Israel’s Pager Attack on Hezbollah (with Nadav Eyal)
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Earlier this month, Israel pulled off what many experts are describing as one of the most impressive and sophisticated intelligence feats in modern history. Thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah operatives across Lebanon and Syria were detonated simultaneously in an apparent attack by Israel. The next day, hundreds of walkie-talkies exploded in similar fashion.

We recorded the following conversation on Wednesday, September 25th. On Friday, Israeli airstrikes killed Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, and other key commanders. In the coming weeks, we'll be providing more coverage on the war in the Middle East. Next week, which marks one year since the October 7th attack on Israel, I'll be speaking with Franklin Foer of The Atlantic. We'll discuss America's year-long effort to contain the war, release the hostages, and broker peace.

But for now, we're focusing on the specific details of this intelligence operation. Nadav Eyal joined me to discuss. He's a renowned Israeli journalist and winner of the Sokolov Prize, Israel's Pulitzer. Nadav, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Prit. So it's great for you to be here, and maybe you can explain some of these things to us. But before we get to any of the details and the consequences and the ramifications, I

Could you just explain to us what happened exactly on September 17? So on September 17, in the morning, afternoon, you know, there's a time difference. Suddenly, and in a synchronized manner, thousands of pagers that were held by Hezbollah operatives across the country, both in Lebanon and in Syria, blew up at once.

This kind of development led to scenes that we have never seen before in Lebanon and to an extent even in Syria of hundreds or more people flowing to the hospitals, to emergency rooms. Almost all of those taken young men and known Hezbollah people.

persons although the lebanese media also reported about of civilians hurt during this uh this detonations and israel did not own up to this operation it never said formally that it's responsible it's just remained silent but but but it is it was it's a hundred percent do you believe 100 that it was israel i don't think it was ukraine

or Ethiopia or Mexico, right? Right. Yeah, on a personal level, I do believe 100% that this was done by Israel. But I should say, you know, I'm an Israeli journalist. I'm not a representative of the Israeli government, right? And this operation was something that Hassan Nasrallah described. Hassan Nasrallah is the leader of Hezbollah for many years now, sworn enemy of Israel. He described this as...

the most difficult blow that the organization has ever encountered. So he did not deny that this was a successful operation against Hezbollah, and of course, naturally, he blamed Israel. One of those that got hurt was the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, who carried a pager himself,

to an extent, testimony to the relations between Hezbollah and between Iran. Iran is, of course, the major state actor supporting Hezbollah. I want to ask more about the mechanics of this before we get to these other implications. What is your understanding of how the signal was sent to the pagers to cause them to explode? And what is your understanding, because I know you've written about this, what's your understanding of the nature of the explosive effect

that was contained in the pagers? I guess there are a couple of different possibilities. So these are great questions. First of all, I'll begin with the explosives. Whoever planned this operation made sure that the amount of the explosives within the pager would not be as such that will lead to the deaths or immediate deaths of everyone who suffered from these detonations.

So this was a very... Can we pause there? Because that's a very important point. So is it the case that because they had limited capacity and space in a pager, that they didn't have the ability to put in enough explosives to definitively kill the holder of the pager? Or are you saying that they made a deliberate decision to have limited firepower in the pagers such that most people were not killed?

It's our understanding that, and of course no source, no formal Israeli source will confirm that, but it is our understanding that they knew very well that the amount of explosives put in these pagers will not be necessarily deadly. I want to say necessarily deadly. And this has to do with several reasons. One of them is because...

because if you put more explosives, of course, you endanger the people around. More collateral damage, yeah. Yeah, so this is something that you need to take into account. The other reason might be technical, but as far as I know, this was not the case. Because one or two grams more of explosives would have been deadly to most people who got hurt.

And the decision made by those who planned this operation is to have more of a shock and awe operation, intelligence operation, than something that will immediately kill thousands of people. And if you think about this in a tactical perception that Israel has with Hezbollah, the fact that you didn't have thousands of casualties of people who died the day that Israel did that,

last week is exactly the reason why Hezbollah was able not to escalate immediately to a full-fledged war. So this might have been taken into account. Yeah, there's a psychological warfare aspect to this, you believe?

