War on Terror using Cold War playbook

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The list of assassinations has crept up over the past month, and they all seem to have one thing in common: Israel. While plausible deniability remains the country's best defense, it appears that the Global War on Terror is taking lessons out of the Cold War's playbook.

Authorities in Dubai recently announced the January 20th death of a Hamas leader in one of their luxury hotels that smacks of 007-hijinks: eleven suspected assassins flew into the Emirate on separate flights, dressed up in disguises ranging from wigs to tennis wear, followed a Hamas terrorist to his room, suffocated him, and then departed the country within 19 hours of arriving. The Hamas man, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, was recently fingered for the death of two Israeli soldiers in 1989.

Linking the assassins back to nearly anywhere is tough, as all used fake passports from European countries. The only positive ID of the killers comes from Dubai's elaborate security camera system, which at one point caught the killers and the victim riding the same elevator to the man's hotel room. Said a former high-ranking Mossad (Israeli Intelligence) expert, it "doesn't look like an Israeli operation" because its members were caught on security cameras, an apparent amateur move.

However, there are links to Israel. First, the victim was a Hamas leader. Second, many of the passports used, while British in origin, have ties back to Israel: one of the actual passport holders is an American-Israeli and another had used his passport to work on an Israeli farm.

As an added twist, Dubai recently arrested two Palestinian Authority citizens, muddying the waters all the more.

Still, the Dubai assassination isn't the only peculiar death in the Middle East in recent months. Iranian nuclear physicist Masoud Alimohammadi was recently killed in Tehran when his motorcycle was blown up by remote detonation, according to the Economist. While more speculation circulates around what Alimohammadi's role was in potentially weaponizing Iranian uranium for the Ministry of Defense, just as much ambiguity revolves around who killed him.

In both cases, there are multiple parties who benefited from the individual's deaths. As for Mahmoud al-Mahoub, Israel clearly wanted revenge, but his death also benefited the Fatah party, and even some within Hamas. As for the Iranian physicist, he had family ties to the recent opposition in Iran, and so Iran's own government may have sought to make an example of him.

However, it's an apt time for Israel to shift to covert tactics, and certainly Israel is the most likely culprit in both cases. The overt Israel-Hezbollah conflict ruined Israel's reputation without accomplishing much. With conventional methods currently taboo, a rising Iranian nuclear power, and a militant wing of Hamas to keep in check, covert is the perfect way for Israel to tell its foes that it isn't out of the fight, its just changed tactics.

Planting circumstantial evidence--the surveillance videos, the use passports that loosely tie back to Israel--is a brilliant way to warn enemies to keep themselves in check without allowing for outright retaliation or international condemnation in the minefield that is Middle Eastern politics. In the Cold War similar tactics were used to eliminate threats without inducing an international incident, and now, it seems, the Middle East is taking note.