In 2023, a trusted marketing official pitched the communications devices to the terrorist group.
By JNS staff
The plot to seed Hezbollah’s ranks with tiny bombs hidden in pagers was “an act of master spycraft,” The Washington Post reported in an investigative piece on Saturday revealing new details of the attack.
The Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency responsible for countering foreign threats, came up with the plan in 2022, more than a year before Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, according to the report, which relied on interviews with Israeli, Arab and U.S. security officials, politicians and diplomats.
An estimated 3,000 Hezbollah terrorists were killed or maimed on Sept. 17 when their pagers were remotely detonated by Israel, thanks to tiny explosive charges hidden inside the devices’ batteries.
Hezbollah in Lebanon is by far the strongest of the terrorist groups threatening Israel. An Iranian proxy, it is armed with 100,000 to 200,000 rockets, some with a range of 500 kilometers (310 miles), enough to cover the entire State of Israel.
However, Hezbollah quickly found itself on the ropes and its leadership ranks “devastated” by the pager operation.
“As an act of spy craft, it is without parallel, one of the most successful and inventive penetrations of an enemy by an intelligence service in recent history,” the Post said.
The Mossad succeeded by capitalizing on Hezbollah’s fears that its communications networks could be hacked by Israel. For years, the agency has spied on the terrorist group via electronic and human surveillance.
Hezbollah’s leaders became aware of this and concerned that they were exposed to Israeli monitoring. They were fearful of using cell phones, which were obviously open to hacking and eavesdropping.
Israel saw that it could fill Hezbollah’s desire for protected communications with “a kind of communications Trojan horse,” officials told the Post.
First, the Mossad came up with booby-trapped walkie-talkies, (these were detonated on Sept. 18, a day after the pager attack). The Mossad fed Hezbollah the walkie-talkies starting in 2015. The two-way radios contained battery packs with hidden explosives.
“For nine years, the Israelis contented themselves with eavesdropping on Hezbollah, the officials said, while reserving the option to turn the walkie-talkies into bombs in a future crisis,” the Post reported.
Ignorant of the plot
Then came the opportunity to sell Hezbollah booby-trapped pagers.
A marketing official, a woman whose identity has not been revealed, and who was herself ignorant of the plot, pitched Hezbollah on pager model AR924 sometime in 2023.
The pager was made by Taiwanese firm Gold Apollo, “a well-recognized trademark and product line,” which had no known connections to Israel.
The woman was known and trusted by Hezbollah. She was a former Middle East sales representative for Gold Apollo and had acquired a license to sell pagers bearing the brand.
“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. “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 pager seemed to fit the bill for Hezbollah: rugged, reliable, waterproof and built for battlefield conditions. Its longer battery life meant the device ran for months without charging.
Best of all, they supposedly were foolproof against Israeli tracking.
“Hezbollah’s leaders were so impressed they bought 5,000 of them and began handing them out to mid-level fighters and support personnel in February,” the report said.
The pagers were assembled in Israel under Mossad oversight, and paid for by Hezbollah.
Although they weighed less than three ounces, the Mossad managed to insert tiny, powerful explosives into the battery packs.
“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,” the Post reported.
(U.S. officials told Axios immediately following the attack that the detonation operation went ahead earlier than planned because of fears that it was about to be discovered by the terrorist group.)
The devices could be activated by an electronic signal from the Mossad. It required a two-step, de-encryption process ensuring that a terrorist would be holding the pager with both hands when it exploded.
The explosion would almost certainly “wound both their hands,” so they “would be incapable to fight,” an official said.
Whether or not to trigger the explosive pagers generated intense debate within Israel’s security establishment, the Post said.
Everyone, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saw the potential that the pagers had for gutting Hezbollah’s ranks. But there was concern over a massive retaliation by Hezbollah’s surviving leaders and Iran.
(Hezbollah’s response so far has been muted with rocket fire at more or less the same rate as before the attack. Iran fired more than 180 rockets at Israel on Oct. 1, in response to the pager attack and the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.)
“It was clear that there were some risks,” an Israeli official told the Post.
Netanyahu decided to approve the attack.
The United States was not informed of the pagers or the debate within Israel over whether to detonate them, U.S. officials said.