Yeah, I do. I think that it was about severely wounding the people that are holding these pagers. And I should explain that the people that Hezbollah handed those pagers to are people that are part of the operational level of Hezbollah. And they use this as a recruitment tool for operations or letting people know of emergencies, basically calling up the reserves or the people who are involved in

in their operations. So this, of course, pagers, and I think we should remind people listening to us, pagers is, you know? Did you own a pager once? I owned a pager when I was a young prosecutor. Yeah. So I did too. You had to come to court. So we used to joke that there were two classes of people who had pagers, prosecutors and drug dealers. And a third, and physicians. My father had a beeper.

so that his call service could get in touch with him when a patient needed his attention. But they're not widely used anymore in the States.

No, they're not widely used, I think, anywhere. And I used to own Pagers as a journalist for many years, actually. And the reason that Hezbollah started using Pagers was because of the Israeli infiltration into its mobile phone system. So Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, had an agenda of taking out those mobile phones online.

And they wanted to have some sort of technological tool that would be rather simple, that can record you, right? There's no mic within the pager. So it's less of a security risk, of a security leakage, of a cyber attack of sorts. And this is why they brought in these pagers. So one question that's been asked, which I think you've now indirectly answered, but an early question was,

Why would Israel not take advantage of the interceptions that they could be conducting of communications devices rather than detonate them all? And I think your answer is they weren't really being used in an effective and important and telling way as communications devices anyway, correct?

They were used in coded languages. But there wasn't sensitive intelligence that is now lost, or is there, by the fact that Israel blew them up? We can assume...

and I can assume quite in a secure way that the Israelis knew what's happening on these pagers anyhow, right? And that these pagers were not the communication system of the commanders of Hezbollah to begin with, right? This was not a high level technique of corresponding with one another. This was a way of Hezbollah central command telling people you need to be here or you need to be there or where we began an alert campaign

in this and that area, right? So I guess that the Israelis already had this information and have some sort of ability to wire themselves there. It's a guess of mine. It's a calculated guess because what Israel has been showing in the last few weeks is that it is infiltrated

to main Hezbollah systems. And you can see this by both the Pager operation, the tactical radio operation, and the assassinations and the hits that Israel has been doing against Hezbollah military commanders. What was the reason for the timing of this? Was it opportunistic? Was it strategic? Was it necessitated by some other unexpected event or worry that the Israelis... What's your best understanding about the timing of this?

So the sources are debating this to a large extent, but those sources that I've been speaking to are telling me that there was a necessity because it's a time-sensitive operation. Look, if you're going to plant explosives... Yeah, but it had been going on for... But this operation, and I was going to get to this in a moment, but since you mentioned it, am I right that an operation of this sophistication and breadth had to have begun some years ago? So it was not a short-term operation, correct? No.

It wasn't a short-term operation, but its execution was rather short-term. It was in the recent year or so that it actually touched ground in Lebanon and was put into use. Someone needed to think about this a few years back.

And we now know that there was a company stationed in Budapest, and this company actually got licensed by a Taiwanese company that had nothing to do with this event, that is the real producer of these type of pagers. And that Hungarian company was probably some sort of, you know, a decoy or something.

a false name of sorts, and they sold these pagers to Hezbollah through a third person or persons, and this is how the pagers landed there. But in order to get all of this sorted out, you need to think about this and plan this and fund this for years. And more and more, as we hear more about this operation, it's quite obvious that it's not that these pagers were produced and then at a certain point,

allegedly the Mossad took hold of the pagers that were produced by either the Taiwanese company or the Hungarian company, and then they did something with these pagers, switched something inside. No. The more we learn about this, these pagers were actually produced by the people who initiated this operation specifically. They were produced, you know, from top to bottom in order to be blown up.

Right. So it's a little bit easier if you have control rather than pulling over a pager truck on the middle of the highway. So that makes sense. What is the degree to which Hezbollah's communications confidence and ability has been degraded? And then more importantly, what is the degree to which Hezbollah as a whole has been degraded after this?

