There's More to the Hezbollah Pager Attack Than Meets the Eye

There's a lot of information on X and similar places about the attack, some of it probably correct, and I'll include links as we go, but as an old intelligence guy, I think what's really fascinating is what the effect will be going forward—along with some really creative psychological operations that might disrupt Hezbollah even more than remote-controlled exploding pagers.

But first, let's think about what we know of the history, which apparently goes back quite a long time. Here I'm cribbing from news reports by the BBC, the AP, and our own Rick Moran.

The pagers were purchased about five months ago after Hezbollah decided iPhones were an operational security risk. A perfectly reasonable decision, since whether or not the messages are encrypted, iPhones have GPS and cell phones can be geolocated just by which cell towers are connecting to the phones. (You may recall the FBI using a mass sweep of cell tower data to track down people who had the temerity to be in Washington, D.C., on January 6.)

So about five months ago, Hezbollah decided to change over to pagers and ordered thousands of them. The BBC tried to track down the manufacturers and honestly didn't get anywhere. The pagers came through multiple layers of cut-outs, including a manufacturer that sold permission to use the brand to a Hungarian company that apparently didn't manufacture them either. At that point, things get really murky.

The story of the exploding walkie-talkies is similarly murky. The details would make a great spy thriller, and I recommend reading all of it. But what I want to think about is the effect this will have in the future.

First of all, it tells Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran that Mossad is even better than previously thought: They created a secret network of shell companies to be prepared for the need to do something like this covertly, and where CIA would be trying to use exploding cigars and beard remover, Mossad blows off testicles.

This plays into the whole notion that Jews are a worldwide conspiracy, and you know what? I'm fine with that.

The inevitable rumors started with rumors that TVs, intercoms, solar power installations, cell phones, and even lighters might be booby-trapped.

You know what? I'm fine with that, too. Israelis have been living in fear of exploding Arab teenagers, bus drivers deciding to run them over instead of picking them up, and men screaming Allahu Akhbar before going on a stabbing spree. Blowing them up with bombs and missiles hasn't done it; let's see if making your car keys a risk of emasculation will get their attention.

If that — along with killing at least dozens and maiming thousands, including blinding the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, who mysteriously was part of Hezbollah's secure communications — was all (all?) it did, that would have been the most amazing intelligence covert op since the Trojan Horse. The real one, not on a computer.

But it also means Mossad took out thousands of at least reasonably important Hezbollah members, the middle management — and told Israel who they were. If you blew up, you had a Hezbollah pager. If you had a Hezbollah pager, you were closely associated — like, in their secured communications — with Hezbollah. Again raising the question of the Iranian ambassador by the way.

But more than that, those pagers were distributed months ago. Now, the people claiming they had GPS were probably wrong — the pager protocols predate GPS by a good bit. But if these were two-way pagers, as these appear to have been, then they emit identifiable messages when replying or even confirming receipt, including unique identification of each pager.

Israeli signals intelligence is among the best, and has been for decades. If a two-way pager responds, radio direction-finding can damn near tell if it's in the left or right pocket.

Even if they are one-way pagers, so you can't exploit replies, they will have some RF coming off them. Especially if the manufacturer is okay with some leakage.

And Israel manufactured the pagers.

One of the most powerful communications or signals intelligence tools is traffic analysis. Back at the dawn of time, when I was actively involved in intelligence, this was often just picking up "This is Ivan 0300 network test" followed by "Ivan this is Sergei, 0300 check confirmed." That intercepted, along with a direction-finding fix triangulating their positions, would tell the analysts a lot.

But that's horse-and-buggy stuff. What we see here is something like five months of traffic from thousands of pagers, with a very good chance that the compromised pagers were sending more information than Hezbollah expected. Followed by thousands of Hezbollah killed, blinded, maimed, and emasculated in a single minute, with all the impact that has on medical care and emergency services. This almost certainly didn't decapitate Hezbollah; the senior leadership is probably far too important to carry their own pagers, although it might have gotten some aides.

But it probably put the fear of YHWH in them, enough so that they reduced or eliminated electronic communications entirely, reducing themselves to actual physical meetings.

Which, coincidentally, got blown up by Israeli missiles just a day ago.

So, what this operation appears to have done is:

• given Israel months of communications traffic that was both readable and probably trackable
• eliminated "middle management" en masse while imposing a massive burden on Lebanon's civilian infrastructure
• spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt throughout Lebanon, so that now commercial air travel restricts electronics on all flights — and has everyone giving a side-eye to everything from iPhones to electronic car locks.
• struck fear not only in the the masses of Hezbollah fighters, but also into their neighbors who now wonder if Ahmed's house next door was about to emit shrapnel
• and then decapitated, apparently, most or all of senior leadership.

And that's just the start. Hezbollah has to reconstitute its command structure, which is in rags and tatters, and as VodkaPundit Steve just pointed out to me, they will have to do with without communications they can trust. (Expect a lot of perfectly good Samsungs to be lost in boating accidents.)

So I think this may have actually broken Hezbollah's back operationally, or at least reduced their abilities dramatically. Notice that as well as killing dozens of their top people and thousands of middle managers, there have been very few successful Hezbollah attacks into Israel, and a whole lot of Hezbollah launch sites were removed.

This operation has completely "blown" Hezbollah's security, and it will be a long time, if ever, before they can operate again.