New details emerge of Israel’s elaborate plan to sabotage Hezbollah communications devices

Beirut (Quds News Network)- New details have been unveiled about Israel’s elaborate plan to sabotage Hezbollah communications devices to kill or maim thousands of its operatives.

According to a Washibgton Post report, Hezbollah’s leaders acquired 5,000 of pagers and began distributing them to mid-level fighters and support personnel in February.

Israeli, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials indicate that an estimated 3,000 Hezbollah members were killed or maimed when Israel’s Mossad remotely triggered these devices on September 17.

Key details of the operation — including how it was planned and carried out, and the controversy it engendered within Israel’s security establishment and among allies — are only now emerging.

The details were gathered from interviews with Israeli, Arab and U.S. security officials, politicians and diplomats briefed on the events, as well as Lebanese officials and people close to Hezbollah.

They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence to the Washington Post.

Origins of the plan

The origins of this operation can be traced back to Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, evolving through a network of operatives across several nations.

The idea for the pager operation originated in 2022, according to the Israeli, Middle Eastern and U.S. officials familiar with the events. Parts of the plan began falling into place more than a year before the Oct. 7 operation.

One Israeli political official, referring to the pager plot, summed up the anxieties in a quip at a meeting with Mossad officials.

“We cannot make a strategic decision such as an escalation in Lebanon while counting on a toy,” the official said.

The report said the Lebanese group was looking for hack-proof electronic networks for relaying messages, and Mossad came up with a pair of ruses that would lead the group to purchase devices that seemed perfect for the job — “equipment that Mossad designed and had assembled in Israel.”

What was the plan?

The first part of the plan, booby-trapped walkie-talkies, began being inserted into Lebanon by Mossad nearly a decade ago, in 2015. The mobile two-way radios contained oversized battery packs, a hidden explosive and a transmission system that gave Israel complete access to Hezbollah communications.

For nine years, the Israelis reserved the option to turn the walkie-talkies into bombs in a future crisis, the officials said.

But then came a new opportunity and a glitzy new product: a small pager equipped with a powerful explosive.

Because Hezbollah leaders were alert to possible sabotage, the pagers could not originate in Israel, the United States or any other Israeli ally. So, in 2023, the group began receiving solicitations for the bulk purchase of Taiwanese-branded Apollo pagers, a well-recognized trademark and product line with worldwide distribution and no discernible links to Israeli or Jewish interests. The Taiwanese company had no knowledge of the plan, officials said.

The sales pitch came from a marketing official trusted by Hezbollah with links to Apollo. The marketing official, a woman whose identity and nationality officials declined to reveal, was a former Middle East sales representative for the Taiwanese firm who had established her own company and acquired a license to sell a line of pagers that bore the Apollo brand. Sometime in 2023, she offered Hezbollah a deal on one of the products her firm sold: the rugged and reliable AR924.

“She was the one in touch with Hezbollah, and explained to them why the bigger pager with the larger battery was better than the original model,” said an Israeli official briefed on details of the operation.

One of the main selling points about the AR924 was that it was “possible to charge with a cable. And the batteries were longer lasting,” the official said.

As it turned out, the actual production of the devices was outsourced and the marketing official had no knowledge of the operation and was unaware that the pagers were physically assembled in Israel under Mossad oversight, officials said.

Mossad’s pagers, each weighing less than three ounces, included a unique feature: a battery pack that concealed a tiny amount of a powerful explosive, according to the officials familiar with the plot.

In a feat of engineering, the bomb component was so carefully hidden as to be virtually undetectable, even if the device was taken apart, the officials said.

Israeli officials believe that Hezbollah did disassemble some of the pagers and may have even X-rayed them.

Also invisible was Mossad’s remote access to the devices. An electronic signal from the intelligence service could trigger the explosion of thousands of the devices at once. But, to ensure maximum damage, the blast could also be triggered by a special two-step procedure required for viewing secure messages that had been encrypted.

“You had to push two buttons to read the message,” an official said. In practice, that meant using both hands.

In the ensuing explosion, the users would almost certainly “wound both their hands,” the official said, and thus “would be incapable to fight.”

According to the Post, most top elected officials in Israel were unaware of the capability until Sept. 12.

The United States, Israel’s closest ally, was not informed of the booby-trapped pagers or the internal debate over whether to trigger them, U.S. officials said.

Netanyahu then approved triggering the devices while they could inflict maximum damage. Over the following week, Mossad began preparations for detonating both the pagers and walkie-talkies already in circulation.

The Post said American diplomats had been pressing Hassan Nasrallah to agree to a separate cease-fire with Israel, without links to the war in Gaza, hoping for a deal that could lead to the withdrawal of Hezbollah from the southern Lebanese bases.

Senior Israeli officials claimed they voiced support for the cease-fire proposal, but Nasrallah withheld his consent, insisting on a cease-fire for Gaza first, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials said. Some senior political and military officials in Israel remained deeply uncertain about targeting Nasrallah, fearing the fallout in the region.

What happened next?

On Sept. 17, even as the debate in Israel’s highest national security circles about whether to strike the Hezbollah leader raged on, thousands of Apollo-branded pagers rang or vibrated at once, all across Lebanon and Syria. A short sentence in Arabic appeared on the screen: “You received an encrypted message,” it said.

Hezbollah operatives dutifully followed the instructions for checking coded messages, pressing two buttons. In houses and shops, in cars and on sidewalks, explosions ripped apart hands and blew away fingers. Less than a minute later, thousands of other pagers exploded by remote command, regardless of whether the user ever touched his device.

The following day, on Sept. 18, hundreds of walkie-talkies blew up in the same way, killing and maiming users and bystanders.

Israel then struck again, pounding the group’s headquarters, arsenals and logistic centers with 2,000-poundbombs.

The largest series of airstrikes occurred on Sept. 27, 10 days after the pagers exploded.

The attack, targeting a deeply buried command center in Beirut, was ordered by Netanyahu as he traveled to New York for a United Nations speech in which he declared, speaking to Hezbollah, “Enough is enough.”

The next day, Sept. 28, Hezbollah confirmed Nasrallah, the group’s longtime leader, was dead.