Pagercide, Inc: How Israel Defenestrated Hezbollah

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Did Israel intercept pagers bought by Hezbollah? Did they hack into them remotely, using their technological supremacy? 

Nope. Turns out that Israel went into the pager business — anticipating Hezbollah’s change in comms strategy by perhaps as much as two years.

The New York Times offers an overview of the operation that took thousands of Hezbollah operatives out of commission and rendered their communications entirely kaput. Rather than tamper with pagers manufactured by others, the Israelis decided to create cut-rate pagers to lure Hezbollah into a sale, and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. 

It’s a tale of creative genius, and of strategic idiocy:

By all appearances, B.A.C. Consulting was a Hungary-based company that was under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In fact, it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation. They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.

B.A.C. did take on ordinary clients, for which it produced a range of ordinary pagers. But the only client that really mattered was Hezbollah, and its pagers were far from ordinary. Produced separately, they contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN, according to the three intelligence officers.

The pagers began shipping to Lebanon in the summer of 2022 in small numbers, but production was quickly ramped up after Mr. Nasrallah denounced cellphones.

Nasrallah did more than just denounce cellphones. He ordered that his terror operatives stop using them altogether, and apparently crafted the pager-communication strategy personally:

Not only did Mr. Nasrallah ban cellphones from meetings of Hezbollah operatives, he ordered that the details of Hezbollah movements and plans never be communicated over cellphones, said three intelligence officials. Hezbollah officers, he ordered, had to carry pagers at all times, and in the event of war, pagers would be used to tell fighters where to go.

On the surface, this looks like a smart tactic. If your enemy has technological supremacy and can pierce your communications, make them simpler by using older tech that doesn’t reveal as much. This would likely have blinded the Israelis to some extent about Hezbollah movements and attack orders, had Israel not pre-emptively made itself Hezbollah’s tech supplier. 

And this is where the strategic idiocy emerges. Nasrallah certainly knew that Israel would try to penetrate any comms structure they created for themselves, high tech or low. Why buy pagers from Western sources at all, with that in mind? Why not get pagers and other technology from its patrons in Tehran? The answer appears to be that Iran simply doesn’t have that capacity, which may raise questions about how secure their supply lines in comms tech may be. 

And even if Hezbollah thought that Taiwanese pagers bought through Budapest would be sufficiently protected from Israeli interference, why didn’t they inspect the pagers themselves before distributing and using them? 

A good strategist and logistician would have insisted on inspections at the points of manufacture, distribution, and receiving. The US military contracting system has many faults, but that part they do very well to make sure their troops get exactly what they desire. Even a barely competent strategist would have inspected a sample of the devices at delivery and checked them against the design of the pagers supplied by Gold Apollo.  

Hezbollah failed to do any of this. And even worse, they continued to use other devices purchased through the same distributors the next day — perhaps a thousand hand-held radios that exploded all over Lebanon. That’s not just strategic idiocy — it’s operational incompetence. And it all points to Nasrallah, whose strategy and leadership led directly to this utter catastrophe and betrayal of thousands of mid-to-high-ranking operatives deemed important enough to carry those pagers in the first place. 

With thousands of their middle management and higher out of commission, Hezbollah’s capacity for defense is likely gutted, let alone offense. That means that the Israelis have a window to open up a full-scale war to defeat the rest of Hezbollah, especially Nasrallah, if the Lebanese don’t beat them to it. Or for that matter, assuming that Hezbollah fighters don’t impose accountability for incompetence on Nasrallah more directly. He made them look ridiculous, and that’s one thing that terrorist forces can’t afford — especially while imposing themselves on largely foreign soil. 

Pagercide Inc turned out to be a very successful operation. And it shows that the Israelis mean business, in every sense of that word.