Hezbollah beeper blasts: Timing not due to plan being exposed, sources say - exclusive

The timing of the Hezbollah beeper and other device explosions last week, which wounded around 3,000-4,000 operatives, was not due to the sabotage being exposed by the organization but carefully planned, the Jerusalem Post has learned.

In the aftermath of the explosions across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, some reports circulated that whoever caused the explosion – attributed by numerous foreign media outlets to Israel, with large aspects of the saga confirmed independently by the Jerusalem Post (which has significant Western sources) – would have preferred a later and more coordinated timing.

Under this narrative, foreign reports said that Israeli intelligence rushed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu around Tuesday of last week – with the entire Israeli media talking about a major unspecified “security event,” to tell him that the device explosion sabotage capability was at use it or lose it a moment.

In other words, some Hezbollah operatives had uncovered aspects of the sabotage and if they announced it nationwide, the organization might rid itself of the devices before they could be exploded.

This narrative made sense with how surprised both the Israeli and Lebanese public seemed by the episode after Jerusalem had allowed Hezbollah to fire rockets on its northern front for 11 months without taking any consistent major steps to force a change beyond limited retaliations.

Ambulances arrive to American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) as more than 1,000 people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics, were wounded when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, according to a security source, in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/MOHAMED AZAKIR)

But the Post has learned that whoever caused the sabotage picked the timing carefully and not because of some sudden discovery by Hezbollah.

It is noteworthy that in the days leading up to Tuesday of last week, both Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made public statements about elevating the push to return Israel’s northern residents to their homes to become one of the primary missions of the current war.

This came after Gallant declared Hamas’s last of 24 battalions in Rafah defeated on August 21.

In other words, for the weeks and days leading up to last week, Israel was shifting its ground and air forces heavily toward the northern border after having focused most of them on Gaza since October 2023.

In this narrative, the exploding devices set the stage for sending Hezbollah reeling on its backheels, leading into the possibly even more significant attacks that the IDF has admitted to since Friday.

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Without beepers and cell phones to communicate, suddenly, Hezbollah Radwan special forces commander Ibrahim Aqil and around 20 of his top sub-commanders needed to meet in person to develop retaliation plans.

Assassination of Aqil, barrage of rockets

When they did on Friday, the IDF killed Aqil and somewhere between 13 and 15 other critical sub-commanders.

Over Thursday through Sunday, the IDF carried out four major waves of attacks, wearing down Hezbollah’s rocket launcher inventory by destroying over 500 rocket launchers and many thousands of rockets.

It is also noteworthy, looking back at Tuesday, that this was the day that the government and the Shin Bet convinced an Israeli court to lift the gag order on a year-old Hezbollah plot to assassinate former defense minister Moshe Yaalon.

Although there was a new recent plot connected indirectly to the old Yaalon plot, which was given as the excuse for rolling out the indictment relating to those who tried to kill Yaalon specifically on Tuesday, the timing was also potentially advantageous leading into the start of a major Israeli escalation against Hezbollah.

The Post has also learned that there were multiple stages in planning the beeper and electronic device explosive sabotage, some dating back years, and some dating back months, with both narratives having been reported by different foreign media outlets.

The discrepancy between the narratives appears to be a well-known intelligence dilemma.

For example, in the book Target Tehran, it was disclosed that the Mossad first hatched its plan to seize Iran’s secret nuclear archives in 2016. However, these plans had to be altered based on changing physical and other circumstances in 2017.

The Post understands that different stages of the explosive devices operation necessitated critical adjustments to the plans at different points along the way, including some, as reported in foreign media, only around five months before.

There remains a discrepancy regarding how the explosions were carried out.

Most foreign reports have said that small amounts of explosive material were slipped into the devices by unidentified agents working at a shell company posing as part of a Hungarian company, which itself was licensed by a Taiwanese company, in order to produce and distribute the devices.

However, some sources have told the Post that the sabotage would be most likely doable by “playing” with the lithium in these devices, which any engineer of a certain level could do without any fancy cutting-edge cyber hacking capabilities.

These devices have a built-in balance of electrical resistance between two poles at a very high level. If the current is played with so it can only flow from one end to another, the resistance could eventually drop low enough to cause a short circuit between the plus side and minus side of the relevant battery, which could eventually explode.

Sources indicated that the tactics used in the sabotage against Hezbollah have existed for a long time.

Questioned whether Israel needs to worry about its enemies now attempting such attacks against it, sources indicated that this is always a risk any time a new capability is used publicly.

Many have noted that Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas have used Israel’s once great dominance in drones against it to reverse engineer their own fleets of threats against the Jewish state.

Sources said the key was to always remain a few steps ahead of one’s adversaries, such that there will be a defense or better attack that can overcome those adversaries if and when they attempt to reverse engineer an attack used against them.