Citing a report on CNN Arabic, Al Arabiya reported Monday that the son of Imad Mughniyeh is now commanding Hezbollah’s operations on the Syrian border with Israel.

Jihad Mughniyeh, whose father Imad was killed in 2008 in a car bomb attack in the Syrian capital of Damascus, is said to be serving as Hezbollah’s Golan District commander, Syrian National Council spokesman Mouayyed Ghizlan told CNN on Sunday. …

Ghizlan said Mughniyeh was close to current Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, his father’s brother-in-law and successor Mustafa Badreddine and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, adding: “This means that there is a big security and strategic escalation for Hezbollah in Syria in the future and this caused concern in the intelligence service of the Free Syrian Army after the discovery of the documents in Tal al-Hara.”

Badreddine is one of the five Hezbollah members being tried by the special United Nations tribunal for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese president, Rafik Hariri.

Earlier this year Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif paid tribute to Imad Mughniyeh, a senior Hezbollah terrorist responsible for killing hundreds of Americans, raising questions about Zarif’s sincerity in seeking to mend relations with the United States.

[Photo: flamenguita / YouTube ]