REUTERS
Israel just turned the screw tighter in Lebanon, as the IDF sent an urgent message to Hezbollah.
In what initially appeared to be a cyber-triggered attack, dozens of Hezbollah operatives were wounded Tuesday afternoon when their encrypted pagers exploded at 3:30PM across Beirut.
Videos of bloodied militiamen quickly spread on social media.
Several of the videos captured outward explosions, suggesting that Israel was able to infiltrate Hezbollah’s communications supply chain and implant small explosives that were then detonated via a page or a cyber-based command.
How it was done remains to be determined.
One thing is abundantly clear: Israel resides in Hezbollah’s communications network, as well as in Iran’s air defense network, and has established dominance in the cyber domain — and now its supply chains.
Why attack now is the bigger question.
For Israel to reveal this level of penetration into Hezbollah’s command and control communications, something big is likely in the making.
It could be one final warning from Jerusalem to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and to Iran to cease and desist rocket attacks in Northern Israel that have displaced more than 60,000 Israelis.
Yet paging Nasrallah and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on this scale has the look and feel of an opening act.
Early reports suggest hundreds of Hezbollah figures were targeted, with the Lebanese Health Ministry reporting upwards of 2,800 people injured, 200 critically, and 8 dead.
Notably, Mojtaba Amani, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, was also hurt in the attack.
Hours earlier, Israel’s Security Cabinet announced that it had overnight “updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes. Israel will continue to act to implement this objective.”
Given the urgency of an overnight meeting of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, we can’t overlook the possibility that the IDF detected a nearing large-scale Hezbollah strike targeting central Israel.
On Sunday, that very kind of a kinetic threat to Tel Aviv was heightened after a Houthi ballistic missile fired from Yemen was intercepted and destroyed by Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome.
Israel has long used Hezbollah’s overreliance on smart phones to geolocate high-value targets, including senior commanders.
As a result, Nasrallah recently ordered his militiamen and operatives to immediately start “using some low-tech strategies to try to evade its foe’s sophisticated surveillance technology,” Reuters reported.
Hezbollah began using coded messages and landlines — and notably, 1990s-style pagers that once were the mainstay of doctors and NYSE traders — as Nasrallah bragged that he was “blinding” the IDF.
Israel’s Tuesday action sent a telling signal that it was not “blind,” and that it would willingly forego intel gleaned from Hezbollah’s pagers to in effect close Nasrallah’s eyes and ears across Lebanon — especially in the south along the Israeli border.
Thus, it’s more likely than not that the IDF has been ordered to conduct a large-scale operation in southern Lebanon. Forcing Hezbollah to go dark by eliminating their pagers allows Israel to set conditions on the battlefield at will.
It also buys Netanyahu valuable time — especially if Jerusalem has evidence that a massive Hezbollah rocket attack on Tel Aviv was imminent.
Now Nasrallah’s military command and control communications are in disarray — and his strategic and tactical orders will be exceedingly difficult to issue and coordinate.
Moreover, many of his key commanders are now wounded and at least temporarily absent from their commands.
That leaves Israel firmly in control of the initiative if and when the IDF opts to go on the offensive in southern Lebanon, with Nasrallah forced into reaction mode — and with restricted means to order and communicate Hezbollah’s response.
Since Oct. 7, Israel has demonstrated the value of dismissing fears of escalation, something the Harris-Biden administration has yet to learn.
Jerusalem has continued to militarily decimate Hamas in Gaza, ignoring Biden’s demands to stay out of Rafah.
Nearly daily, the IDF has targeted Hezbollah and IRGC commanders in Lebanon and Syria — and Mossad killed Ismail Haniyeh, the former political chief of Hamas in Tehran.
Regardless of what happens next in Lebanon, Netanyahu has clearly escalated his military response to Iran and its IRGC-backed militias, with more likely to come in the days ahead.
The Middle East just got a lot hotter — and Nasrallah and Khamenei don’t need to check their pagers to know it. Israel took care of that for them.
Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer.