The mystery of how the Mossad obtained the pagers used to bomb Lebanon, killing nearly 40 people and wounding thousands in two days, has deepened after a British university said it never taught the woman who supplied the spy agency.
For two days, explosives embedded in pagers and walkie talkies detonated across Lebanon in a major operation likely perpetrated by Israel’s shadowy intelligence agency, the Mossad, which is believed to have companies were set up across Europe to manufacture and sell the old radio sets, and the Mossad redesigned them to contain lethal amounts of PETN explosive with a miniature detonator.
The Hungarian firm BAC Consulting, which allegedly supplied the pagers, was actually part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officials interviewed by the New York Times. The firm was run by the glamorous “scientist” Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, who boasted of speaking seven languages and having studied politics at the London School of Economics (LSE) and having a doctorate in physics from University College London.
However, the LSE claimed it had not awarded him postgraduate degrees in politics during the years in question, and neither UCL nor the School of Oriental and African Studies could confirm his claims that he had studied there.
American journalists who reached Barsony-Arcidiacono by phone earlier this week said she denied any knowledge of the plot, saying: “I don’t make the pagers. I’m just the middleman.”
The company was run by glamorous “scientist” Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, who boasted of speaking seven languages and having studied politics at the London School of Economics.
For two days, explosives embedded in pagers and walkie talkies detonated across Lebanon
The blasts have greatly increased already high tensions between Israel, Hezbollah and the terror group’s allies.
People react around a car after an explosion occurred during the funeral of those killed when hundreds of homicide bombers exploded across Lebanon the day before, in the southern suburbs of Beirut on September 18, 2024.
BAC’s now-shuttered website was littered with landscape photos, corporate jargon, meaningless buzzwords and “encouraging” quotes from Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci. Its headquarters were an empty flat in Budapest.
John Bayliss, a former GCHQ official, speculated that Israel had discovered that the company that had accepted the Hezbollah order wanted to outsource manufacturing to Europe, and used the opportunity to set up a “shell company” to supply the order and undercut its competitors’ prices.
At least two other shell companies were also created, one of them in Sofia, Bulgaria, run by a Norwegian businessman.
Its function was to conceal the true identities of the people creating the devices in Israeli intelligence. The Mossad had been working on the plan long before the Iranian-backed Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, ruled that mobile phones were too easy to track and ordered them replaced by pagers and walkie-talkies. If Israel was going to go high-tech, Hezbollah would take a backseat. “You ask me, where is the agent?” Nasrallah told his followers.
‘I’m telling you that the phone you have in your hands, in the hands of your wife and in the hands of your children is the agent. Bury it. Put it in an iron box and lock it.’
Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike hit Tyre in southern Lebanon this afternoon
Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike hit Tyre, southern Lebanon
Following this February speech, Mossad’s bomb production is believed to have increased rapidly.
Over the summer, beeper shipments to Lebanon increased, with thousands arriving in the country and being distributed to Hezbollah officials and their allies, U.S. intelligence officials say.
Meanwhile, Icom, the Japanese manufacturer whose name was on the exploding handheld radios, said it had stopped making the device a decade ago. Icom said it had not shipped any of the IC-V82 radios since 2014.
The blasts have greatly increased already high tensions between Israel, Hezbollah and the terror group’s allies.
Israeli warplanes carried out their most intense strikes in southern Lebanon in nearly a year of war on Thursday night, escalating the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah amid calls for restraint.
In the latest operation on Thursday, the Israeli military said its aircraft spent two hours attacking hundreds of multiple rocket launcher guns in southern Lebanon that were to be immediately fired toward Israel.
The bombardment included more than 52 strikes in southern Lebanon after 9 p.m. (1800 GMT), Lebanese state news agency NNA reported. Three Lebanese security sources said they were the most intense airstrikes since the conflict began in October.
Photographs showed crowds of people walking through the streets of Beirut mourning the death of the boy, along with three other men who died.
Their deaths, along with ten others killed on Tuesday, came just a day before Israel launched a second wireless attack, this time targeting Hezbollah walkie-talkies.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Israel’s military vowed to continue attacking Hezbollah, saying its strikes on Thursday hit around 100 rocket launchers and other targets in southern Lebanon.
In a televised address Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the Tuesday and Wednesday bombings “crossed all red lines.”
“The enemy has overstepped all controls, laws and morals,” he said, adding that the attacks “could be considered war crimes or a declaration of war.”
Ian is believed to have sent money to an Israeli pensioner in exchange for assassinating Benjamin Netanyahu.
Tehran is said to have attempted to employ Israeli businessman Moti Maman, 73, who is believed to have spent time in Türkiye plotting to assassinate the Israeli prime minister.
Iran is believed to have been behind a broader plot to assassinate several senior officials in Israel, following the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh on July 31, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced on Wednesday.
Two Turkish men, Andrei Farouk Aslan and Guneid Aslan, were named as the intermediaries who connected Maman to Iran.
A hand shows the destroyed pager that exploded on September 17
The Israeli army evacuates the wounded by helicopter after an anti-tank missile was fired towards Israel from Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, on September 19, 2024
The attacks have left dozens of Hezbollah members seriously injured across southern Lebanon and its capital, Beirut.
Thousands of people were injured when communication devices exploded on Tuesday and Wednesday in Lebanon and Syria
They are said to have met him in the town of Samandag in May to discuss the attack.
Following an initial request to be paid $1m up front to reach any deal, Maman is believed to have been offered €5,000 (£4,200) to join meetings and undergo training.
As part of his job, Maman was reportedly tasked with filming videos of Israeli locations for surveillance and intelligence gathering purposes. Iran is also believed to have asked the businessman to try to recruit Russians and Americans capable of killing Iranian figures opposed to the regime.
Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency did not suggest how far the suspect had gone with his missions, stressing that foiling one plot did not end the broader threats facing Israel.
Last week, the agency uncovered what it said was a plot by the militant group Hezbollah to assassinate a former senior defense official, who was later identified as former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon.