NYT account reveals why Israel feared Hezbollah pager operation was compromised
Israel detonated the pagers days after realizing some devices were being sent to Iran for examination; had earlier used drone to kill Hezbollah technician who suspected they were rigged
The New York Times on Sunday reported that Israel detonated thousands of boobytrapped pagers, which it had covertly sold to Hezbollah, six days after learning that the terror group was sending some devices to Iran for close examination. The newspaper’s account of the years-long deep penetration of the terror group by the Mossad and Israeli military intelligence is the most detailed to be published to date.
The report cited two dozen current and former Israeli, American, and European officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified information. It detailed Israel’s two decades of surveillance of Hezbollah’s leadership and the decision to keep Washington in the dark about the plan to assassinate the terror group’s long-time leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
According to the report, earlier in 2024, Israel carried out a drone strike to kill a Hezbollah technician who suspected there might be explosives in the walkie-talkies that, like the pagers, Israel had covertly sold the terror group.
The September 17 pager detonation, which killed dozens of Hezbollah operatives and maimed thousands, marked the beginning of Israel’s escalation against Hezbollah, after almost a year of the terror group’s persistent rocket fire that displaced some 60,000 residents of the north. Israel invaded Lebanon 10 days after the targeted explosions, beginning with airstrikes in which most of Hezbollah’s leaders, including Nasrallah, were killed. By the end of November, a battered Hezbollah signed a ceasefire agreement with Israel.
The Iran-backed terror group, unprovoked, began its near-daily rocket attacks against Israel on October 8 of last year — one day after its fellow Iran-backed terror group Hamas stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
According to the New York Times, the boobytrapped devices were not yet fully in place at the time of the Hamas invasion and Hezbollah’s entry into the war. The newspaper confirmed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided against a large-scale counteroffensive in Lebanon, preferring to focus on Gaza, over the advice of some Israeli officials, including then-defense minister Yoav Gallant.
By August 2024, Mossad chief David Barnea and military intelligence chiefs were urging a short campaign to neuter Hezbollah’s rocket capabilities and push it away from the border, said the Times, citing a senior Israeli defense official.
Then, according to several unidentified officials cited in the report, new intelligence showed the long-planned pager operation was in danger, especially in light of a September 11, 2024, discovery that some devices had been taken to Iran for inspection.
With the pager operation apparently compromised, Netanyahu met with top security chiefs on September 16 to decide whether Israel should “use it or lose it,” according to four Israeli security officials.
The Times also elaborated on a report last week from CBS’s “60 Minutes” that Mossad had registered shell companies in Budapest and Sofia to handle the sale of the pagers to Hezbollah. CBS said Hezbollah had some 5,000 pagers in use at the time of the blasts.
The pagers were first delivered in the fall of 2023, the Times report noted, and it also cited Hezbollah’s purchase of some 15,000 booby-trapped walkie-talkies since 2015.
20-year surveillance of Hezbollah culminated in hit on Nasrallah
The New York Times said that the foundation of Israel’s surveillance effort was laid in the 2006 war with Hezbollah. For example, according to three Israeli security officials cited by the newspaper, Israel planted tracking devices on Hezbollah’s Fajr missiles, which yielded information on the terror group’s munitions and facilities. During that war, Israel bombed the sites and destroyed the missiles.
Israel also developed near-constant tracking of the terror group’s leaders by recruiting people to bug their hideouts. In the case of Hezbollah military chief Fuad Shukr, whom Israel killed in July, keeping track of his movements included knowledge of his multiple rendezvous with four mistresses, whom he made his wives in the months before he was killed. They married in separate phone-based ceremonies arranged by Hashem Safieddine, who was killed by Israel in October, when he emerged as Nasrallah’s heir-apparent.
Israel reportedly decided to strike Nasrallah after learning of a plan to move him to a different bunker that would have been harder to hit.
Netanyahu approved the strike that killed the terror chief immediately before the premier addressed the United Nations General Assembly on September 27 — when he decried Nasrallah’s grip on Lebanon.
According to the Times, confirming previous reports and comments by the prime minister, Netanyahu discussed the strike with top Israeli officials in Israel the night before taking off for New York, and gave the operation the green light after landing.
Jerusalem chose not to update the White House on the imminent elimination of Nasrallah, avoiding any opposition by Washington, trusting that the US would support Israel if Iran retaliated.
The report cited Israeli intelligence, shared with Western allies, that Nasrallah, in his very last days, seemed skeptical that Israel would try to kill him, maintaining that the country was not interested in an all-out war. After the strike that killed the long-ruling terror chief, intelligence sources determined that he died of suffocation, together with a top Iranian general based in Lebanon.
