Nowhere To Hide

During the afternoon of 17 September, pagers belonging to Hezbollah fighters, collaborators and civilian supporters exploded across Lebanon. The pagers beeped for a few seconds before exploding, leading to injuries primarily to the face and eyes. By the following morning, 11 people were dead and more than 2,000 injured. Among the injured were senior Hezbollah officials and the Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amini. While initially, two main theories – a cyber attack and the use of explosives – emerged, it soon became apparent that tiny quantities of explosives had been placed in the pagers sometime between production and distribution. The pagers were distributed widely among Hezbollah and its affiliates and were part of a batch only recently purchased by the group. While the attack represented a security breach for the group, it constituted a great success for Israel and (likely) Mossad, even if – as some suggest – Israel was in a “use them or lose them” predicament. The attack also raises important issues that have to do with the conduct and signalling function of covert operations, international legality and legitimacy, and the increasing risk of regional escalation.

If it is confirmed that Israel used explosives hidden in the pagers, such an operation entails both novel and recurring elements in Israel’s (covert) foreign policy. The attack is unprecedented in terms of scale and reach. It occurred in a denied country where it should be harder for Israel to conduct operations. Be that as it may, Israel has shown great ability to target individuals in Beirut and even Tehran in recent months. The number of pagers distributed is also impressive, as is the ability to modify them to explode simultaneously. Such prowess also entails an ability to interfere effectively in a supply and distribution chain. The operation to sabotage the supply chain and insert a few grams of explosives in the devices must have taken months. It remains unclear when this intervention took place. The pagers were seemingly produced under the label Gold Apollo, a Taiwan-based company, but the president of the company was quick to distance it from the attack. Instead, he pointed the finger at BAC, a company based in Budapest with the rights to produce under the Gold Apollo label. The operation’s conduct and outcome is likely to have provided Israel with an even better picture of the group, its collaborators, its capabilities and its main locations.

The operation is likely to damage Hezbollah’s morale, and many fighters and collaborators will have been put out of action for some time due to their injuries

At the same time, this is not the first time that Israel has used explosives; it has often hidden them in civilian items and/or communication technology. As Ronen Bergman detailed in his history of Israel’s use of assassination, the practice was particularly prevalent in the late 1970s. In Lebanon, in a close historical precedent, Israel placed explosives in oil and fuel drums that were later distributed to the families of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters. Explosives have also been used in the assassination of high-level targets. In 1973, Israel hid explosives in the marble stand of the phone of PLO leader Mahmoud Hamshari in Paris. Having confirmed Hamshari’s identity by phone, Israel exploded the device. He was severely injured and later died in hospital. In 1996, Shin Bet assassinated Yahya Ayyash, Hamas’s chief bomb-maker, by smuggling a small explosive into his mobile phone, which was then remotely detonated. Perhaps more famously, in 2009, in collaboration with the CIA and then Director Michael Hayden – who had received the green light from President George W Bush – Israel killed the terrorist Imad Mugniyeh by placing a bomb in the spare wheel compartment of his SUV, an area not checked by his security detail, while he was in Damascus, Syria. More generally, Israel is not the only country that has explored the use of explosives, often placed in “exotic devices” for use in assassination. The US government and the CIA famously developed explosive cigars and considered an explosive seashell in their many attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. The explosive seashell plot was ultimately abandoned, and it isn’t entirely clear what happened to the cigars.

Beyond the practicalities of the operation, on which more details are likely to emerge in the next few weeks, a key question is the rationale behind the operation. One can think of many possible answers. First, the wide-ranging attack and the targeting of individuals including civilians, as well as collaborators in civilian settings, points to the aim of terrorising the local population. Such an attack could be considered a form of psychological warfare. Early reports after the attack pointed to the level of chaos in Lebanon: overcrowded and struggling hospitals, traffic and ambulances coming to a standstill, general shock among the population, and a fear of answering phone calls. Second, as with many covert operations, part of the rationale was signalling. Here, the target was not solely the Lebanese population at large, but Hezbollah and its collaborators more specifically. The manner in which the attack occurred highlights this dimension. In February, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah had warned his fighters against using their phones. They are more dangerous than Israeli spies, he had warned, pointing to how they had been used to track and kill Hezbollah fighters and leaders. While the group had used pages for years, this increased after Nasrallah’s call and after the killing of senior Hamas and Hezbollah leaders as revenge for the 7 October attacks. Israel has long demonstrated prowess in exploiting hi-tech devices for its operations, including assassination; such a widespread attack against low-tech objects tells Hezbollah that it has nowhere to hide. In this case, the operation is likely to damage Hezbollah’s morale and – from a more practical point of view – many fighters and collaborators will have been put out of action for some time due to their injuries. Third, the attack will also have reverberations within the international community and international politics. It will increase concerns surrounding supply-chain sabotage, with a greater focus on low-tech items in particular.

Israel has increasingly shown a tendency to escalate the fighting, bringing the region to the precipice of a wider war

According to emerging rumours, Israel might have decided to conduct the operation earlier than it expected, when some Hezbollah leaders raised concerns about the pagers. If this is the case, one could speculate that the initial aim of the operation might have been to target specific high-level individuals, perhaps including the Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon, Amini, who was among the thousands injured in the attack. Another theory currently floating around is that the attack – had it happened when Israel wanted – would have been the first salvo in a broader attack against Hezbollah.

In this context, the attack certainly violated Lebanese sovereignty. Questions remain regarding the proportionality and the effort to distinguish civilians from combatants in conducting the attack. While Israel might have known who the carriers of the pagers were, it would not have known where they would have been located at the time of the explosion. Israel has disregarded international humanitarian law and international human rights law in many of its recent operations against Gaza, Hamas and Hezbollah. It has also increasingly shown a tendency to escalate the fighting, bringing the region to the precipice of a wider war. This is particularly glaring since the attack happened one day after the visit of Amos Hochstein, senior envoy of the Biden administration, whose mission aimed to prevent a further regional escalation. The US, which has struggled to moderate its regional ally – often contributing to the war effort – was not told in detail of the operation. According to Axios, Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant only warned US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin moments before the attack that an “intelligence operation” was about to take place. As with many similar operations, then, Israel has put the ball into Hezbollah’s and its regional allies’ – primarily Iran’s – court. Will they respond with a further escalation as they have threatened, or will they de-escalate? At the same time, has the Biden administration lost credibility and leverage with Israel and those it is fighting?

Luca Trenta is an Associate Professor in International Relations in the Department of Political and Cultural Studies, Swansea University. His current research focuses mainly on the US government’s involvement in the assassination of foreign officials from the Cold War to the present day.