Hezbollah pager attacks are a harbinger of a darker, more dangerous age of individualized strikes, military expert says

An ambulance rushing wounded to a hospital in Beirut, September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds.

The simultaneous detonation of thousands of pagers in Lebanon on Tuesday is a harbinger of a darker and more dangerous age of individualized attacks, according to a retired general and warfare strategist.

Wireless pagers used by Iran-backed Hezbollah members detonated around Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and injuring about 2,800, 200 of whom are in critical condition, Lebanon’s health minister said.

Hezbollah and Lebanon have both blamed Israel.

A US State Department spokesperson said Washington was not involved in the incident and was not aware of any attack in advance.

US and other officials told The New York Times that Israel carried out the attack by placing explosives within a shipment of Taiwanese-made pagers sent to Lebanon.

The pagers were ordered by Hezbollah and were tampered with before they reached Lebanon, some of the officials said.

Three officials said they were programmed to detonate upon receiving a specific message.

As of now, no one has claimed responsibility for the attack, although Sky News Arabia, citing unnamed sources, reported that Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, placed the explosives.

If Israel was behind the attack, it would carry “profound implications” for Hezbollah and the future of warfare, Mick Ryan, a former Australian major general, wrote in an article published on Wednesday.

“This is yet another demonstration that individuals are increasingly vulnerable to highly precise and personalized attacks,” he said.

Ryan cited the use of armed first-person-view drones on the battlefields in Ukraine and Russia, which he said showed the use of lethal personalized attacks had escalated in the past two years.

He said that the use of explosive mobile devices has been “relatively” rare in the past, and that this latest incident has shown that lethal, personal attacks are now possible at scale and “well beyond” the battlefield.

“These kinds of attacks do not require the resources of a state either,” he said. “They are possible from motivated individuals or issue-motivated groups if they can access the personal devices of government officials or politicians.”

Ryan added that such an attack should not come as a surprise: “Nations have been developing ever more precise ways of targeting individuals, equipment, and installations since the US Air Force developed laser-guided bombs during the Vietnam War.”

Yousef Munayyer, a senior fellow at Arab Center Washington DC, made a similar observation in an X post on Tuesday.

He said the pager attack on Hezbollah “opens a dangerous Pandora’s box” and makes almost everyone a “walking ticking bomb.”

“It won’t be long before this tech will be used by many actors,” Munayyer predicted.