Why was Hezbollah equipped with these devices?

The simultaneous explosion of these devices across Lebanon left nine dead and nearly 2,800 injured, including hundreds of members of the Iranian-backed Lebanese movement.

It is undoubtedly one of the most impressive operations of recent years. The simultaneous explosion, on Tuesday, September 17, across Lebanon of pagers used by Hezbollah left nine dead and nearly 2,800 injured, including hundreds of members of the Lebanese Islamist movement, supported by Iran, which accused Israel of being responsible.

For its part, the Hebrew state has not commented on these explosions, which occurred in several Hezbollah strongholds a few hours after the country announced that it was extending the objectives of the war against the Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip to its northern border with Lebanon. But the shadow of its foreign intelligence services looms over the simultaneous explosions of these communications devices.

Concretely, the beeper (or ‘pager’) is a box, ancestor of the mobile phone, which became widespread at the end of the 1970s, which allows messages to be received by radio waves without using the GSM network of mobile phones which is much easier to hack.

The signal is in fact sent via radio waves, thus avoiding interruptions, connection problems or hacking. This is why Hezbollah equipped its men with these devices, without obviously imagining that they could explode simultaneously. The assassination of Fouad Chokr, a founding member of the party, on July 30 in Beirut, which followed a long series of liquidations of cadres, was already a serious warning: aware of the threat, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Shiite movement, had then asked his supporters to stop using their mobile phones, to avoid being spied on and located.

For Yehoshua Kalisky, a researcher at the Israeli Security Institute, the Hebrew state is undoubtedly behind the operation.There are two ways this could have happened. The first is that the explosion system was introduced into the factory where the machines were purchased. Maybe someone, somewhere, installed this system. That’s one possibility. The other option is that a remote electronic pulse caused the battery to explode.“, according to the researcher, who assures that the region has just witnessed “one of the most impressive operations of recent years“.

For its part, the Taiwanese group Gold Apollo claimed that the Hezbollah’s AR924 model beeper bombs, bearing its brand, were produced and sold by its Hungarian partner BAC.Our company only provides permission to use the brand and is not involved in the design and manufacturing.” of this pager, he insisted.

The question of responsibility therefore remains unclear. There is, however, a precedent of the same type: the assassination of a Hamas leader in 1996, following the explosion of his mobile phone. But this was a single target and not a massive simultaneous attack on thousands of machines, which were supposed to be hermetic.

The only certainty in the aftermath of this operation: the toll. Thousands of Hezbollah militiamen are now wounded, which could represent between 5 and 10% of the organization’s potential fighters, thus neutralized. However, in the perspective of an open conflict with Israel, this is now a serious handicap for the Shiite militia.