 "Hezbollah pager bombs: Israel's original plan failed. So here's what it did")
Israel on Tuesday allegedly caused thousands of pagers used by the Hezbollah militant group to explode, resulting in nine fatalities and nearly 3,000 injuries, amid concerns that Hezbollah was about to discover the tampering, according to reports on Wednesday.
Citing American and Israeli officials, Axios reported that Israeli intelligence originally planned to detonate the pagers as an initial strike in an all-out conflict with Hezbollah. However, Al-Monitor reported that they opted to act sooner when a Hezbollah member expressed suspicion about the devices and intended to inform his superiors.
Israel has not commented on the detonations, neither confirming nor denying responsibility.
Just days earlier, another Hezbollah member had suspected that the devices had been tampered with and was subsequently killed, according to Al-Monitor.
Upon learning of these suspicions, Israeli leaders reportedly went as far as contemplating launching an immediate full-scale war against Hezbollah to preserve the pager attack as a preliminary move. According to the Al-Monitor report, they also considered maintaining the status quo, despite the risk of the operation being compromised.
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According to New York Times and Reuters reports from Tuesday, Israeli agents allegedly tampered with the pagers before they arrived in Lebanon, although it was unclear where the tampering occurred.
"The Mossad injected a board into the device that contains explosive material activated by a code," a senior Lebanese security source informed Reuters, adding, "It's very difficult to detect by any means, even with any device or scanner."
According to the source, 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent, triggering the explosives.
Another security source stated that up to three grams of explosives were concealed in the new pagers. The explosives had reportedly gone "undetected" by Hezbollah for months.
The attack appeared to have been in preparation for many months, several unnamed sources told Reuters.
In a televised address in February, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned supporters that their phones were more dangerous than Israeli spies, advising them to break, bury, or lock them in an iron box.
Subsequently, Hezbollah chose to distribute pagers to members across various branches of the group, including fighters and medics.
One senior Lebanese security source reportedly said that Hezbollah ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, which several sources confirmed were brought into the country earlier this year.
Gold Apollo stated on Wednesday that the devices were manufactured by BAC, a Budapest-based firm that has the rights to use Gold Apollo's brand but operates independently.
Gold Apollo authorised "BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in specific regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are entirely handled by BAC", the company said in a statement.
"The product was not ours. It merely had our brand on it," Gold Apollo's founder and president, Hsu Ching-kuang, told reporters at the company's offices in New Taipei on Wednesday.
Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the attack and vowed to retaliate.
The explosions coincided with reports that Israeli leaders were considering a major offensive in southern Lebanon to push Hezbollah forces north of the Litani River, 10 miles north of Israel's border, in accordance with a 2006 United Nations Security Council resolution.
Hezbollah has been firing at Israel almost daily since October 8, 2023, following the cross-border assault by its ally Hamas the day before, which initiated the ongoing war in Gaza.
On Tuesday, just hours before the pager explosions, the security cabinet officially added the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens evacuated from northern Israel as a war objective. That same day, the Shin Bet security service announced that it had thwarted a Hezbollah plot to assassinate a former high-ranking defence official on Israeli territory.