“In a remarkable operation, an order for 5,000 pagers was intercepted and discreetly embedded a small amount of explosive material in each device. The volatile lithium batteries powering these pagers required only a minor accelerant to ignite. At a predetermined moment, the attack team sent a simple alphanumeric code to each pager, triggering a series of explosions.”
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon
“When such a capability is activated without any strategic context, this is a puzzling move. At the same time, and I don’t know, it could be that there was a situation where there was no choice, a situation where they had to activate this tool immediately.”
Yair Golan
(former IDF deputy chief of staff)
Some of you have reminded me that it has been a long time between missives. It has been a busy season of travel, trying to keep flowers from dying in this mini heatwave, exterior improvements for the house, checking in on the progress of the Westwin demonstration plant, and—of course—keeping the doctors and pharmaceutical companies in business. At the same time, I’m trying to get the third book of the trilogy out and finishing up a new historical fiction novel about which I’m really excited. Then there is carving out time for friends: conversations with good friend Terry Wyant after a breakfast trip to Mom’s Restaurant; a delightful chat with Gracie Dalton on her rustic porch amid the chickens, dogs and maple trees; a quick Gatlinburg visit with close friends; and visiting former church friends in Northern Kentucky.
I’m also spending more time these days as guest commentator on Christopher McDonald’s nationwide McFiles podcast. The topic last night was in response to a truly remarkable event in the Middle East—the simultaneous explosions of hundreds of pagers (at exactly 3:30 p.m. local time) used by Hezbollah cadres in Lebanon and Syria. Reportedly, as many as 3,000 Hezbollah members, including sympathizers like Iran’s envoy to Beirut, were injured (many blinded), and at least nine killed, in the cyber-attack yesterday. (The figure has been updated to 12 killed). The blasts occurred primarily in Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut known as Dahiyeh, and the eastern Bekaa Valley; but recent reports also indicate several explosions among Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) elements as far away as eastern Syria.
The event was much more than the “biggest security breach” in Hezbollah’s history, as noted by one party official; many observers point out that the attack has severely hampered the group’s communication systems, disabled thousands of operators, and perhaps, neutralized key mid-level decisionmakers. As my friend Brad Johnson noted on our program last night, it was a real “gut blow” for Hezbollah.
I tried to point out last night that the cyber-attacks also resulted in a huge intelligence windfall for Israel as they monitored hospital channels to identify important injured operators and their locations. That treasure trove of information may be the biggest, though thus far unacknowledged, benefit of the attacks for Israeli intelligence.
Speaking of intelligence matters, in my view, the cyber-attacks were certainly a much-needed booster shot in the arm for Israeli technical intelligence groups, following their dismal performance on October 7-8 last year, when Hamas thugs and murderers breached border defenses and by-passed technical systems to slaughter as many as 1,100 people and took 250 hostages to the Gaza Strip.
Of course, the Israelis have refused to comment on their role in the cyber-attack this week. But, as Avner Avraham, a long-time former Mossad agent observes: “The problem of [plausible denial] is that this operation is so fascinating, so creative, and so out-of-the-box, that only the CIA, MI6 or Mossad could do something like this. You need government backing, a lot of connections, and money, to do something crazy like this.”
The attacks, no doubt, will result in several second- and third-tier effects and repercussions. As one of many examples, in some quarters Sunni Muslims openly celebrated the Shi’ite setbacks.
But why was the most technologically-savvy terrorist group in the Middle East using outdated pager systems? Good question. In February, following Israel’s recent success in eliminating high-profile Hezbollah targets, ostensibly using targeting information obtained from smartphones, the organization’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah instructed the party cadres to start using recently provided pagers instead. Pagers were thought to be more secure because they can only receive, rather than broadcast. Hezbollah officials mistakenly believed the pagers—in this case “Gold Apollo” pagers—purchased by Iran through a Taiwanese provider, were secure.
They weren’t.
More interesting to some analysts, I’m sure, is tracing the procurement chain of the pagers and identifying the weak point in the supply chain where Mossad agents were able to plant the explosive devices. Certainly, company officials in the supply chain now are ducking for cover and throwing others under the bus. Shortly after news of the explosions broke, for example, Gold Apollo’s president, Hsu Ching-kuang, was interrogated by Taiwanese authorities. Gold Apollo has reportedly produced and exported over 260,000 pagers since 2022, but there is no record of direct exports to Lebanon. The company’s president claimed the pagers were designed and produced by BAC Consulting Kft, a company registered in Budapest, Hungary. Today, however, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government said the company had no operational site in the country and the explosive pagers were never in the country.
