According to an expert at the National Defense University, it was an unprecedented influence operation on Tuesday.
17:45•Updated 18:25
The simultaneous explosion of thousands of pagers belonging to the extremist organization Hezbollah yesterday Tuesday is most likely the result of an operation by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
The Mossad had managed to distribute tracking devices with a remote-triggered explosive device installed to Hezbollah, according to sources with knowledge of Israeli intelligence circles.
Mossad’s plan was originally to detonate the devices in the event of a full-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel. In this situation, maiming thousands of Hezbollah leaders could even paralyze the organization’s military operations, according to anonymous intelligence sources, for example news agency Al-Monitor and an American news site Axios.
According to the sources, Hezbollah was learning about the danger that threatened it, and that is why Israel decided to detonate its bombs.
Expert: I had to blow them up sometimes
Teacher at the Department of Military Art at the National Defense University Petteri Viitanen finds it amazing that the Mossad bombs had not been revealed earlier.
– The risk was huge, because there were a lot of them and they had been delivered to Hezbollah perhaps already months ago. In that sense, it was logical that sooner or later they had to be blown up.
Viitasen has no information on whether the devices were being revealed to Hezbollah.
According to Viitanen, the Mossad operation was an unprecedented operation both in terms of intelligence and influence.
According to Viitanen, it was a “big trick” that the Mossad managed to smuggle a large amount of equipment to Hezbollah that had been handled by the Israelis. By unprecedented influence, he means that an explosive device had been installed in the devices, while previously the enemy had been influenced mainly by stealing or messing up computer files.
What will Hezbollah’s revenge look like?
Hezbollah has already vowed that it will avenge Israel’s actions. Viitanen does not want to predict what kind of attack is coming.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will speak on Thursday. After this, there will probably be more information about what actions the organization will take.
At that time, it will also become clear whether Iran, which supports Hezbollah, is involved in the revenge. After all, one of the injured in the explosions was the Iranian ambassador Mojtaba Amani.
According to Viitanen, Hezbollah’s planning is restrained by Mossad’s skill.
– Israel’s intelligence is so good. Israel will probably get it [iskusuunnitelman] find out because they know how to wait for a blow.
In the summer, Israel killed a high-ranking Hezbollah commander By Fuad Shukri. Hezbollah’s response was to fire hundreds of rockets into northern Israel. Residents of the area had to flee to bomb shelters, but otherwise the revenge attack was mild, stated Finland’s ambassador to Lebanon Anne Meskanen for STT.
Is Israel taking advantage of the situation?
Because of Hezbollah, around 3,000 people are now injured to varying degrees or even dead. The organization is currently in a very weak state.
Petteri Viitanen has not seen any indications that Israel intends to take advantage of the situation, although according to him it could be “reasonable from a general military perspective”.
However, Viitanen reminds us that Israel is very good at hiding its intentions.
Hezbollah actors known
The operating principle of paging devices is that they are constantly close to their users. Hezbollah had distributed devices to its leaders because mobile phones had been assessed as a security risk.
According to Viitanen, Israel has in any case found out a lot of Hezbollah operatives with its operation.
There are now many disabled people in Lebanese hospitals whose backgrounds Israel can now find out. The wounded are most likely the leadership of Hezbollah. So Israel got a lot of new targets for its own possible attacks.
At the same time, the Israeli intelligence service Mossad brightened its reputation with the operation, which received a bad blow when Mossad was unable to reveal the major terrorist attack on Israel by the Palestinian Hamas organization in October 2023.
Sources: Reuters, STT