Psywar and the bunker bombing

Haaretz:

There was a personal reason for the excitement that grabbed the chief of Military Intelligence, General Amos Yadlin, last Wednesday, too. He was attending a family celebration in the center the country. But far away, in souther Beirut, another event was going on, in which Yadlin had a particular reason to take an interest. At exactly the same time, Israeli Air Force fighter jets were dropping 23 tons of explosives on the Hezbollah's so-called alternative bunker. Hidden under an innocent-looking mosque, the bunker had been built by Iranian engineers who specialized in the construction of protected subterranean building for their country's nuclear facilities.

Five days have passed since the bombing and its results are not yet known. Hezbollah, as part of the psychological warfare it is waging against Israel, has not made its losses public. Members of the movement's field security unit are carefully guarding the area around the damaged bunker, along with other important sites belonging to the organization, and preventing strangers from approaching.

Israel, which decided very late in the game to respond with psychological warfare, has also refrained from releasing any information on the incident - although the chief of staff did hint at a press conference on Friday night that Israel knows the identities of some of those killed in the bombing, but prefers that Hezbollah will publicize their names. In this way, Israel is letting Hezbollah grope in the dark with respect to what Israel actually knows and its intelligence capabilities.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz authorized the attack, based on intelligence assessments that Hezbollah leaders including Hassan Nasrallah and his deputy Imad Mughniyah - a well-known terrorist wanted by the Mossad, the CIA and in fact just about every Western intelligence agency, who is considered to be Hezbollah's "chief of staff" were supposed to be in the bunker. The aim of the attack was also to hit Mughniyah's deputy, Talal Hamia, and other commanders.

Nasrallah was not harmed in the attack because he wasn't in the bunker at the time, but it is possible that other members of the organization's leadership were wounded.

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What are Israel's intelligence achievements? Some information about this was intimated by the previous chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alon, who is currently in the United States. At a lecture he gave in Washington, he said: "Hezbollah has built special rooms inside ordinary residential buildings used to launch rockets, but they didn't know that we know that, and were surprised."

For years, and while carefully maintaining strict compartmentalization, Hezbollah built up a dense system of "secret houses," in which rockets and missiles aimed at numerous Israeli targets were hidden. About a year ago, Nasrallah boasted that he would "set northern Palestine ablaze." Israel's north is indeed being hit very hard by Katyusha rockets and missiles, so far more than 2,000 have been fired, but it is not burning. As of yesterday, only 5 percent of the rockets and missiles fired hit precise targets, causing the deaths of around 20 people and damage to dozens of buildings.

The hidden missiles, especially the long-range Zelzal ones, were the Hezbollah's strategic weapons. This capability has been severely undermined. The IAF - equipped with precise information that has been gathered, examined and meticulously prepared by intelligence experts - knows exactly where many of these concealed storerooms are and has destroyed them....

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There is much more on Israel's intelligence effort as well as some of its obvious failures. Later in the story there is a strong suggestion that Imad Mughniyah was not killed in the 23 ton raid on the mosque bunker hidey hole.