CNN
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On Tuesday, hundreds of pagers exploded almost simultaneously across Lebanon, killing scores of people and injuring thousands. CNN learned that the explosions were a joint operation by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and the Israeli military.
Almost exactly 24 hours later, walkie-talkies detonated in a new wave of explosions across Lebanon on Wednesday, a security source told CNN.
The alleged attacks on the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah are the latest in a series of covert operations that the Israeli government does not admit to but that were allegedly carried out by Israeli agents.
Israel is said to have been placing explosives in telecommunications equipment since 1972. The attack was part of revenge for the murder of eleven Israelis, including athletes, at the Olympic Games in Munich by the Palestinian militia “Black September”.
In response, Israel launched “Operation Wrath of God” and spent years searching for those involved in the Munich massacre.
Among the targets was Mahmoud Hamshari, the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Paris. Unidentified agents allegedly linked to Israeli intelligence broke into his home and planted a bomb in his phone before another person – disguised as an Italian journalist – arranged a telephone interview with Hamshari. When he answered the call and identified himself, the bomb was detonated remotely.
Tuesday’s attacks reminded many of the killing of Yahya Ayyash in 1996. Ayyash was Hamas’s chief bomb maker, known as “the Engineer,” and responsible for the deaths of dozens of Israelis.
Ayyash was killed in Gaza when his mobile phone, filled with 50 grams of explosives, exploded next to his head. After his assassination, dozens of Israelis were killed in four retaliatory suicide bombings.
Since 2010, five Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in assassinations linked to foreign sources as Israel tries to prevent its greatest adversary from developing nuclear weapons. In August 2015, at the height of the assassinations, then-Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon cryptically told the German magazine Der Spiegel that he could not be held responsible “for the life expectancy of Iranian scientists.”
Experts believe that Israel and the United States are responsible for using the complex computer virus Stuxnet, which destroyed centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear facility in 2010.
Iranian officials believe that the cyberattack, which targeted centrifuges, including those at the Natanz and Bushehr nuclear power plants, originated from Israel and the United States. Neither country has commented on the origin of the malware, however. Notably, Stuxnet was one of the first cases in which a cyberattack manifested itself outside of cyberspace, with centrifuges spinning out of control without anyone noticing. The pager attack appears to be another example of a cyberattack with physical consequences, unlike stealing money from a bank account or bringing down a website.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, was assassinated east of Tehran in 2020 by a remote-controlled machine gun fired from a nearby Nissan. Iranian officials said the weapon used artificial intelligence and facial recognition to detect Fakhrizadeh and open fire before the car, which was reportedly packed with explosives, self-destructed.
Senior Iranian officials blamed Israel for the murder. Israel made no comment.
While many of these assassinations have a science fiction feel, experts stressed that any operation requires a high level of human intelligence, raising questions about the security protocols of Israel’s adversaries. After Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, intelligence analysts stressed that a country or actor would still have had to smuggle in specialized equipment to carry out the operation.
Following this week’s events, some speculated that the explosions may have been caused by an Israeli cybersecurity breach that caused the lithium batteries in the pagers to overheat and detonate.
But David Kennedy, a former intelligence analyst with the U.S. National Security Agency, told CNN that the explosions were “too large to be a remote and direct hack that would have overloaded the pager and caused the lithium battery to explode.”
Kennedy said it was more likely that Israel had human agents in Hezbollah who were able to intercept the supply chain and tamper with the devices. “The pagers would have been implanted with explosives and would probably only explode when a specific message was received,” he said.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Israel had hidden explosives in a shipment of pagers intended for Hezbollah that had been ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo, and that a switch had been built in to detonate the devices remotely, according to anonymous American and other officials briefed on the operation.
In some cases, Israel has reportedly relied on human intelligence rather than high-tech operations to assassinate its enemies. In July, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran by an explosive device that had been secretly hidden in the guesthouse where he was staying two months before it detonated, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
However, Iran claimed that Haniyeh’s assassination was carried out by a “short-range projectile,” which contradicts information provided to CNN.
The Iranian government and Hamas claim that Israel was responsible for the murder. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
