Sunday, Israeli airstrikes targeted a convoy of Hezbollah vehicles, killing several senior operatives, reportedly including Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of late Hezbollah terrorist leader Imad Mughniyeh. Whether Jihad was the intended target or not is already a matter of debate, but the collection of the kind of timely and actionable intelligence that identified the convoy offers a glimpse into the spy-vs-spy war being fought between Israel and Hezbollah every day.

The airstrikes overshadowed another recently revealed chapter in this intelligence war. Hezbollah — the group that declared “divine victory” over Israel in the July 2006 war — now admits that enemy spies have penetrated the inner core of the group’s decision making circles. Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah himself addressed it in a recent interview, conceding that “infiltrations are part of the war between us and Israel and part of the battle’s losses, and we must expect things of this kind.” Indeed, this is just the latest chapter in a spy-vs-spy saga straight out of an espionage paperback.

On Jan. 5, Hezbollah’s deputy chief Naim Qassem lauded the ability of a group as “big and sophisticated” as Hezbollah “to stand with the same steadfastness despite some major infiltrations.” Media outlets identified the latest accused spy as Mohammad Shorbah, but as Qassem implied, this was not the first such “major infiltration,” nor is it likely to be the last.

But Israel doesn’t always come out on top in this intelligence war. Hezbollah is no slouch when it comes to espionage and counter-intelligence, the result of training its operatives receive from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and Hezbollah has enjoyed its share of successes against Israeli and Western security agencies. In late 2000, a retired Israeli colonel named Elhanan Tannenbaum established a shady business relationship with Qais Obeid, a Palestinian criminal with ties to Hezbollah. Tannenbaum was lured first to Brussels, then the United Arab Emirates, where he was kidnapped and smuggled to Lebanon.

Read the article in full at the Washington Institute.