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In 1990, a Canadian-born former officer called Victor Ostrovsky blew the whistle on its internal organisation, training and methods, revealing codenames including "Kidon" (bayonet), the unit in charge of assassinations. An official smear campaign failed to stop Ostrovsky's book, so the agency kept quiet when another ostensibly inside account came out in 2007. It described the use of shortwave radios for sending encoded transmissions, operations in Iran for collecting soil samples, and joint operations with the CIA against Hezbollah.

the worst own goal came in 1997, during Binyamin Netanyahu's first term as prime minister. Mossad agents tried but failed to assassinate Khaled Mash'al – the same Hamas leader who is now warning of retaliation for Mabhouh's murder – by injecting poison into his ear in Amman, Jordan. Using forged Canadian passports, they fled to the Israeli embassy, triggering outrage and a huge diplomatic crisis with Jordan. Danny Yatom, the then Mossad chief, was forced to quit. Ephraim Halevy, a quietly spoken former Londoner, was brought back from retirement to clear up the mess.

It would be surprising if a key part of this extraordinary story did not turn out to be the role played by Palestinians. It is still Mossad practice to recruit double agents, just as it was with the PLO back in the 1970s. News of the arrest in Damascus of another senior Hamas operative – though denied by Mash'al – seems to point in this direction. Two other Palestinians extradited from Jordan to Dubai are members of the Hamas armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam brigades, suggesting treachery may indeed have been involved. Previous assassinations have involved a Palestinian agent identifying the target.

Yossi Melman, the expert on intelligence for Israel's Haaretz newspaper, worries that, as before the 1973 war, the Israeli government may be getting it wrong by focusing on the wrong enemy – the Palestinians – instead of prioritising Iran and Hizbullah.

a further two Irish passports were used in the assassination, bringing the total number of Irish travel documents involved to five as speculation grew that the size of the hit squad was bigger than the 11 originally reported.

In Dubai, however, the emirate's police chief, Dahi Khalfan Tamim, called on local television for Interpol to issue "a red notice against the head of Mossad … as a killer in case Mossad is proved to be behind the crime, which is likely now."

British officials said last night it was too early to speculate on what measures Britain might take against Israel if the government remained uncooperative.One possible consequence could be Britain's response to an Israeli request to change its 'universal jurisdiction' law on war crimes, under which a London magistrates court issued an arrest warrant in December for Israel's former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, for her role in the Gaza offensive a year earlier.

Sir Richard Dalton, Britain's ambassador to Iran from 2003 to 2006 said: "All this just says how pathetic and ludicrous the claim is that Israel is Britain's strategic partner."

The Dubai authorities said they had asked Britain for assistance at the end of January, but the foreign office insists it was only informed of the British connection hours before it was made public.

Rival Palestinian factions, meanwhile, continued to trade accusations about involvement in the Dubai killing. Hamas named two Palestinians under arrest in the emirate as Anwar Sheibar and Ahmad Hassanein, former Gazan members of Fatah's security forces with links to the senior Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan. Al-Hayat, the London-based Arabic daily, quoted an unnamed Hamas official as saying that the two had provided logistical aid to the alleged Mossad team.

According to the US government, the group is responsible for targeting Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children, Foreign Policy said. In July it claimed responsibility for attacking the Grand Mosque in Sistan-Baluchistan capital of Zahedan, reportedly targeting members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps, killing 28 people.

Tensions in the US-Iran relationship have also spiked, most recently following the car-bombing of an Iranian nuclear scientist. Foreign Policy, however, said there was no evidence of a link between the scientist's killing and Jundallah.

Middle East experts and diplomats see the Dubai plot as part of a wider clandestine struggle between Israel and Hamas – and a deliberate attempt to weaken the Palestinian organisation's links with Iran. Israel considered Mabhouh to be the point man in smuggling longer-range Iranian rockets into Gaza that would be capable of striking Israel's urban heartland.

Dubai police identified Austria as ­"command centre" for the assassins, after mobile phone data showed at least seven numbers originating there.

In December 2008 radical Islamic terrorists also coordinated their bomb attacks in Mumbai, in which 160 people were killed, using Austrian mobile phone numbers.

The military and intelligence establishment in Israel is also believed to have serious reservations about launching unilateral military action. The US has urged restraint, arguing that sanctions need time to take effect.

