Hezbollah will miss the organizational capabilities of Imad Mugniyah as it ponders the best means of retaliating for the death of its senior and veteran militant.

After all, it was allegedly Mugniyah who oversaw the planning of the last two major acts of revenge for Israeli operations against Hezbollah – the bombings in Buenos Aires of the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish cultural center in March 1992 and July 1994 respectively, which together killed over 100 people.

The bombing of the Israeli Embassy was claimed by Islamic Jihad (of 1980s kidnapping fame, not the Palestinian version) in revenge for the assassination a month earlier of Sayyed Abbas Moussawi, the then-Hezbollah secretary general, who was killed along with his family and bodyguards in an Israeli helicopter attack.

The Jewish cultural center was blown up six weeks after an Israeli air strike killed more than 40 recruits in the Bekaa, an unprecedented number of casualties in a single raid.

Hezbollah has apparently already replaced Mugniyah, probably with one of his deputies. Mugniyah’s successor has not been publicly named, of course, but it is possible that he could be either Talal Hamiyah or Ibrahim Aqil.

Hamiyah, from a powerful clan in the Bekaa, worked closely with Mugniyah in the 1980s kidnapping operations and was responsible for striking deals for the release of some of the minor hostages. In the 1990s, Hamiyah was alleged to have worked with Saudi Hezbollah, an Iranian-supported Shia group that was accused of the 1996 Khobar Towers military residence bombing in which 17 Americans were killed.

Ibrahim Aqil, a veteran and highly-respected resistance commander, was originally a member of Hussein Moussawi’s Islamic Amal formed in 1982. His name has been linked to the 1982 suicide bombing of the Israeli military headquarters in Tyre, a 1983 assassination attempt against then-Lebanese Prime Minister Shafiq Wazzan, and to the bombing of the US Marine barracks in October 1983. In the mid 1990s, Aqil was thought to be Hezbollah’s chief of weapons, logistics and training before going on to command the southern front against Israel. He narrowly survived an Israeli helicopter attack on his car in February 2000, and was later alleged to have been involved in the abduction of three Israeli soldiers from the Shebaa Farms in October 2000.

For those who still harbored doubts, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary general, made it abundantly clear at Mugniyah’s funeral on Thursday that the party will respond to the militant’s assassination, and that it will probably be an overseas reprisal.

“You have killed Hajj Imad outside the recognized battle zone,” Nasrallah said, addressing Israel and referring to Lebanon’s borders. 

“With regard to this killing, considering the date, place and style, Zionists: If you want this kind of open war, then let the entire world listen: Let it be an open war.”

Western intelligence agencies have long held the view that Hezbollah has global reach through networks based in Lebanese Shia communities scattered around the world.

“I know there is a debate about this, but not among those of us who have seen the intelligence material. We know Hezbollah has global reach,” a former FBI counter-terrorism officer once told the author.

Most of these cells are engaged in fundraising, but they also keep potential targets under surveillance, according to these intelligence sources. In 2002, a secret FBI briefing to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that while Hezbollah had the assets to conduct attacks in the US, its “extensive fundraising” activities reduced the chances of such a decision being made.

Hezbollah has always denied it possesses global reach, although Nasrallah once told the author in an interview that the party does have “supporters” who could strike if the organization was threatened.

“There are many people throughout the world who love Hezbollah, who like Hezbollah, and who support Hezbollah. Some may not sit idly by when seeing a brutal aggression against Lebanon,” he said.

US intelligence sources suspect that Hezbollah has contingency plans for attacks against a list of targets around the world, which can be implemented quickly if a rapid retaliation is required. The two Buenos Aires bombings occurred only a month and six weeks after the respective Israeli attacks.

Following Mugniyah’s assassination, Israeli embassies around the world went on alert, and the Israeli army beefed up its presence along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

However, the retaliation is unlikely to emanate along the Lebanon-Israel border. Analysts suspect that it will consist of a qualitative attack that leaves the Israelis knowing they have been subject to retaliation for Mugniyah’s murder but still granting Hezbollah plausible deniability. Some analysts believe that Hezbollah could refrain from a large-scale bombing of an Israeli target, like an embassy, and will choose a more significant target with a greater shock value.

“I think they will possibly try to do something more spectacular. It won’t be a matter of scale, but the choice of target; something innovative,” Magnus Ranstorp, a Hezbollah specialist at the Swedish Defense College, told NOW Lebanon.

Timur Goksel, lecturer on international relations in Beirut and long-serving UNIFIL official in South Lebanon, agreed that Hezbollah would select a “high-profile target.”

“I don’t think Hezbollah will go for a big bombing, [but] probably an assassination,” he said. “This is something that Hezbollah cannot let pass. Mugniyah was too much of a symbol.”