Hezbollah suffered three major blows in the last six months. The first blow is that Israel has been reducing significantly its ability to use its strategic leverage

to try and occupy parts of the sovereign state of Israel and invade, do some sort of an incursion like we saw Hamas doing on October 7th. This thing isn't an assessment by the Israelis. It's not an accusation. Hizballah proudly has shown the videos of its soldiers, its foot soldiers, commando, preparing, its commando is called the Raduan Force, preparing to invade the Galilee, part of sovereign Israel, take place.

towns or kibbutzim there and proceed to do what Hamas has done in the southern part of Israel. And what the Israelis have been doing in the last six months is basically attacking the infrastructure of Hezbollah, attacking the Raduan force. And right now when we're speaking, there are less than a thousand fighters of Hezbollah that are south to the Litani River, which is a major river in the

in Southern Lebanon. So this is one thing the Israelis have been doing. The second thing was, of course, with the SPAGER operation and then the tactical radio operation, they have significantly reduced the security that Hezbollah has in communicating with the different operatives branches of Hezbollah. - How can they possibly communicate with any confidence anymore? That seems to me a very, very significant blow, right?

Yes, and it's also a blow because in the Middle East, it's not only about the facts. I should stress again, it's not that this communication system was of strategic value to Hezbollah as of itself. Right, but it puts everything into question now.

Yeah, exactly. You know, you have all these sketches that are shown both in Lebanon and in Israel of Hassan Nasrallah, you know, looking at, I don't know, at the switch, at an electricity switch, sort of asking himself, should he touch it? You know, so you have these kinds of caricatures. Or their cars or their bicycles. You have to be, they have necessarily, I would expect, have created, you know, non-frivolous paranoia

in the minds of everyone in Hezbollah about every device, about every communications tool, laptops, standalone computers, televisions, everything. Am I correct? Yes, and also the fact that Israel was able to do that to all the pagers. It wasn't just 10. Exactly. And that means that the level of reach that the Israelis have

again, according allegedly to the sources with Israel denying, is as such that the deterrent force of Israel vis-a-vis Hezbollah in the region has increased. And this is after a huge deterrence failure of Israel since October 7. On October 7, it didn't have a deterrent force

vis-a-vis Hamas. Hamas attacked. On October 8, Hezbollah attacked. Then the Houthis attacked. Then the Iranians attacked. So, obviously, the Israelis didn't enjoy in the last year a deterrence in the region. But now, with this operation and other operations and assassinations, you know, Aniyah in Tehran, this was an incredible Mossad operation according to, uh,

Western sources in which the Mossad actually managed to put explosives in what you can actually compare to the Blair House, the Iranian Blair House in the center of Tehran, and then just wait for Haniyeh to be there and then blow it up.

And so you see this again and again being done in the region. And this causes this anxiety that you would want when you fight a terror group or a designated terror group like Hezbollah, you would want them to say to themselves, is this safe? Is that safe? And to fear for their lives and not wanting to be near their homes and civilian areas so that other people might not get hurt because they are hit. Right.

So this is where the Israelis and maybe the Americans wanted to put Hezbollah at, and this is what we're seeing right now. So you raised a point that I think is a very important one, and it's a question in my mind and many other people's minds. How could you simultaneously have a country's intelligence apparatus do whatever you think of this, and we'll get into the ethics of it if we have a moment shortly, but

But an extraordinary intelligence operation on the one hand, and a complete abject vacuum of intelligence, failure of intelligence, when it came to anticipating October 7th, I assume the same leaders were involved in both the failure and the success. How do you explain that? First of all, I think it's a fantastic question and not often asked. And my answer to this is twofold. First of all,

Israel has been preparing for the third Lebanon war. The previous Lebanon war was in 2006.

