oppose the tyrant Bashar Assad.

However, this latest information highlights how deeply the Iranian Regime is, in not just the Syrian Civil War but also in Lebanon.