ONE OF THE MORE SURPRISING ASPECTS of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has been the fact that, to date, neither side has been willing to deploy all of the assets at their disposal to destroy the enemy. While this is easy enough to understand in regard to Israel, given that the Jewish state belongs to the civilized community of Western nations, it is less understandable in the case of Hezbollah. While Hezbollah’s leadership, most notably Secretary-General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, have threatened “open war” against Israel, his organization’s actions do not yet appear to have reached that point.

This is not to say that Hezbollah has exercised restraint, but rather to acknowledge that the organization possesses at its disposal an international terrorist network every bit as ruthless and as deadly as Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda. According to the 2005 Patterns of Global Terrorism report issued by the State Department, Hezbollah has “established cells in Europe, Africa, South America, North America, and Asia,” cells that could be called upon to act against Israeli or Jewish targets worldwide. In the past Hezbollah has been implicated (along with its Iranian backers) for the Buenos Aires bombings of an Israeli embassy and a Jewish cultural center in 1992 and 1994 respectively. These attacks, which killed 90 civilians, demonstrate the broad reach of Hezbollah even inside countries that do not possess large Muslim or Shiite populations. In 1999, Argentina issued an arrest warrant for Hezbollah operations chief Imad Mugniyeh in connection with both attacks, but he remains at large.