Israel killed the Hezbollah leader after he was smeared with a chemical agent that allowed spies to track his movements, it was claimed yesterday.
Hassan Nasrallah shook hands with an Israeli agent who transmitted the unknown substance to him, according to a Saudi Arabian news channel.
The agent would have been an Iranian visiting Beirut, where Nasrallah was killed in an airstrike on Friday, Al Hadath news outlet said.
Security sources have suggested that the substance could have been identified using a sensor or camera on board a low-flying drone. An Israeli statement on his assassination noted that the operation had been “led by” the country’s Intelligence Directorate.
Israeli ‘microdrones’ maintain constant coverage of the Lebanese capital and are small enough to be invisible to the naked eye when flying over buildings. Alternatively, it is possible that Nasrallah or one of his closest collaborators may have been sprayed with an invisible chemical marking agent.
Hassan Nasrallah shook hands with an Israeli agent who handed him the unknown substance, according to a Saudi Arabian news channel
Flames grow after an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, on Saturday.
If a chemical was not used, another explanation would be that a source provided information about its whereabouts. Nasrallah’s body was recovered intact beneath the remains of the building. In total, more than 20 Hezbollah members were killed by the Israeli Air Force.
During the Cold War, the KGB used marking agents such as nitrophenyl pentadienal, known as “spy powder.”
Israel is known to be at the forefront of research also involving the United States and the United Kingdom on the challenges of contemporary urban warfare.
The country is also believed to have a connected network of hidden cameras and biosensors in Beirut that monitor key sites and the local population.
One of these technologies is called “Bionet,” described by one security source as “a rapidly proliferating deployable network of biological and biomimetic nodes that can infiltrate a city to detect and transmit data.”
The Israelis are also using Artificial Intelligence to classify large volumes of data related to Hezbollah human targets and present the information in the most relevant form.
This system is understood to save its agents hundreds of hours of examining signals and messages collected through interceptions.
Another new technology apparently used by Israel to infiltrate Hezbollah is called ‘EMS Persona’.
This is a group of realistic and diverse ‘virtual humans’ with verifiable digital stories used to communicate with supporters online.