The scene takes place in a hospital ward in Beirut. The atmosphere is one of devastation and chaos. Men are lying on beds or in wheelchairs, their clothes splattered with blood. One of them turns over and lies on his side: the tip of his hand is torn, almost like paper. Stumps of his fingers hang where they once were.
This is just one of several videos that Middle Eastern sources have sent me from Lebanon over the past 24 hours. I am seeing the visceral consequences of one of the most audacious intelligence operations in history, but I am also seeing something else: a clear message: do not mess with the State of Israel. The country’s security forces have a reputation for carrying out operations with unparalleled ruthlessness and efficiency. In the past 24 hours, they seem to have outdone themselves.
On Tuesday afternoon, explosions from Hezbollah fighters’ pagers echoed across Beirut. What followed was an extraordinary scene: terrorists collapsing as they searched for fresh produce, collapsing in the street as their pants pockets exploded, imploding in a heap as they paid at cash registers.
Hezbollah is now reaping what it has sown for others for so long. Amid the destruction there was, I thought, a certain irony.
By yesterday afternoon the death toll had reached 12, with thousands more injured.
Then, incredibly, came a second wave of explosions: at around 17:30 local time, Hezbollah walkie-talkies began to explode. Images of the exploding devices examined by Reuters showed an interior panel marked “ICOM” and “Made in Japan.” It appears the Mossad may have access to more than one supply chain.
Crowds watch as smoke rises from a building after an explosion, as portable radios used by Hezbollah detonated in southern Lebanon and Beirut.
Hezbollah reportedly used walkie-talkies as a backup communication system – who says the Mossad doesn’t have a sense of humour? But how did the Israelis do it? Although they haven’t claimed responsibility, believe me it was Israel.
No one is more certain of this than Hezbollah, which issued a statement shortly after the explosions: “After examining all the facts, data and information regarding the sinful attack that took place this afternoon,” it thundered, “we hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression.”
How then did the Israelis manage to fill thousands of Hezbollah pagers with explosives and then distribute them among Hezbollah members throughout Lebanon?
The answer lies, as always in Israeli security operations, in meticulous planning, creativity and guts. All of these qualities were necessary for this operation because Hezbollah is much more than a terrorist organization. It is a paramilitary group that also de facto runs the Lebanese state.
This means it has a network of procurement supply chains that it uses to obtain weapons, launder money and traffic drugs.
For all this, several things are needed, and one of the most important is an equally large and opaque network of shell companies around the world. The Israelis know of their existence and nickname them “monkeys.” It is highly likely that Hezbollah used one of these companies to buy the several thousand pagers needed for its army of thugs.
The Israelis reportedly infiltrated this supply chain years ago and then sat idly by, waiting. A few months ago, Hezbollah leaders decided it was time to trade mobile phones for pagers. This was, of course, just what the Mossad had been waiting for. It was time to act. Saboteurs, working somewhere along the pager-manufacturing supply chain, planted one or two grams of explosives inside more than 5,000 pagers shortly before these devices — now Israeli Trojan horses — were exported to Lebanon.
Sources say the explosive material was PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, structurally very similar to nitroglycerin and formidably powerful while at the same time very stable.
For months, members of this outlawed terror group unwittingly used pagers to communicate. It would have been a tense time for those monitoring the situation in Jerusalem. If just one device had gone off ahead of time, the entire plot would have failed. But it didn’t – and then: D-Day. On Tuesday at 3:45 p.m. local time, users received an unknown message; many of them held the pager up to their face. Seconds later, the pager didn’t beep, but boomed.
There are many theories about what happened. One theory is that a code (e.g. “00000” or whatever) was sent to a small electronic card inside the pagers, causing the machines to heat up rapidly and ignite the explosives.
As expected, most of the injuries occurred on the hands and faces.
As of last night, at least 14 people had been killed, including two children, and around 3,000 wounded in Lebanon and Syria (where Hezbollah is also active).
Some 200 people are in critical condition and hundreds are said to have been left blind by the blasts. In the eastern Lebanese village of Saraain, mourners gathered for the funeral of the youngest confirmed victim, nine-year-old Fatima Abdullah.
This is a disaster for Hezbollah. The pagers were most likely used by its highest-ranking officers, meaning that those who were maimed probably had the rank of major or lieutenant colonel or higher.
