*This article was submitted on 26 September, prior to the bombing that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, which Adrian suggested would occur.
Mossad’s fearsome reputation took a blow when Israel was attacked on 7 October 2023. The organization has used the time since then to remind the world why it had that reputation in the first place.
In a stunning attack on 17 September, at least 2,800 people were injured and 12 killed when pagers used by the terrorist group Hezbollah exploded at 15:30 local time. The next day, some 600 of Hezbollah’s walkie-talkies exploded, killing 25 and injuring at least 600 more.
The attack made some members of the public wonder how far this weaponization of technology could go. In the days after the attack, more details became public knowledge.
Israel has repeatedly targeted Iran and its proxy groups with sophisticated technology – most notably the 2020 assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, using a remote-controlled machine gun. Stuxnet, jointly developed by Israel and the United States, was a computer worm to destroy Iranian centrifuges used in fuel enrichment.
More similarly to this latest attack, Israel assassinated Hamas’ chief bombmaker Yahya Ayyash in 1996 using an explosive-laden cell phone. This latest attack is unprecedented only in its scale.
Back in February, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah had told his fighters in a televised speech to ditch their smartphones over fears that Israel could use them for surveillance and targeting. Nasrallah had heard from allies that Israel had newly acquired means to hack into phones and activate the cameras and microphones to spy on their users. The message was clear: cellphone communication and even encrypted messaging apps were no longer safe. Members of the organization were prohibited from communicating details of movements of plans over cell phones.
Hezbollah had lost some 170 fighters in targeted Israeli strikes on Lebanon, including a senior commander and a Hamas official in Beirut. The group distributed pagers to Hezbollah members across all the organization’s branches to communicate more securely.
Hezbollah officers were ordered to carry pagers at all times – in the event of war, the pagers would be used to communicate.
Even before Nasrallah’s pivot to pagers, they were used in a limited fashion in the organization. Israel knew this and had put a plan into motion to establish companies posing as international pager producers.
Israeli operatives established a Hungarian company called BAC Consulting, registered in May 2022 and at least two other front companies for this plot.
The 49-year-old CEO of BAC Consulting, Italian-Hungarian Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, reportedly speaks seven languages, has a PhD in particle physics – a field in which she has never worked – and a dubious work history in humanitarian organizations. According to her mother, Barsony-Arcidiacono is now in Hungarian police protective custody. Claiming to be nothing but an intermediary, Barsony-Arcidiacono – even if she was just an unfortunate patsy – will no doubt be in Hezbollah’s sights for the rest of her life.
Corporate filings indicate 118 business activities including book publishing, motion picture distribution and the manufacturing of imitation jewelry and oil and fats. It seems the primary purpose of the company was to pose as a company under contract to produce AR-924 model pagers on behalf of Taiwanese company Gold Apollo.
The real manufacturers were Israeli intelligence.
Gold Apollo CEO Gold Apollo founder and president Hsu Ching-Kuang said that BAC was responsible for manufacturing. Hsu claims Gold Apollo did not design or manufacture the pagers.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs stated that from early 2022 to August 2024, Gold Apollo exported 260,000 sets of pagers, primarily to European and American countries, but has no records of direct exports to Lebanon.
Taiwanese police raided a BAC office in Taipei and uncovered shipping records that indicate Gold Apollo last sent 254 pagers to Hungary in 2022.
The AR-924 is advertised as “rugged” and is dust- and waterproof with an 85-day battery life. The device is described as a “compact, front-panel programmable pager” with a backlit display supporting 4 lines of text. Weighing 56 grams, it operates on a single AAA battery and is available in both UHF and VHF frequencies – seemingly perfect for the Lebanese environment.
Pagers do not require a SIM card or a cellphone service to operate and with just one-way communication, they cannot be geolocated. Hezbollah ordered thousands of them from a second front company, reported by Hungarian media to be Norta Global Ltd., a company registered in Bulgaria, which delivered them to Lebanon.
Each of these contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN – one of the main ingredients in Semtex. Once the pagers were distributed within Hezbollah, they could be activated at whatever moment Israel chose – referred to as a “red button” capability.
As to why the Israelis chose now to use their red button capability, some analysts have speculated the Israelis were worried their explosives were at risk of being detected. With Israeli military attention now shifting to the North, it might have been the opening salvo in a greater incursion in southern Lebanon – perhaps to clear Hezbollah out of all territory south of the Litani River.
The explosions were triggered when Israel sent messages to them in Arabic, which appeared to be from Hezbollah’s senior leadership. The small explosives in each pager were enough to send men flying. It must have been a terrifying and confusing attack.
A day later, hundreds of Hezbollah’s IC-V82 VHF walkie-talkies exploded. This time it was a Japanese company that was implicated. The Osaka-based radio, wireless LAN and SIP solutions maker Icom Incorporated’s series of handheld walkie-talkies has said it halted the manufacture of this particular model back in 2014 and has blamed counterfeiters for using its brand. Icom said it only sells its wares through authorized distributors.
There have been unverified reports in Lebanese media of other electronic devices also exploding – everything from home solar energy systems to laptops, phones and car batteries.
This multiyear operation has struck a devastating blow to Hezbollah. Israel has maimed many of its enemies without the excessive collateral damage of airstrikes. Hezbollah will now have to provide medical care for days, weeks and months – potentially years – for those wounded members, which will be a drain on its resources. It can hardly abandon thousands of its wounded fighters, some of whom it can be assumed have lost limbs, without alienating thousands more of its fighters and supporters.
They will have to operate in constant fear that whatever technology they are using has been hijacked by Israel and might kill them at any moment. How are they to know whether their orders came from their leadership or whether they are fake orders sent by Israel? The success of the psychological warfare aspect of this operation is hard to overstate and is sure to result in paranoia, which will hamstring the organization’s ability to operate effectively.
Moreover, Israel’s ability to penetrate Hezbollah’s supply chains so thoroughly indicates a deep understanding of how Hezbollah operates and is a decisive intelligence coup. The organization will have to do a thorough review of everything it orders in the future – and it can never trust anything again. Hezbollah has already regressed backwards in technology while Israel has dominated in high technology. Nasrallah has openly admitted Israel’s technological advantage.
A total regression of the organization towards using little to no electronic communication is impossible at this stage, but in some day-to-day activities of the organization, it might be possible. This would present some difficulties for Israeli intelligence services.
I’m reminded of a quote from Ridley Scott’s 2008 spy thriller Body of Lies. Russel Crowe’s Ed Hoffman says “Our enemy has realized that they are fighting guys from the future. Now, ahem, it is as brilliant as it is infuriating. If you live like it’s the past, and you behave like it’s the past then guys from the future find it very hard to see you. If you throw away your cell phone, shut down your e-mail pass all your instructions face-to-face, hand-to-hand turn your back on technology and just disappear into the crowd No flags. No uniforms.”
Before long, I would not be surprised if Israel was able to finally eliminate Hassan Nasrallah himself. With Ridley Scott making sequels (Gladiator 2 is set to hit theatres soon), perhaps it is time to revisit the spy thriller genre…
Featured Photo: Lebanon Pager Explosions 2024 Mehr News, Wikimedia Commons, 2024
Inset Video: CCTV captures moment of explosion in Beirut supermarket, VOANews Youtube, 2024