About a month after the cease-fire in Lebanon went into effect , a New York Times investigation published on Sunday reveals how deeply Israel has infiltrated Hezbollah and closely monitored its commanders over the years. The investigation, based on interviews with dozens of current and former senior officials in governments and intelligence agencies in Europe, the United States and Israel, reveals the broad scope of Israeli infiltration.
Even up until Hassan Nasrallah's final moments , he did not believe that Israel would kill him. In late September, he moved to a bunker 12 meters underground. His aides urged him to take more extreme precautions to protect his life but, according to intelligence gathered by Israel and shared with its Western allies, he did not listen to them. He thought Israel was not interested in a full-scale war. Nasrallah also did not realize that Israeli spy agencies were tracking his every move, and had been doing so for years. It was also the result of two decades of systematic intelligence work in preparation for an all-out war that many in Israel knew would one day come.
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Netanyahu and Nasrallah
(Photos: Shutterstock, Aziz Taher/Reuters, AFP, Amir Levy/Getty Images)
Building a network of sources
The Second Lebanon War in 2006 ended in a stalemate for Israel. But actions during that war formed the basis for the current approach. In one operation, according to information provided by Israel to the United States, tracking devices were planted on Hezbollah's Fajr missiles which provided Israel with information about weapons hidden inside secret military bases, civilian storage facilities and private homes. In the 2006 war, the Israeli Air Force bombed the sites and destroyed the missiles.
Ten current and former American and Israeli officials told the NYT that, as Hezbollah rebuilt itself, the Mossad expanded its network of human sources within the terrorist organization. For example, the Mossad recruited people in Lebanon who had helped Hezbollah set up its network of secret facilities and knew where they were. Those sources fed the Mossad with information about the locations of the bases and facilities, and helped the Intelligence Directorate monitor what was happening at those facilities. Israel generally shared intelligence about Hezbollah with the United States and its European allies.
The place where Nasrallah was killed in Dahieh
In 2012, the intelligence Unit 8200 obtained extensive information about the location of Hezbollah leaders and their hiding places.
Five senior officials in European and U.S. intelligence agencies, based on a briefing they received from Israel, said that a significant moment came in 2012, when Unit 8200 was able to obtain a wealth of information about the precise whereabouts of Hezbollah leaders, their hiding places, and the organization's missile and rocket batteries. This operation raised confidence among Israeli intelligence agencies that, if Netanyahu carried out his threats to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, the IDF could help "neuter" Hezbollah's ability to respond.
Shortly after that operation, Netanyahu visited the headquarters of Unit 8200 in Tel Aviv, and during the visit, the unit's commander printed out all the information collected by the Intelligence Directorate about Hezbollah, and presented the huge pile to Netanyahu. "You can now attack Iran," he told Netanyahu, while standing next to the pile. Israel, as we know, ultimately did not attack.
Over the next few years, Israeli intelligence agencies worked to refine the intelligence gathered from the previous operation and produce information that could be used in the event of a war with Hezbollah. According to a senior Israeli security official, when the Second Lebanon War ended in 2006, Israel had “target files” on just under 200 Hezbollah leaders, operatives, weapons caches and missile sites. By the time Israel launched its major operation against Hezbollah in September, Israel’s target bank had grown to about 30,000.
Turn pagers into deadly devices
Ultimately, in order to gain an advantage in the war that was about to break out with Hezbollah, Israel also developed plans to sabotage the organization from within and to provide it with booby-trapped electronic devices. This was a joint operation by the Mossad and the Military Intelligence Directorate, especially Unit 8200, because it was designed to be included in Israel's war plan, a critical element in the IDF's calculations for a possible conflict, whether as a result of a planned attack by Israel or in response to a surprise attack by Hezbollah.
Within the Israeli intelligence community, the devices were known as “buttons” that could be activated whenever Israel chose to do so. To design and manufacture the buttons, Israeli engineers specialized in placing PETN explosives inside the batteries of electronic devices, turning them into small bombs. The most complex part of the operation was carried out by the Mossad, which for nearly a decade had tricked Hezbollah into purchasing military equipment and communications equipment from Israeli shell companies.
First reports of explosions in Beirut
The Mossad deceived Hezbollah, and the first pagers rigged with explosives were sent to Lebanon in 2015
In 2014, Israel had seized an opportunity when Japanese technology company iCOM stopped making its popular IC-V82 walkie-talkies. The devices, originally assembled in Osaka, Japan, were so popular that copies were already being produced across Asia and sold on online forums and in black market transactions. Seven American, Israeli and European officials told the Times that Unit 8200 had discovered that Hezbollah was specifically seeking the same device to equip all of the organization’s frontline forces, even designing a special vest for its men with a chest pocket that accommodated the device.
Israel has begun producing its own copies of the IC-V82 walkie-talkies with minor modifications, including packing explosives into the batteries. The first Israeli-made copies arrived in Lebanon in 2015, and more than 15,000 were eventually shipped there. In 2018, an Israeli Mossad intelligence officer devised a plan that would use a similar technique to implant explosives into a pager battery. Israeli intelligence chiefs reviewed the plan, but according to three officials they determined that Hezbollah’s use of pagers was not widespread enough, and the plan was shelved.