Channel 2's disclosures came as a respected Israeli thinktank, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), published the outcome of a war game simulating the 48-hour period after an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear installations. In the scenario, Israel does not inform the US of its operation until after its launch. Iran reacts by launching around 200 missiles at Israel, and urging its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas to do likewise. However, it is careful to avoid attacking US targets in the immediate aftermath of a strike.According to the INSS, there are two opposing outcomes of an Israeli attack: "One anticipates the outbreak of world war three, while the other envisions containment and restraint, and presumes that in practice Iran's capabilities to ignite the Middle East are limited." Its war game "developed in the direction of containment and restraint".

Another two men, one using a French passport and one using a German passport, are also suspected of playing parts in the assassination.

The French foreign ministry said it was "not able to confirm the nationality of this person", according to the AFP news agency. German officials said the passport number was either incomplete or wrong, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Mr Mabhouh was murdered in his hotel room in Dubai on 20 January. Reports have suggested he was in Dubai to buy weapons for the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas. Hamas has accused Israeli agents of killing him.

Former Mossad spymaster Meir Dagan has predicted that Syria, Iran's key Arab ally and now beset by a bloody domestic uprising, might also choose to join in the foreign conflict.

Public reluctance has been galvanized by the unusually vocal questioning by Dagan and some other retired security chiefs of Netanyahu and Barak's secret strategizing.

These critics have urged U.S.-led sanctions on Tehran be given more time. Israel and its Western partners are also widely believed to have been sabotaging Iran's uranium enrichment and ballistic arms projects, though Barak said any such covert campaign cannot be relied upon to finish the job.

A December 1 poll by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the U.S. think-tank Brookings found that 43 percent of Israeli Jews backed attacking Iran, while 41 percent would be opposed.

By a ratio of two to one, respondents said they would agree to stripping Israel of its own atomic arsenal as part of a regional disarmament deal. Ninety percent predicted Iran, which says its nuclear project is peaceful, would obtain in time become a nuclear military power.

Slowing its progress toward that point, however, may be enough of an objective for Israel, which Barak assessed last month stood to lose "maybe not even 500 dead" to Iranian retaliation.

Should it end up worse, "there are international mechanisms that would curtail the war between Iran and Israel," former Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said last month.But Yadlin, who was among the eight F-16 pilots who carried out the 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak reactor, sounded circumspect about Israeli military capabilities against Iranian targets that are numerous, distant, fortified and on the alert for attacks - in contrast to Saddam Hussein's sole installation near Baghdad.

Israel, he said, should "open lines of dialogue with those who have superior operational abilities than we do" -- effectively, shelving unilateralism in favor of cooperation with the United States and its NATO allies

Dan Schueftan, head of the National Security Studies Centre at Haifa University, said Israel's recent hawkish talk could be meant for foreign ears: "Because they (Netanyahu and Barak) fear that if it is believed that there is no possibility of Israel attacking Iran, the United States won't consider taking action."Even Dagan publicly dangled the possibility that he has been playing into a propaganda ruse, telling Israeli television: "If Dagan is arguing against a conflict, then the Iranian conclusion is ... 'Listen, these Jews are crazy. They could attack Iran!'"

But posture can also be self-realizing. Before launching his surprise attack on Israel at Yom Kippur in 1973, Egypt's Anwar Sadat repeatedly issued mobilization orders to his forces while also saying he was willing to consider peace negotiations, lulling Israelis into believing Cairo was not a serious threat.

Mohammed Nazzal, a Hamas leader, has previously said Mabhouh was ambushed by agents from Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, although he gave no evidence for his accusation.

Al-Jazeera reported that Ahmadinejad also met Khaled Mash'al, the Damascus-based leader of the Palestinian movement Hamas, and Ramadan Shallah of Islamic Jihad, both of which are supported by Tehran

Two years ago the military leader of Lebanon's Hizbullah, Imad Mughniyeh, was assassinated in Damascus in an attack that was also blamed on Israel's secret service, the Mossad

Syria and Iran announced they were cancelling visa restrictions between their countries

Clinton said the US wanted Syria "generally to begin to move away from the relationship with Iran, which is so deeply troubling to the region as well as to the United States".