Hezbollah blame Israel's Mossad foreign intelligence service for blowing up Mughniyeh in a booby-trapped car in the heart of the Syrian capital on Feb. 12, 2008, and have vowed to avenge him.

According to security sources, Hezbollah has sought to carry out at least six revenge attacks against Israeli targets outside the Jewish state, but all were thwarted.

"It's possible that the actual number of attempts that have been prevented is at least twice that number -- if not more," according to the liberal daily Haaretz.

One source said Hezbollah has mounted at least 10 such operations in the last two years.

There is considerable speculation that a Jan. 14 bomb ambush in Jordan against two vehicles carrying Israeli diplomatic personnel was the work of Hezbollah.

None of the six people in the vehicles was hurt, apparently because the bomb was detonated prematurely by remote control.

The ambush took place on the highway linking Jerusalem and Amman, the Jordanian capital where Israel has maintained an embassy since the two neighbors signed a peace treaty in 1994.

The Jerusalem Post reported Jan. 19 that sources close to Jordan's General Intelligence Department say it suspects the attack on the convoy was carried out by local al-Qaida activists who received explosives and funds from Iran.

The rationale is that the attack was in retaliation for the Jan. 12 assassination in Tehran of Iranian physicist Professor Massoud Ali- Mohammadi by a remote-controlled bomb on a motorcycle. But security analysts are not convinced that al-Qaida was involved.

"There are no clear signs of Iranian involvement … either," U.S.-based security consultancy Stratfor observed.

"Organizing a skilled operation in less than two days is highly unlikely, especially on Jordanian soil where Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security does not have a strong presence. …

"An operation by Palestinians militants, with assistance from Hezbollah, is the most likely explanation. Indeed, groups such as Hezbollah often find willing collaborators in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan."

The ambush was the second big setback in recent weeks for Jordanian intelligence, considered one of the best services in the Arab world and which has been highly effective in foiling such attacks in the Hashemite kingdom.

On Dec. 30 seven U.S. Central Intelligence Agency operatives were killed when a Jordanian militant supposedly turned collaborator carried out a suicide bombing at a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan.

The bomber's GID handler, a cousin of Jordan's King Abdullah II, was also killed.

The GID, heavily subsidized by the CIA, had convinced the agency the militant was a genuine defector who could get close to top al-Qaida figures.

As the anniversary of Mughniyeh's mysterious assassination looms closer, the Israelis are concerned that Hezbollah could be plotting a spectacular high-profile attack against the Jewish state.

Some of the attacks the Israelis say they, and their allies in Turkey, Azerbaijan and Europe, have foiled were quite ambitious.

In August, the Shin Bet security service arrested a 23-year-old Israeli Arab law student named Rawi Fouad Sultani, allegedly recruited by Hezbollah to assassinate the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi.

According to state prosecutors, Sultani, the son of a prominent lawyer, planned to kill Ashkenazi at the fashionable, members-only Kfar Saba country club outside Tel Aviv where they both worked out.

Sultani had been recruited in August 2008 at a summer camp in Morocco by a Hezbollah agent who was lecturing on the movement's war with Israel.

In other plots, two Hezbollah activists were recently sentenced to prison terms in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, for plotting to blow up the Israeli Embassy there in May 2009.

In October, Turkish intelligence foiled a plot to attack Israeli targets in Istanbul and other cities.

In early 2009 Egyptian security began rounding up an alleged Hezbollah ring that would eventually number more than 100 suspects.

Cairo alleged these cells planned attacks against Israeli targets in Egypt, which made peace with Israel in 1978, as part of Hezbollah's effort to retaliate for Mughniyeh's murder.

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