Over the next three years, Israel’s ability to hack cell phones improved even more, causing Hezbollah, Iran, and their allies to be more cautious about using smartphones. Concerned, Hezbollah’s leadership decided to expand its use of pagers. Such devices allowed them to send messages to forces in the field, but they did not reveal location data and did not have cameras or microphones that could be hacked. Israeli intelligence officers reconsidered the pager operation, and worked to build a network of shell companies to hide their Israeli identities and sell the products to Hezbollah.
Israeli intelligence officers targeted the Taiwanese brand "Gold Apollo," known for the pagers it produces. In May 2022, a company called BAC Consulting was registered in Budapest, and a month later, in Sofia, Bulgaria, a company called Norta Global Ltd. was registered in the name of a Norwegian citizen named Rinson Josue. It was Unit 8200 that identified Hezbollah's need for the new product. The Mossad oversaw the production of the pagers in Israel, and through intermediaries, the organization's agents began marketing them to Hezbollah buyers - offering a discounted price for bulk purchases.
During a meeting in March 2023, the Mossad presented Netanyahu with the gadget, without a hidden explosive. The prime minister was skeptical about the durability of the pagers, and asked Mossad head Dedi Barnea how easily they could break. Barnea assured him that they were strong. The prime minister was not convinced, abruptly got up from his chair and threw the device against the wall of his office. The wall cracked, but the pager did not.
The Mossad front company sent the first batch of pagers to Hezbollah in the fall of 2023.
War Games management
The pager operation was not fully in place until October 2023, when war broke out following the surprise attack by Hamas. Even as Israel focused on Hamas, military and intelligence officials continued to work on plans for war with Hezbollah. Israeli intelligence analysts who had been closely monitoring Hezbollah’s use of the devices discovered a potential problem with the operation. According to a report provided by Israel to the United States, at least one Hezbollah technician began to suspect that the radios might contain hidden explosives. Israel quickly dealt with this and killed the technician in an airstrike.
Along the way, Israel has collected routine and intimate details about Hezbollah commanders, including the identities of four mistresses of “Hajj Muhsin,” the nickname of Fuad Shukar, considered Hezbollah’s most senior military commander who was assassinated in July . At one point this year, apparently feeling uncomfortable about his situation, Shukar sought help from Hezbollah’s top cleric in order to marry all four women, according to two Israeli and one European source. The cleric, Hashem Safi al-Din, who was also later assassinated, organized four separate, quick wedding ceremonies for Shukar, thus making the relationships acceptable.
Meanwhile, new intelligence disrupted the planning: Hezbollah operatives suspected that someone had been "tampering" with the pagers they were using. On September 11, suspicions arose that experts might be checking the devices, and Israel knew that it was only a matter of time before the covert operation would be discovered.
On September 16, Netanyahu met with senior security officials to consider whether to blow up the pagers. "Use it or lose it," they told him. Some opposed it, saying it could provoke a full-scale counterattack by Hezbollah, and perhaps even lead to an attack by Iran. Netanyahu accepted the recommendation to act, and the next day, at 3:30 p.m. local time, the Mossad and Military Intelligence activated the system to activate the devices and send an encrypted message to the thousands of pagers. Seconds later, they exploded.
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U.S. intelligence officials concluded that the beeper incident was clearly done in a hurry, since - as Israel informed the United States - Rinson Jose, who headed one of the Mossad's front companies, was surprised to receive a warning that he was in danger while attending a technology conference in Boston. Jose was exposed in news reports as having participated in the operation, and the Norwegian government announced that it was demanding that he return to the country for questioning. Israel secretly pressured the Biden administration to ensure that Jose could leave the United States without returning to Norway, and the officials involved did not reveal his whereabouts, saying only that he was in a "safe place."
Assassination confirmation
For almost a year, the Intelligence Directorate, Unit 8200 and the Israeli Air Force conducted about 40 “war games” built around the elimination of Nasrallah and other senior Hezbollah leaders, according to two Israeli sources. They wanted to be able to attack them at the same time, even if they were not in the same place.
Nasrallah calls teh pager explosions a 'declaration of war'
The most significant decision was whether or not to eliminate Nasrallah. While Israeli officials debated, intelligence agencies received new information that Nasrallah was planning to move to another bunker, one that would be much harder to hit.
On September 26, a few hours before Netanyahu was scheduled to fly to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, the prime minister met with his senior political, intelligence, and military advisers to discuss authorizing the assassination. They also had to decide whether to tell the Americans in advance. Netanyahu and other senior advisers opposed Israel informing the Biden administration about the assassination, as they believed that the Americans would pressure it not to carry it out, but that the United States would nevertheless come to its defense in the event that Iran retaliated for the assassination. They agreed to keep the Americans in the dark.