In a coordinated attack across Lebanon and parts of Syria, hundreds of pagers used by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah simultaneously exploded on Tuesday, killing more than a dozen people and injuring thousands of others. No group has claimed responsibility, but the overwhelmingly likely culprit is Israel. Israel’s multifront war has broadened, including not only Hamas in Gaza but also Iran and its Axis of Resistance, a collection of proxy groups that includes Hezbollah.
In a coordinated attack across Lebanon and parts of Syria, hundreds of pagers used by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah simultaneously exploded on Tuesday, killing more than a dozen people and injuring thousands of others. No group has claimed responsibility, but the overwhelmingly likely culprit is Israel. Israel’s multifront war has broadened, including not only Hamas in Gaza but also Iran and its Axis of Resistance, a collection of proxy groups that includes Hezbollah.
Many are wondering why now. Is there a broader significance to the timing of the attack? Israel has said preventing Hezbollah attacks is among its war goals, despite warnings from the United States against a wider operation that could lead to all-out regional war. The pager attack could very well be the opening salvo to a prolonged Israeli military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon—or it could just be the latest clandestine operation in the long-running shadow war between Israel and Iran’s proxies. It is also possible that the Israelis triggered the operation because there was a time limit on how long it could continue undiscovered.
For Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, the attack may go a long way toward polishing a reputation badly tarnished by failures around Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The pager operation itself seems out of a spy novel. There are myriad hypotheses circulating about how Mossad could have pulled off an attack this large and this dramatic. We don’t yet know whether bombs were implanted at the manufacturing stage or whether the supply chain was compromised at another phase in the process.
Hezbollah relied on antiquated means of communications such as pagers, possibly believing they were beyond the reach of Israel’s cyberwarriors. Following the Oct. 7 attack, Hezbollah personnel largely sought to eschew the use of cellphones, with the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, urging fighters to instead use alternative methods of communication.
Some have speculated that malware injected into the devices could have caused the batteries to overheat and then, ultimately, the devices to explode. However, the attack was organized; it was done so with meticulous planning and attention to detail. Apart from the immediate impact of the attack, the capabilities demonstrated will render Hezbollah increasingly paranoid and uncertain of exactly what Mossad might pull off next.
Hezbollah will likely follow this attack with a comprehensive overhaul of its internal security apparatus, reviewing where the gaps in its operational security exist and attempting to shore up the tradecraft of its members. There could even be an internal purge for moles, a hunt that could lead to bloodletting within Hezbollah—an added bonus for Israel’s spooks.
One of the drivers behind the pager attack, as with the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in late July, is that Mossad is determined to refurbish its brand. Before the Oct. 7 attack, Israeli intelligence enjoyed a reputation as omnipotent, its legendary exploits retold in blockbuster spy movies such as Steven Spielberg’s Munich and the hit Netflix series Fauda. Israel’s targeted assassination campaign has so far killed Hamas deputy political leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut in January and Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut in late July, in addition to Haniyeh shortly after.
In addition to brand management for Mossad, Israel’s covert operations have a more practical effect. Hezbollah command and control has likely been wrecked, causing the group substantial communications issues in the near term. Moreover, Tuesday’s attack injured hundreds of Hezbollah fighters, some of whom will undoubtedly be maimed, missing fingers, hands, or suffering other injuries that will put them on the sidelines, at least temporarily.
The Houthis in Yemen, militia groups in Iraq and Syria, and other Iranian proxies will now begin taking greater precautions. This could change the way these groups communicate with one another, which, in turn, could directly affect coordination and hamper their ability to launch attacks of their own. The impact will be felt far beyond Lebanon, with other illicit groups worldwide—terrorists, criminals, and hackers—questioning the safety of their personal communication devices.
Nasrallah claims that Hezbollah does not want total war with Israel and has implied that his group remains engaged militarily on behalf of its Palestinian brethren in Gaza. Yet, even when multiple stakeholders claim that they want to avert war, it can still happen, as it did with Hezbollah and Israel in July 2006, a war that brought massive devastation to Lebanon and ended in somewhat of a stalemate. One could argue that it was a strategic defeat for Israel, since Hezbollah has only grown exponentially more powerful since the end of that war.
Eighteen years after that 34-day conflict, Hezbollah is an entirely different organization, with more advanced weaponry, more men under arms, and greater political legitimacy not just in Lebanon but throughout parts of the Islamic world. As Seth G. Jones and Daniel Byman correctly pointed out recently, war with Hezbollah would be Israel’s biggest challenge in decades. Nevertheless, that’s exactly where things could be headed.
Hezbollah will feel compelled to respond to the pager attack, humiliated by the success of the operation and thirsty for revenge. Israel’s new war aim of moving its displaced population back to the north near the border with Lebanon, nearly 60,000 people in total, will require pushing Hezbollah’s forces away from the border and back toward a manageable buffer zone. Even if Hezbollah claims to want to avoid war, any number of miscommunications could propel both sides toward conflict as the tit-for-tat exchanges continue and each side seeks to position its forces to gain a first-mover advantage.
As the Israelis know well, Hezbollah is not Hamas. Hezbollah is more akin to a conventional military, and its arsenal contains upwards of 150,000 rockets and precision-guided munitions. Hezbollah is, without question, among the most complete, well-trained, and resourced nonstate actors in global politics. Its fighters are battle-hardened from combat deployments to Syria, where they worked alongside Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and experimented with new, high-tech weaponry.
The pager attack is likely to have serious implications for Lebanon, the conflict between Israel and Iran’s proxies, and for the Middle East as a whole. Roughly three weeks out from the grim anniversary of Oct. 7, the region remains on a knife’s edge. Hard-line elements on all sides may see it in their interest to escalate, while ongoing diplomatic efforts prove too little, too late.
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