Unknown Explosions in Wireless Devices Add to Speculations of Secretive Israeli Operations
Nearly twenty-four hours later, walkie-talkies exploded in a fresh wave of bombings in Lebanon, as reported by a security source to CNN.
The suspected attacks against the militant group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, are part of a series of covert operations that Israel's government refuses to acknowledge, but are alleged to have been carried out by Israeli operatives.
Munich massacre response
Israel's history of planting explosives in telecommunication devices dates back to 1972, as retaliation for the Munich Olympics attack by the Palestinian militant group Black September, which resulted in the death of 11 Israelis, including athletes.
In response, Israel launched "Operation Wrath of God" and spent years tracking down those involved in the Munich Massacre.
Mahmoud Hamshari, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representative in Paris, was one of those targeted. Unidentified operatives who were believed to be linked to Israeli intelligence broke into his home and planted a bomb in his phone, before arranging a telephone interview with Hamshari, who was posing as an Italian journalist. When he picked up the call and identified himself, the bomb was activated remotely.
The ‘engineer’
Tuesday's attacks reminded many of the 1996 killing of Yahya Ayyash, Hamas' chief bombmaker, who was known as “the engineer.” Ayyash was killed in Gaza after his cell phone, which had been packed with 50 grams (1.76 ounces) of explosives, exploded near his head. After his killing, dozens of Israelis were killed in four retaliatory suicide bombings.
Iranian nuclear scientists
Since 2010, five Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in foreign-linked assassinations, as Israel tries to prevent its greatest adversary from developing nuclear weapons. In August 2015, at the height of the assassinations, then-Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon cryptically told the German magazine Der Spiegel that he could not be held responsible “for the life expectancy of Iranian scientists.”
Experts believe that Israel and the United States were responsible for deploying the complex computer virus called Stuxnet that destroyed centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear facility in 2010.
Iranian officials have said they believe the cyberattack, which targeted centrifuges including those at the Natanz and Bushehr nuclear plants, originated in Israel and the United States, but neither country has commented on the malware’s origin. Stuxnet was one of the first times a cyberattack had a manifestation outside cyberspace, causing the centrifuges to spin out of control unnoticed. The pager attack is seemingly another instance of a cyberattack causing a physical consequence, unlike stealing money from a bank account or taking down a website.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was Iran’s chief nuclear scientist, was assassinated east of Tehran in 2020 by a remote-controlled machine gun operating out of a nearby Nissan. Iranian officials said the weapon had used artificial intelligence and facial recognition to detect Fakhrizadeh and open fire, before the car, reportedly packed with explosives, self-destructed.
Top Iranian officials blamed Israel for the assassination. Israel did not comment.
Human intelligence
While many of these assassinations have a sci-fi aspect, experts stressed that each operation requires high levels of human intelligence that raised questions about the security protocols of Israel's adversaries. After Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, intelligence analysts stressed that a country or actor would still have had to smuggle in specialist equipment to stage the operation.
After this week’s events, some speculated that the explosions could have been caused by an Israeli cybersecurity breach that caused the lithium batteries in the pagers to overheat and detonate.
But David Kennedy, a former US National Security Agency intelligence analyst, told CNN the explosions were “too large for this to be a remote and direct hack that would overload the pager and cause a lithium battery explosion.”
Kennedy said it was more likely that Israel had human operatives in Hezbollah who were able to intercept the supply chain and tamper with the devices. “The pagers would have been implanted with explosives and likely only to detonate when a certain message was received,” he said.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that Israel had hidden explosives inside a batch of pagers ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo and destined for Hezbollah, and that a switch was embedded to detonate them remotely, according to unnamed American and other officials briefed on the operation.
In some instances, Israel is thought to have relied on human intelligence assets to assassinate its enemies rather than high-tech operations. In July, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran by an explosive device that had been covertly hidden in the guest house where he was staying, two months before it was detonated, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
However, Iran claimed that Haniyeh’s assassination was carried out by a “short-range projectile,” contradicting the information told to CNN.
The Iranian government and Hamas say Israel carried out the assassination. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
The Middle East has seen a long history of covert operations, with Israel being allegedly involved in several incidents. For instance, after the Munich Olympics attack by Palestinian militants in 1972, Israel launched "Operation Wrath of God" and targeted individuals believed to be involved.
The world is also witnessing the use of advanced cyberwarfare tactics, such as the Stuxnet virus, which was believed to have been deployed by Israel and the United States against Iran's nuclear program in 2010.
