Two mysterious explosions in Southern Lebanon last week, led Israeli Ronen Bergman, author of  “The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World's Most Dangerous Terrorist Power,”  to cite them and earlier ones as evidence of a “Secret War on Hezbollah,” in a Wall Street Journal commentary.

Bergman noted what Israel security services and the IDF may be doing:

The episode also led to heightened tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border. The specter of renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah looms as large today as it has at any time since the end of the Lebanon war in August 2006. Yet senior military officers in Israel's Northern Command are confident that the embarrassing outcome of the last round will not be repeated.

"By all means, let the Hezbollah try," one officer told me two weeks ago when I asked if he was concerned about the possibility of warfare. "The welcome party that we are preparing for them is one that they will remember for a very long time." That sentiment is shared by many of his colleagues.

If the 2006 war underlined the military might of Hezbollah—a repeat, in a sense, of Hezbollah's success in driving out the Israeli occupying forces from South Lebanon in May 2000—it also forced Israel to include Hezbollah in any assessment of possible responses to an Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear installations.

As part of its combat doctrine, which eschews reliance on reinforcements and resupply, Hezbollah has stockpiled its weapons throughout Lebanon, but particularly near the Israeli border. According to current Israeli intelligence estimates, Hezbollah has an arsenal of 40,000 rockets, including Iranian-made Zelzal, Fajr-3, Fajr-5, and 122 mm rockets (some of which have cluster warheads) and Syrian-made 302 mm rockets. Some of its rockets can reach greater Tel Aviv. Hezbollah also has a number of highly advanced weapons systems, including antiaircraft missiles that constitute a threat to Israeli combat aircraft.

Then, in February 2008, Imad Mughniyeh, the organization's military commander and Nasrallah's close associate, was killed in a car bomb in Damascus. The assassination of the man who topped the FBI's most-wanted list prior to Osama bin Laden was a severe blow to morale, as well as to Hezbollah's strategic capabilities. Nasrallah was convinced that the Mossad was responsible, and vowed to take revenge "outside of the Israel-Lebanon arena."

The Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency, which is also responsible for protecting the country's legations abroad, has been on high alert ever since. But as of today, Hezbollah has not exacted its revenge. This fact was a topic of discussions at a high-level secret forum of Israel's intelligence services that took place from late July to early September.

Israeli officials raised four possible reasons for Hezbollah's failure to act, all of which reflect its current weakness.

First, no replacement has been found for Mughniyeh, whose strategic brilliance, originality and powers of execution are sorely missed by Hezbollah.

Second, Israel's intelligence coverage of Iran and Hezbollah is far superior today to what it was in the past. Planned attacks, including one targeting the Israeli Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, have all been foiled. The Israeli security services have warned Israeli businessmen abroad of possible abduction attempts by Hezbollah. They also shared information with Egyptian authorities that led to the arrest of members of a Hezbollah network who intended to kill Israeli tourists in Sinai. The arrest of these operatives resulted in sharp public exchanges between Egypt, Hezbollah and its Iranian masters, when Nasrallah admitted that these, in fact, were his men.

Third, Nasrallah cannot afford to be viewed domestically as the cause of yet another retaliation against Lebanon. Any act of revenge that he contemplates needs to be carefully calibrated. On the one hand, it needs to hurt the enemy and be spectacular enough to stoke Hezbollah pride. On the other hand, it cannot be so murderous as to cause Israel to respond with force. To complicate matters further, Israel has made it clear that because Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government, despite the fact that the party that it backed lost in the recent election, any Hezbollah action against Israel would be viewed as an action taken by the Lebanese government. Thus Israel would regard Lebanese infrastructure as a legitimate target for a military response.

Finally, there are the Iranians. Their primary focus is on proceeding with their nuclear program without unnecessary distractions. Tehran's main concern is that a terror attack that can be linked to Iran would result in the arrest of its agents overseas, who are currently procuring equipment for its uranium-enrichment centrifuges.

While we concur with Bergman’s analysis, much remains to be done by Israel’s security services in any run-up to an rumored attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, as the Obama Administration’s dithering posture has made that a distinct possibility reflected in a Los Angeles Times commentary by former US UN Ambassador John Bolton.  In an assessment of the Israeli Iran confrontation on Friday, I heard Clare Lopez of the Intelligence Summit opine that according to published Israeli accounts that the rumored Iran nuclear attack might come as early as December.

Hezbollah has vast bunkers filled with rockets, ammunition and vehicles in the Bekaa Valley, well above the Litani River line in Southern Lebanon that defines the responsibility of the weak UNIFIL screening Force and the Lebanese Army to monitor Hezbollah arms caches in Southern Lebanon under UNSCR 1701. A resolution that has been breached repeatedly by Hezbollah.  Thus, we expect to hear more in the coming weeks about other mysterious explosions in Lebanon demonstrating the possible furtherance of the Israeli covert ops against the vast array of Hezbollah rocket and missile arsenal supplied and controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Al Qods force. That effort should strengthen the defensive shield of the northern half of Israel against any likely Hezbollah response should the rumored Israeli Iranian nuclear facilities attack scenario become a reality.  Israel security officials also have to be concerned about elimination of Gaza based rocket and munitions caches and any other ‘laboratories’ like the one uncovered in Abu Dis  a Palestinian town bordering Jerusalem.  We can expect to hear more reports in coming weeks about the progress in Israel’s secret war against Hezbollah, Hamas and West Bank terror group rocket and missile arsenals, as a possible date for the assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities likely draws near.