The pager and radio explosions that rocked Lebanon over the past two days are the biggest breach that the Lebanese Hezbollah has been subjected to since the escalation imposed by the war in Gaza began, but it is not the only one. The Iranian-backed group has previously been subjected to a series of raids that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of fighters and senior leaders, the most recent and most prominent of whom was Fouad Shukr.
The effects of these incidents were not limited to the leaders only, but led to the death of about 500 members. They were targeted by Israeli strikes along the front line and in various areas of Syria, and another section of them were killed inside the headquarters and military points spread in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Most of the strikes were carried out according to precise coordinates, which was the case with the killing of Shukr in a house in the southern suburb, as well as the killing of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in the same area, and other leaders from Hezbollah, the Islamic Jihad movement, and other Palestinian factions.
The recurrence of assassinations and the recent strike linked to pagers and wireless devices raise questions about the secret of the major breach, which has become strikingly clear when looking at Hezbollah’s system from the inside and outside.
While experts and observers from all sides link the reasons behind the breach to Israel’s advanced strategy and intelligence apparatus, others go in another direction, speaking to Alhurra about what they described as “excessive confidence” that opened a big door that has become difficult to close.
The nature of the repercussions that may result from the pager and wireless explosions is not yet known, and it is also unclear what steps Hezbollah may take to close the security gaps that Israel opened within its system suddenly and without any warning.
On the other hand, there is uncertainty about what Israel is threatening to implement along its northern border with Lebanon, and whether it will move to another military phase, which is what its military leaders are threatening to do.
“A combination that has lasted for years”
Philip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland who follows the activities of Iranian proxies in the Middle East, does not believe that the Hezbollah breakthrough is related to “one thing,” but rather “a combination of concentrated efforts that have continued for years.”
Speaking to Alhurra, he explained that “the Israelis have been aware of the threat that the party could pose for decades, and they have been taking into account its activities that it has been involved in since the attacks of October 7.”
On this basis, “it makes perfect sense that they would look for any way to get into the somewhat opaque structure of the Lebanese Hezbollah,” Smith said.
The researcher adds that “the Israelis have done their best to maintain an advanced mix of sources to monitor Hezbollah, such as human intelligence, electronic surveillance, etc.”
He points out that the aforementioned forms are always used by intelligence agencies in an “unconventional” manner, and that they require a degree of weakness in the target group.
“Hezbollah may have believed their (Israeli) propaganda and believed that its strength in Lebanon meant it could get away with it,” he says. “This overconfidence often leads to an easier situation for foreign intelligence services to exploit.”
Considering the incidents of infiltration within Hezbollah and comparing them to what happened in Iran, and what it recently witnessed with the assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, the picture is almost no different, according to the view of the researcher at the National Security Institute, Arman Mahmoudian.
“Between Gaza and the suburb”
Israel has succeeded in identifying Iranian suppliers and intermediaries involved in purchasing equipment for Iran’s enrichment facility in Natanz.
It also succeeded in hiding explosive devices inside the equipment, which exploded as soon as Iran received and installed them, researcher Mahmoudian added.
It did the same thing with pagers and radios, starting with the company that supplied and manufactured them, and ending with them being seized by Hezbollah members and then detonated remotely.
But while the bombing of the pagers and radios is seen as a mission success, it does not appear to be the same as what happened on October 7, when Hamas launched its attack, creating a major breach in Israel’s defenses.
Lebanese military expert Brigadier General Naji Malaeb explains that “a cyber attack cannot be expected unless there is cyber security.” Cyber security is the responsibility of a state apparatus, not an organization like Hezbollah.
Malaeb also added to Alhurra that “cybersecurity in Lebanon is not strong,” and that “an attack of this type cannot be detected until after it happens. What happened is a precedent that Israel possesses and may have cooperated with other forces,” he said.
On the other hand, the military expert does not rule out that the penetration within Hezbollah is linked to “agents.”
Can he fill in the “gaps”?
Israel has a long history of carrying out complex attacks in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, although it often does not claim responsibility.
Over the past decade, Israel has succeeded in assassinating a number of Iranian nuclear scientists, including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020, who was considered the mastermind of the Iranian nuclear program.
Before that, it is believed to have successfully stolen Iran’s nuclear archive from a warehouse in Tehran in 2018 in a sophisticated operation.
After the Gaza war, intelligence operations escalated.
The last of these was before the pager and wireless explosions in Lebanon, when a special landing operation was carried out at the Scientific Research Center in the city of Masyaf in central Syria, according to officials quoted by the Axios website and the New York Times last week.
Regarding Hezbollah, researcher Philip Smith believes that “the breaches it is subjected to aim to reveal the fundamental weakness within its security apparatus.”
These violations were so profound that they “shake the organization to its core,” according to the same spokesman.
“What is most surprising,” he said, is that the party “should have had some insight into the loopholes in which Israel might try to target it.”
Closing the loopholes would require a great deal of restructuring, time and money, and Smith believes that “the damage to the sense of security will be irreparable, at least in the short term. Moreover, the numbers targeted were huge (by pager and radio bombings).”
“When a group tries to fill such (security) gaps, it creates more internal mistrust. This can cause more problems that could lead to its deterioration,” he said.
The pager and radio bombings, along with Israeli precision strikes on Hezbollah launch pads, roads, command systems, warehouses and other sites, indicate that Israel is “moving toward crippling the Iranian-linked group’s command structure,” Mahmoudian says.
The above may be either preparation for a large-scale attack or an indication of more targeted strikes to come.
The University of Maryland researcher believes that the recent attacks, especially the pager and radio bombings, have significantly affected Hezbollah’s command system, and it is likely to “remain disabled for a short period.”
He adds that in addition to the main question of his ability to “plug security gaps,” a concern he has is “whether he can maintain a reliable supply line.”
“big challenge”
Mahmoudian doubts that Hezbollah or Iran have the industrial capacity to meet all their needs independently.
“It is inevitable that they will need to get more equipment from foreign suppliers,” he said, and that “they may turn to allies like Russia or China, but that does not seem to be the case at the moment.”
In the short term, Hezbollah may adopt strategies similar to Hamas’s before October 7, by reducing its reliance on electronic systems and relying more on face-to-face conversations or traditional means such as “human messengers.”
However, the researcher explains that “Hezbollah is larger and more active than Hamas, and therefore implementing such measures on a large scale would be a major challenge for it.”
In contrast, the researcher in Iranian affairs, Hakam Amhaz, believes that the current war is not only military, but also security-related.
According to what he told Alhurra, the security war is based on two foundations: the first is “human penetration” and the second is “cyber-technological penetration.”
Amhaz believes that there is a “technology-level war of brains between Israel and Hezbollah at the present time,” and that the group’s leader had previously announced in 2005 a breach targeting Israeli drone technology.
While the pager and radio explosions revealed a “major breach” and resulted in dozens of deaths, thousands of injuries and major destabilization in the stronghold of the Iranian-backed Lebanese party, the expert on Iranian affairs points out that “war is always sometimes for you and sometimes against you.”
He says, “Hezbollah’s capabilities reached the stage of discovering that the Pager shipment was booby-trapped, which prompted Israel to take the decision to detonate it before the operation was due.”
Israel has so far refrained from commenting on the explosions that occurred in several Hezbollah strongholds.
But Western media linked what happened to it, and CNN reported on Wednesday that the targeting of Hezbollah members throughout Lebanon was “the result of a joint operation between the Israeli intelligence agency (Mossad) and the army.”
The New York Times reported in a separate report, citing informed officials, that Israel had hidden explosives inside a Taiwanese batch of pagers before they were exported to Lebanon.
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