Pagers, Walkie Talkies Explode in Hands of Terrorists

Thousands of Hezbollah members and the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, were injured in Lebanon on Tuesday when their handheld pagers explode in what appears to have been an Israeli attack. The Lebanese Health Ministry has estimated high casualties, the vast majority of them in the Hezbollah strongholds of Beirut and southern Lebanon. Even higher numbers have been reported but not confirmed.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the exploded pagers were from “a new shipment the group received in the past few days,” raising the possibility that the Israelis intercepted the shipment and modified the devices or directly infected them with malware. Others have suggested that Israel was able to either hack into the pagers and force their lithium batteries to overheat or somehow activate self-destruct mechanisms that Hezbollah had built into the devices. What the Israelis did not do is tell the United States of the plan, per U.S. officials quoted in Axios—probably a good idea, given that the highest-ranking White House intelligence official, Maher Bitar, used to sit on the executive board of Georgetown’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. 

The attack was a brilliant technical display, of course, but did it mean anything strategically? On Tuesday morning, Israel declared the return of civilians to the north as an official war goal, and Israel Hayom reported, citing a “high-ranking security official,” that Israel was “on the precipice of conflict with Hezbollah.” The same official said that Netanyahu had been working to overcome “resistance [to a Lebanon operation] from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and [the] military leadership,” who were resistant to defying American requests to delay any invasion until after the Nov. 5 U.S. election. So, was this attack a prelude to an invasion?

For help understanding that one, the Tablet News Editor Tony Badran said: 

The question is what was the purpose of this operation? Why now? What now? 

Timing wise, it’s difficult to overlook the fact [that] it coincided with Amos Hochstein’s visit to Israel and him telling the Israelis that the U.S. continues to oppose an invasion of Lebanon.

This brings us to a point made by Tablet’s geopolitical analyst: 

They set off the pagers because they decided not to invade, which was the original purpose of these capabilities.

In a separate email to The Scroll, Tablet’s geopolitical analyst expanded:

I highly doubt this was intended as a one-off. Logic says this was supposed to disrupt the enemy’s communications as part of a larger invasion plan. The word is that the invasion was called off “until after the election.” So then you’re left with a degrading asset that was either already discovered or would likely be discovered the moment one of these guys brought their pager for repairs. So either you use them or you lose them.

In other words, as with everything we’ve seen so far from Israel, its actions are still within the U.S.-imposed parameters pertaining to the special province of Lebanon and the U.S. protective umbrella it extends to Hezbollah.