Still no heir apparent to Mughniyeh

Monday’s coordinated attack against Israeli embassies in New Delhi and Tbilisi may well be linked to the events of four years ago Sunday — February 12, 2008. At approximately 11 p.m., after leaving what was allegedly a lover’s apartment, the man who once headed the FBI’s most wanted list and the father of modern suicide bombings, Imad Mughniyeh, was finally killed. A bomb placed in the headrest of his jeep, in a quiet and affluent Damascus neighborhood, ended the life of perhaps Israel’s most capable enemy.

For Israel, which of course never took responsibility for the assassination, there is a clear bottom line when it comes to targeted killing, and the question that is asked, in the corridors where such missions are planned, is simple: Is it worth it?

As far as Mughniyeh’s killing was concerned, despite the tragic injury of an Israeli citizen today in New Delhi, the answer remains an unequivocal yes.

Hezbollah has promised to avenge his death. Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Kassem told Al-Manar TV in 2008: “Revenge is the legitimate right. For everything there is a time, God willing. We won’t get into details, but the Israelis will be surprised.”

But for the past four years the terror group has been largely unsuccessful. Recent Hezbollah plans for attacks on Israeli targets in Azerbaijan and Bangkok have been foiled.

In the past that was not the case. Hezbollah, with Mughniyeh alive, was often able to follow through on its threats. When, on February 16, 1992, Israeli Apache helicopters reportedly killed Hezbollah Sec. Gen. Abbas Musawi, Nasrallah’s predecessor, the results were swift and painful: Rockets were promptly fired on the Galilee, killing a five-year-old girl; three weeks later, Ehud Sadan, an Israeli security officer at the embassy in Ankara, was killed by a car bomb; and exactly one month to the day of the assassination, a suicide bomber struck the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 29 people.

All fingers pointed toward Mughniyeh.

Mughniyeh, a native of a village near Tyre, Lebanon, and a secular Shiite who joined Fatah’s Force 17 right after high school in the late seventies, became religious and began working as a personal bodyguard for Sheikh Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Hezbollah. In 1982 he was believed to have been behind the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, resulting in the death of 241 US soldiers. He immediately rose to the top of both the US and Israeli lists of most wanted people.

Bob Baer, a former CIA case officer in the Middle East, told the Uvda program last year that “Mughniyeh was a genius. We cannot deny him that.”

Former Mossad head Shabbtai Shavit said on the same occasion that “his mind, his education, his professional capacity, his bravery, his planning capacity, his ability to blend in to the territory, put him in another league.”

Hezbollah, still dangerous and still yearning to settle the score, has not found a replacement — not yet. Monday’s attack in New Delhi, painful though it was, confirmed this.