Stay tuned.
Last night, we also discussed when the proverbial “next shoe” would drop and what such an event would look like. At that time, we were thinking primarily about Hezbollah and the various Shia groups in Iran, Syria and Iraq. As predicted, Hezbollah launched another volley of missiles into northern Israel. Little surprise here. Since Oct. 8, 2023, claiming sympathy for Gaza and Hamas, they have reportedly launched some 8,200 such missiles into Israel.
Instead, Israel has sent a clear signal it won’t be a punching bag.
Today, there has been another wave of attacks using weaponized “walkie-talkies”—supposedly equipped with better batteries—and reportedly distributed to a narrower range of Hezbollah members than the pagers. Lebanese officials say 14 were killed and more than 450 wounded. The explosions have been even more powerful than the pagers. As you can expect, there is anxious confusion and fear within the ranks of the terrorist organization. At the same time, in the skies above Beirut and Hezbollah command-and-control systems from the Bekka Valley in Lebanon to Syria, Israeli aircraft are hitting communication nodes as I am writing.
A few minutes ago, I read about Hezbollah’s latest instructions to its members: “All recently imported cellular and electronic devices must be checked to make sure they are not captured. The batteries of any wireless device must be temporarily disconnected.”
This is a new kind of war and Israel has delivered a couple of early, but devastating, cyber punches.
Hezbollah’s leaders must be aware that Israel’s brazen attacks this week demonstrate a willingness to act independently in the face of US pressure and divided domestic political support. For sure, Washington’s strategic priorities are dominated by the upcoming election. Bottom line: if Netanyahu is willing to act in defiance of US pressure, Israel becomes a very dangerous foe indeed. In turn, if this is true, news photos of a totally devastated Gaza Strip have to be an important decisional factor looking ahead: the specter of Beirut being reduced to rubble, along with Damascus and Tehran, can be the end result of policy missteps. It took, for example, decades for Hezbollah to recover from Israeli bombings during the 2006 war.
At the same time, Hezbollah and especially its secretary-general is facing mounting pressure in the region to initiate a significant response to the attacks. Prior to the October 7 massacre, Nasrallah had an unassailable position in the Middle East in terms of his leadership and decisional acumen. But his tepid steps against Israel thus far, and his empty threats and exaggerations regarding Hezbollah’s recent responses, (in one case, his boasts of successful reprisals merely amounted to a rocket attack on a chicken farm prompting a series of negative memes and cartoons on social media and in Arabic newspapers; in one, Nasrallah was portrayed as a Colonel Sanders KFC-type figure, in another a split-screen cartoon showed a Hezbollah coffin on one side and on the matching frame, two dead chickens). For the first time since he became secretary-general in 1992 (after his predecessor was taken out by an Israeli airstrike), Nasrallah is being openly ridiculed in Arab press stories. He is unaccustomed to criticism from within.
So far, Nasrallah’s response has been measured. For his critics, far too measured. As we discussed last night, he has two options: one, lick his wounds, assess the damage and plan a future devasting response (in combination, no doubt, with Iran); or, he could avenge the losses by launching an all-out military attack on Israel using border tunnels and underground facilities.
Tough choice, either way.
Let me switch the narrative a bit. As I noted on the program last night, Israel’s cyber-attack this week was the largest of its kind since the much-ballyhooed Stuxnet virus fifteen years earlier that disabled essential computer programs for Iran’s nuclear weapons development program.
That was a real game changer.
I wonder if this second wave of cyberwarfare will be as well.
What we are seeing is not the final iteration of cyber-warfare, nor, for that matter, is what we are seeing today in AI-enhanced drone wars in the Ukraine.
Nevertheless, we are stumbling into a dangerous world.
Finally, regardless of the Israeli cyber successes, I cannot help feeling that the Middle East tonight is a much more dangerous place. As a former intelligence analyst for many years, I may admire Israel’s cyber operations over the last two days. As a human being, I recoil at the scenes of young men being blinded and maimed for life; it is of little conciliation to me that war is always dirty and bloody. Certainly, in today’s tumultuous political atmosphere, and our government’s seemingly endless penchant for control, the specter of cellphones, pagers and walkie-talkies being weaponized carries an element of uncertainty and uneasiness with it. Do you feel it?
-Jeemes Akers