And ever since, the Israeli defense apparatus, with all its power and intelligence and abilities, has been preparing to another war in Lebanon. And that means, by the way, you know, having a pager operation ready so you can detonate. That means gathering intelligence as to missiles and rockets of Hezbollah. By the way, Israel in the last 72 hours was responsible to the destruction of at least

between 30 to 50% of Hezbollah's arsenal of direct targeted missiles and rockets, and in general, the rockets and missiles arsenal that was destroyed by an aerial assault of the Israeli Air Force that lasted for seven hours and hit 1600 targets. That's another major strategic blow to Hezbollah. So you're making the point, it seems that Israel

Israel is much smarter and sophisticated when it comes to Hezbollah than when it comes to Hamas? Yeah, no, I'm just saying that Israel was not focused at Hamas at all. Israel did not see Hamas as a strategic threat. Right, they've always been focused on Hezbollah. And that was the difference, yeah. And the other issue is, of course, the virtue of strategic surprise, which unfortunately this country, the U.S., knows mastermindedly.

about because of Pearl Harbor and 9-11. You have everything in place, right? And you would expect that you'll see that, and you don't. And what happened to Israel on October 7 was exactly that. And it happened before with Israel, with the Yom Kippur War in 1973. So it wasn't focused, and now it is focused. So for

first of all, it's not going to be surprised again, right? So these are my two points. First of all, it was preparing for a war in the north with Hezbollah. It wasn't preparing for Hamas to invade Israel and have its massacres along its border. And it did, by the way, prepare itself for Hezbollah to invade. And the second point is that they simply did not assume that

That Hamas has even the power, not the intention, the power to pull out this thing that it actually did. And because of that, Israel was very ill-prepared. And this is something that we're going to deliberate for years and years to come.

How is, generally speaking, the international community responding to these particular attacks with the cell phones and the walkie-talkies? I heard Leon Panetta, the former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director here in the States, and I don't know exactly what he meant by his comment. I don't think there's any question that it's a form of terrorism. I don't know if you saw those comments, if you have a reaction to them.

or otherwise want to mention what the international community is saying about it, you know, who is praising it and who isn't? Yeah, well, first of all, I didn't see Leon Panetta's remarks, and I'm quite surprised. And the reason I'm surprised is as follows. The interpretation of the United States to international law, when we talk about terror groups, and specifically, and Hezbollah is a designated terror group,

both in the US and Europe, most places in the West, is that there is no separation between people who are in actual combat and people who are the financiers of the terror group.

They are all legitimate targets. And this is a debated subject in international law. And before going on your show, Rick, knowing about who you are, I did make a few phone calls to international legal experts, just that I won't be too surprised. Yeah, although my first degree is in law.

law degree from Hebrew U. So I called some of my professors, both Israeli ones and non-Israeli ones. So to say that this is a form of terror, I find this

really peculiar. If Israel would have hit every place in which 2,000 Hezbollah operatives were at with a very direct and precise missile that would hit only the room in which they were at, would that be considered terror? I don't think so. I think that would be considered a targeted attack.

because, you know, evidently it's not about collateral damage. It's not about blowing up this person's house and having maybe civilians hurt. This is as targeted as you can get. Now, of course, it's an exceptional operation. It's unique. It's never been done before. A more serious argument is about whether or not these could be considered as booby traps.

Because there is a special clause about booby traps, meaning, you know, materials or stuff that could seem innocent, right?

and then might be blown up, and then civilians who approach them might get hurt. But then you have to ask, is a pager used by a Hezbollah operative, a pager, it's not exactly, you know, it's not a child's doll or something. Is a pager, can you consider this to be sort of a naively held thing?

thing in your house or on yourself. And a pager is usually held on your body. And this is one of the reasons that we have seen these, you know, these kind of difficult injuries, bad injuries that people got, either, you know, parts of their hands, their eyes. This is because it was held on their body. And what I've mainly seen from the international arena is I didn't see the type of condemnations that...

that Israel is getting, for instance, for its operations in the Gaza Strip. I think people were, mainly leaders, were sort of scratching their heads. On the one hand, Hezbollah is a terror group. They didn't want the escalation to begin with. Hezbollah began shooting. But it's such a widespread operation, right?

