Yesterday morning, I wrote about the Israeli intelligence operation that killed a handful of Hezbollah operatives and wounded hundreds of others using sabotaged pagers. Based on what I knew then, I believed that the operation was tactically brilliant, of unknown strategic benefit, and seemed unconcerned with collateral damage. That’s still right, I think, but with some nuanced differences.
The degree of planning and tradecraft that went into the operation was actually even better than I understood at the time. The pagers, branded under a Taiwanese company’s name and manufactured in Hungary, were actually made by a Mossad shell company. And they’ve been supplying Hezbollah leadership for more than two years. Further, the shift of so many Hezbollah operatives to pagers was a result of Mossad operations that made clear that the terrorist group’s mobile phones were compromised. Additionally, more concentrated follow-on explosions yesterday in other communications devices throughout the region demonstrate a more far-reaching operation than initial impressions.
While I still believe setting off the pagers at 3:30 in the afternoon local time significantly increased the likelihood of innocents, including children, being killed, the explosions were more targeted than I initially understood. While bystanders, including children, were indeed killed and maimed, the amount of explosives in the pagers was quite contained. I still don’t know the ratio of Hezbollah operative-to-noncombatant casualties but now believe it considerably higher on the left side of that equation than I did yesterday morning.
How this fits into Israel’s larger strategy remains unclear to me. Clearly, this operation was designed to disrupt Hezbollah’s command and control. Additionally, it almost surely makes not only Hezbollah operatives but those around them incredibly fearful. That’s brilliant psychological warfare. What I don’t know is whether this was supposed to happen in preparation for IDF military action but got pushed up because of evidence Hezbollah had gotten wise to the plan, whether this was a deterrence operation designed to facilitate a cease-fire, or something else.