According to Eyal Pinko, a former Navy commander and intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces, “the entire backbone of Hezbollah was affected” by this attack. He added: “They will have to remake themselves. They have to reconfigure themselves to understand who is leading the battalions and the military units. It will take time to recover.”
The operation, which reportedly involved hundreds of Israeli agents, is one of the most complex and impressive feats of modern warfare. It is not clear why the decision was made to turn on the beepers on Tuesday.
US sources told news website Axios the decision to blow up the beeping devices was made out of fear the group could uncover the secret operation in a decision described as a “use it or lose it moment”.
These sources suggest that Israeli officials initially planned to use the beepers as an initial surprise strike in an all-out war. Other analysts suggest that this attack was a preemptive strike after it became known that Hezbollah intended to escalate the conflict between Israel and Lebanon on the northern border.
Pinko said: “I think Hezbollah is a very culturally suspicious organization by nature and if they had the slightest suspicion about the explosives inside the pagers they would have stopped using them immediately. The idea that officers became suspicious is nice gossip, but I don’t think it’s true.”
Beyond the practical consequences for Hezbollah, there is, of course, the enormous embarrassment. The operation is described as Hezbollah’s “biggest security breach,” and comes after the Israelis attacked Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in central Tehran on the day of the inauguration of the new Iranian president.
The Iranians and Hezbollah should be careful: if this continues, they could start to suffer from a “terrorist brain drain.” Internationally, all parties that could be considered, even vaguely, to be linked to the supply chain at the heart of the operation have feverishly distanced themselves from events.
The affected devices were found to bear the branding of Taiwanese company Gold Apollo. Most of them were the company’s AR924 model, although three other models were included in the shipment. Founder and chairman Hsu Ching-Kuang said production had been outsourced to Budapest-based company BAC Consulting.
He added that he considered himself a “victim” of the incident and planned to sue BAC. However, he acknowledged that the payments had come via the Middle East and said: “The remittance was very strange.”
On BAC Consulting’s website, the company stated that its goal was to “bring together technology and innovation from Asia.” The company’s registered address was a two-story building in Budapest; its name was posted on the glass door on an A4 sheet.
About three years ago, BAC received permission to sell its own products under the Gold Apollo brand. Gold Apollo makes a wide range of devices, including pagers, wireless devices that can send messages without an Internet connection and are commonly used in emergency services and hospitals.
Taiwan has no records of Gold Apollo pagers being sent to Lebanon, according to preliminary investigations by its Ministry of Economic Affairs.
British-educated Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, chief executive of BAC Consulting, told NBC News: “I don’t make the pagers. I’m just the middleman. I think they got it wrong.”
Remnants of a portable pager after the explosions that rocked Lebanon this week. Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the “sinful aggression”
Frantic people gather outside a hospital where the atmosphere is one of devastation and chaos.
What now? Among the wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, who lost an eye in the first attack. Let us not forget that Iran launched a massive direct missile attack on Israel in April because the Israelis attacked a target in the Iranian consulate in Syria.
Iran has also vowed revenge for Haniyeh’s assassination, but has so far done nothing. Tehran may now feel that the pressure to respond is too great to resist.
Yesterday I interviewed Foreign Secretary David Lammy for the Mail’s new weekly global news podcast, 90 Seconds To Midnight.
As we discussed Britain’s role in an increasingly dangerous world, my producer Bella Soames had to update me twice with more news about the carnage in Lebanon. Once again, the irony was not lost on me.
Unsurprisingly, there are those – especially in the EU and the UN – who are attacking Israel, criticising Jerusalem for its “escalation” and various other crimes that are frowned upon by the bloodless officials who make up the top management of these organisations.
But remember: Israel is a country at war, it is a British ally and it is fighting the forces of extremism and terrorism that we ourselves have endured. What happened yesterday was an astonishing feat of creativity and intelligence against a malignant terrorist group that stands against every value we hold dear.
The world is approaching midnight – in fact, we are speeding towards it.
So let us support all those who are on the right side of a war that, whether we like it or not, we have been waging for many years now, or else it might swallow us all up.
Find 90 Seconds to Midnight wherever you get your podcasts now.
