The Hezbollah pager attacks reveal a textbook covert operation, ex-spies say
Lebanese army explosives experts work on preparing the site to explode a walkie-talkie that they found thrown away a day after several devices exploded.
Scores of pagers and walkie-talkies used by the Hezbollah militant group exploded across Lebanon this week, leaving dozens of people dead and thousands more injured and raising the potential for escalation between two bitter enemies.
Emerging details from the sophisticated attack, in which the personal, handheld devices carried by militants were rigged with tiny explosives, reveals a textbook covert operation, former American and Israeli spies told B-17.
“We are looking at something that has been a very carefully, very thoroughly, well-calculated, meticulously tailored process,” said Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official, who likened it to a “long-term chess game.”
The attacks appear to have blinded the militancy’s communications but the strategic objectives of the coordinated blasts remain unclear, leading to questions about timing and intent.
The chaos and carnage began on Tuesday when pagers used by Hezbollah members started beeping before they exploded en masse across Lebanon. The following day, walkie-talkies used by the Iran-backed militant group followed a similar fate as they started detonating in large numbers.
A photo taken on September 18 in Beirut’s southern suburbs shows the remains of exploded pagers.
The back-to-back attacks killed at least 30 people and injured some 3,000 more, including Hezbollah fighters, and overwhelmed local hospitals.
Hezbollah, Lebanon, and Iran all blamed Israel for the deadly attacks. Israel has not claimed responsibility, but the country has a long history of carrying out clandestine operations beyond its borders. It quickly became the leading suspect behind the blasts, with some media reports that the Israelis were behind the events.
Israel assassinated a Hamas bombmaker in 1996 with an exploding phone, but what’s different in these attacks is that thousands of devices were rigged and exploded simultaneously.
While the extent of the attack is still being determined, the level of sophistication is becoming clearer.
Earlier this year, the leader of the militant group, Hassan Nasrallah, decided it was better to avoid using cellphones because they could be too easily tracked and monitored by Israel’s vaunted intelligence services. They began switching to older devices like pagers — creating an opening for their enemy.
Smoke billows from a house in Baalbek in east Lebanon after a reported explosion of a radio device on September 18.
The pagers and walkie-talkies reportedly had small amounts of explosives concealed within, rigged to blow at one point during the supply chain process in what clearly required extensive planning dating many back months — if not years.
Carrying this out required technical mastery on a large scale. The operatives needed to insert the explosives and detonator without leaving traces on the devices and do so quickly enough to avoid affecting shipment dates in a way that could arouse suspicion, all the time knowing just one sloppy pager could give thousands away.
Hezbollah failed to detect the tampered devices in time, likely by failing to properly scan them or take them apart and inspect their components.
Melamed, the former Israeli intel officer who’s the founder of the Inside the Middle East organization, said maintaining the edge over an adversary is not just about having technological advantages.
It’s more important to have “ingenuity” and the ability to plan several moves ahead of an adversary, he noted. He said this was a notable component of the attacks this week.
Ambulances are surrounded by people at the entrance of the American University of Beirut Medical Center on September 17.
But if Israel is indeed behind the attack, it raises questions about why the country would have chosen to detonate the explosives now after going through all the trouble of such a sophisticated and lengthy infiltration process.
“Supply chain operations are hard,” said Douglas London, a retired senior CIA operations officer with experience in the Middle East. “When you have this success, it’s incredible. You hold on to it and don’t expose it.”
Hezbollah will investigate the massive security breach and plug the necessary holes, making it more difficult for an adversary to carry out another supply chain operation in the future, added London, author of “The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence.”
The attacks began shortly after Israel indicated, without specificity, that it would increase military pressure on Hezbollah so that people who have been displaced by constant fighting between the two bitter enemies can return to their homes.
Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily cross-border strikes since Hamas staged its October 7 massacre, forcing tens of thousands of people in northern Israel and southern Lebanon from their homes. The two warring parties have avoided all-out confrontation despite constant fears that escalation would lead to that scenario.
An Israeli fighter jet takes off at an unidentified location to conduct strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, in this handout photo released September 19.
The pager and walkie-talkie attacks were certainly disruptive and would have made Hezbollah vulnerable to immediate Israeli military action, experts say. But if the blasts are supposed to precede an Israeli ground offensive into Lebanon, that does not yet appear to be the case.
“Relatively, the gains don’t seem to merit the exposure of this capability,” London said.
He said this capability could have been a tool for more strategic goals like collecting intelligence on Hezbollah’s membership, facilities, weaponry, and movement. Such advantages could have then translated into precision attacks instead of causing indiscriminate casualties for psychological effects.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday that the war is now in a “new phase” and “the sequence of our military actions will continue.” On Friday, Israel and Hezbollah exchanged more fire.
Whether Israel is headed for a ground invasion of Lebanon remains to be seen. Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said there may not be a direct correlation between the device explosions this week and any Israeli invasion.
“But that doesn’t mean that it’s not something that could happen in the immediate future,” he said. “This was such an extensive and so bold an operation that it was designed to knock Hezbollah off balance for a period of time. They’ll obviously recover, but not soon.”
