Israel delivered another devastating blow to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia militia in Lebanon that has conducted terrorist attacks against Israel for decades.
After the Gaza war began, Hezbollah launched attacks against Israel in support of Hamas, another Iran-backed organisation. Israel’s cyberattack was unexpected, highly sophisticated and innovative. It used digital communication to blow up pagers carried by Hezbollah members, killing around 30 people and injuring thousands. Some civilians in the vicinity were caught in the crossfire.
The pagers received a message from the top Hamas leadership when they detonated. While Hezbollah promptly blamed Israel, the latter acknowledged responsibility.
Hezbollah has vowed to avenge the attacks. Hasan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, made a TV address saying these attacks have crossed a line and they will lob rockets into Israel. Nasrallah has asserted that Israel’s attacks will not cause any fracturing in the ranks and will lead to greater determination and higher morale to confront it.
Much of this is rhetoric to satisfy a wounded ego since Hezbollah does not have the military capacity to take on Israel.
Meanwhile, Israel has continued its strikes against Hamas and retaliated against revenge attacks by Hezbollah. Israeli fighter jets have attacked Hezbollah camps in Southern Lebanon and have been flying over Beirut as a warning. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was also injured, confirming he was using a pager networked with Hezbollah.
Hezbollah heralded its arrival by three bomb blasts in Beirut. Its base is in the area with 32 percent of Lebanon’s Shia population.
Lebanon is fractured along religious and sectarian lines among Shias, Sunnis, Christians and Druze communities.
In October 1983, Hezbollah organised the bombing of the multinational force, killing a large number of Americans and French military personnel.
A Hezbollah suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into the building housing the American Marine Battalion and another one did the same to the French Multinational Force nearby. The 1982 Israeli invasion and occupation of Southern Lebanon helped Iran bring together various Shia militant groups under the Hezbollah banner.
Hezbollah was formed with Iran’s help in 1980 to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Israel withdrew in 2000.
In the following years, Hezbollah has turned into Lebanon’s most powerful political party and fighting force, extending its reach into Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere in West Asia. Hezbollah has also developed an extensive apparatus to support social services, communications and internal security. Iran’s Islamic regime has regarded Israel and its strategic ally, the US, as an existential threat.
These latest attacks raise questions about Israel’s modus operandi and implications for the ongoing conflict in West Asia. How did Israel manage to intercept and introduce explosives into communication devices? The names of two companies, one in Taiwan and the other in Hungary, have surfaced.
Both manufacture the brand of pagers used by Hezbollah. Both have denied responsibility. One Japanese company’s name also came up, but it announced it stopped making such pagers 10 years ago. Clearly, Israel injected itself into the supply chain to get physical access to the pagers.
Israel has a long history of asymmetric warfare against its numerous enemies. In 2010, Stuxnet, a powerful computer malware designed jointly by Israel and the US, was deployed against Iran that disabled computers that controlled centrifuges for uranium enrichment at Natanz for Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. The malware is reported to have been introduced by an Iranian double agent.
In April 2021, Iran accused Israel of a cyberattack on an underground nuclear facility. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading Iranian nuclear scientist, was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a remote-controlled Nissan car.
Earlier in 2010, Israeli agents killed Mahmoud al Mabhouh, a Hamas leader, in a hotel in Dubai. Mossad agents posing as tourists carried out the hit.
In 2000, Samih Malabi was killed when a mobile phone exploded while he was speaking. In 1997, Israeli agents using Canadian passports tried to poison Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Amman. Jordanian authorities arrested the agents and Israel had to make a deal by providing an antidote to the poison.
When I was serving as a diplomat in the Indian embassy in Tel Aviv, there was the case of Yahya Ayyash in 1996, a Palestinian bomb-maker whose prowess earned him the nickname ‘engineer’. He caused the deaths of around 90 Israelis in bombing attacks. Ayyash was eliminated by a mobile phone explosion as he was talking.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine spokesperson Bassam Abu Sharif was severely injured in 1972 when he opened a book with implanted explosives delivered to him in Beirut.
Hezbollah switched to pagers for communication after these incidents to evade location-tracking. This would have alerted Israel that Hezbollah would be procuring these devices.
Post-revolution Iran, ruled by mullahs, have regarded Israel as its arch enemy. Iran has organised the “Axis of Resistance” that included Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen.
The fallout of the cyberattacks will have its impact on the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Israel has sent the message that it can attack its enemies in the most unexpected manner. This message aims to deter Hezbollah and others, and aims at sowing division among Lebanon’s population whose non-Shia population has been long fed up with Iran’s machinations using their Hezbollah proxy.
Clearly, Israel feels the conflict with Hezbollah will not end and has prepared for a war of attrition. Whether Israel will take the next step of invading southern Lebanon is a moot question.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to ensure the approximately 60,000 displaced Israelis return home to northern Israel. The cyberattacks have been welcomed by Israelis and bolstered Netanyahu’s political fortunes.
The conflict in Gaza shows no sign of ending and negotiations for the release of Israeli hostages have floundered. Some hostages recently have been killed by Hamas and were found in a tunnel in Gaza.
The increasing profile of cyberwarfare also indicates a change of strategy as conventional warfare has not helped achieve Israel’s goals. While this round of cyberattacks will not lead to a full-scale regional war, it is bound to deflect attention from the conflict in Gaza.
(Views are personal)
Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty | Former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs; former diplomat in Israel; Visiting Fellow, ORF