And civilians did get hurt. So I'm not going to sugarcoat this. So I think that to an extent that this is what I'm hearing. I also heard behind the scenes a lot of appreciation for the ability of the Israelis to actually do that. And not the type of, you know, condemnation that you would have expected. And of course, the entire Lebanese sphere, maybe I should say, I'm worried about that, is completely different than Israel.

the southern front. And people around the world don't completely understand that sometimes when I talk with them, that at the north, there is no argument of occupation. Israel redrew all, you know, it redrew from Lebanon in the year 2000. It got a UN Security Council decision identifying, recognizing that it was a full redraw. So I think there's much more lenience towards what Israel is doing in order to get Hezbollah to stop shooting at it.

Here's a question that may be a little bit outside your expertise, but I've been wondering about it. Within Hezbollah, which is an organized group, what is the level of calling for the scalp and having held accountable whoever the idiot was who decided we will buy all of our pagers?

in bulk from the same company. Is anyone getting toppled within Hezbollah because of this? Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course. You know, there are conspiracy. First of all, I speak with people from across the region, including Lebanese.

not only excite Lebanese. And I hear all the time what's being said. And one of the things that you can see in Lebanon today is so, so much conspiracy theories going around and the blame game of who's responsible to that. And people are blaming Nasrallah's, one of Nasrallah's sons for,

And others are saying that he escaped to Israel, which he didn't. And people were bribed within the organization. So usually... Some people are suggesting treachery, not incompetence. Oh, usually in these kinds of operations, you need an inside man. And usually you would need to tilt someone to your side to pull this through. And I think that it would be safe to say that this was not...

You know, when you have an organization like Hisbala, they're not publishing an ad in the newspaper in Lebanon. We're looking for 4,000 pages and we're going to give it to the best bidder, right? So this is all about... They don't go to T-Mobile, the store. Yeah, no, and not to Verizon too. So what they're doing is they need to have contact people and someone, and this is the most difficult part of this operation, which for me is...

especially interesting and I don't have the answers.

Who convinced them after they decided that they don't want mobile phones around because Hassan Estrella, the leader of Hezbollah, was so worried about mobile phones, as he should be, who convinced them that they should buy pagers? And did that same someone convince them, you know, told them, I'm going to bring you those pagers. To buy these pagers, right, exactly. Exactly. And convince them that that would be a great idea. And I suspect that.

That the entire Prager thing, and it's just my suspicion, entire Prager thing was planted as an idea. And that's the most difficult thing to do, right? To plant it as an idea with them. Could you explain why this is a Mossad operation as opposed to an IDF operation and how they share responsibility when there's a war going on or when there's not a war going on?

I can explain the differences between the Mossad responsibility and the IDF responsibility. Basically, the IDF doesn't operate on an intelligence gathering level or intelligence operations beyond enemy lines in an undercover kind of way in the long term, specifically when you want to do something so strategic. That's usually the case. So years and years ago,

there started to be a clear separation between what the Mossad does and what the IDF does. Of course, the IDF has its own intelligence unit. For instance, Sayeret Matkal, originally the Israel's elite command of force, the one that, you know, raided Antebe at the time and released the hostages, the one that Netanyahu and Barak were part of,

So that was originally an intelligence unit. It was a commando intelligence unit, but it was under the headquarters of the intelligence command of the Israeli chiefs of staff.

And at a certain point, a clear division grew between what the Mossad does, which is this expertise of not only hits, right, for an enemy. But this is, of course, what gets most media, but mainly gathering intelligence, stealing documents, getting recordings, listening, etc.

to whoever they need to listen. And this kind of distinction between the organization was made clear while the Israeli intelligence branch within the IDF is more focused on giving alerts as to specific intentions and capabilities of the enemy. And that's the prime responsibility of the intelligence branch of the IDF, to give you a warning towards war.

And this is where they have failed towards October 7, and the Mossad didn't. So the Mossad, if you think about it as part of the Israeli intelligence community, is the only organization that escaped the blame for October 7 because it's simply not responsible for covering the Palestinian arena. That is also done by the Shin Bet. I want to thank you very much, Nadav Eyal. Thank you for your insight. We'll have you back because there's a lot to talk about here. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you, Prit.

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Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at Preet Bharara with the hashtag AskPreet. You can also now reach me on threads, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That's 669-24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters at cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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