Will Israeli Pager Attack Deter Hezbollah?

Earlier this year, when Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group based in Lebanon, decided to ditch cell phones in favor of pagers and walkie-talkies, it sought to prevent Israel from hacking and tracking its operatives. But instead of improving the group’s operational security, the move opened the door to a masterstroke by Israeli intelligence. By blowing up those pagers and walkie-talkies last week, Israel has severely disrupted the group’s operational capabilities, at least in the short term.

But what Israel really wants is for Hezbollah to stop bombing northern Israel so that thousands of displaced Israeli civilians can return home. It is not clear that Hezbollah understands this message.

It all began in February, when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned his fighters that Israeli intelligence was monitoring their movements via their cell phones. “Israel no longer needs collaborators,” he warned. “Its surveillance devices are in your pockets. If you are looking for the Israeli agent, look at the phone in your hands and the phones of your wives and children.” Hezbollah then embarked on what it called a “blinding” strategy of using low-tech tools to evade Israel’s vaunted intelligence capabilities.

But Israel, in an extraordinary covert deception, foiled Hezbollah’s plans by creating a front company that produced the low-tech, deadly communications devices that Hezbollah acquired for its operatives. The beepers and walkie-talkies that exploded last week killed at least 37 people and wounded about 3,000 others, the vast majority of them Hezbollah militants, including commanders of the elite Radwan special forces unit. Members of other militant groups were also hit, including about 40 Yemeni Houthi militants in Lebanon and Shiite militants in Syria and Iraq. Also injured was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, whose duties apparently required him to carry an operational Hezbollah beeper.

Hezbollah today faces not only a severe moral blow and the loss of essential personnel, but also a loss of confidence in its operational security. As a result, the group is less capable of waging a full-scale war against Israel. It can and will recover as the wounded heal, new fighters are trained, and communications systems are rebuilt. But today, Hezbollah is in an impasse: it wants to respond to the Israeli operation, but it is not prepared to withstand the Israeli response in the event of a serious escalation, for example by having the capacity to fire longer-range, higher-payload rockets deeper into Israel.

But even if it was Despite tactical success, the Israeli operations did not go exactly as planned and their strategic advantages remain inconclusive. The operation targeted Hezbollah’s wartime communications systems and was intended to be used only in the context of a full-scale war, to cripple Hezbollah should such a conflict break out. Fearing that Hezbollah might have discovered the covert operation, Israeli officials faced a critical moment and decided to detonate the devices over two days to maximize anxiety within Hezbollah.

The Israeli decision to continue the operation was based on the premise that beyond its tactical advantages, it would also signal to Hezbollah that the group would face increasingly dangerous consequences if it failed to halt its months-long rocket campaign. On the day of the alerts, Israel’s security cabinet officially expanded the country’s war aims to include returning more than 60,000 displaced Israeli civilians to their homes in abandoned communities along Israel’s northern border.

These warnings have bite, since they are the latest in a series of bold and successful actions by Israeli intelligence. In July, Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s top military official in Beirut and the Hamas leader in a Revolutionary Guards guesthouse in Tehran. Last month, Israeli intelligence launched a preemptive strike, destroying Hezbollah’s rocket-launching sites hours before the group planned to attack Tel Aviv. Two weeks ago, Israeli special forces raided an Iranian facility in Syria, destroying an underground factory producing missiles for Hezbollah. Last week, Israel launched an intensive series of airstrikes against missile launch sites in Lebanon. And just days after the Hezbollah communications devices were blown up, an Israeli airstrike reportedly killed Ibrahim Aqil, Hezbollah’s chief of military operations, as well as much of the senior command of Hezbollah’s Radwan special forces.

With these measures, Israel sent two messages to Hezbollah. The first: “We can find and kill your most senior leader. We know you intend to launch attacks before you launch them. And we can blow up the pager on your belt and the radio in your hand.” That message came through loud and clear.

What’s less clear is whether Hezbollah also heard the broader strategic message. “The goal was to convince Hezbollah that it was in its interest to disconnect from Hamas and make a separate deal to end the fighting with Israel, independent of a ceasefire in Gaza,” a person familiar with the Israeli operation told Axios. So far, however, Hezbollah said it would continue to launch rockets at Israel until a ceasefire is established in Gaza.

Perhaps this is why Hamas appears unwilling to accept a ceasefire (nor does Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu). Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar recently announced that Hamas was prepared for “a long battle of attrition.” But whether as part of a Gaza ceasefire agreement or not, Israeli officials are very serious about their commitment to allowing displaced Israeli citizens to return to their homes along the northern border. These latest strikes are aimed at reducing both Hezbollah’s ability to wage an all-out war and its ability to continue firing rockets into northern Israel.

The day before the Hezbollah pagers were blown up, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that time was running out to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Hezbollah. Two days later, Gallant announced that the attack on Hezbollah’s communications opened “a new phase” in the conflict with Iranian proxies, with the Israeli military’s focus shifting from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Lebanon. In the words of the IDF chief of staff: “The price to be paid for Hezbollah must be high.”

Hezbollah’s communications are temporarily down, but maybe they’ll still get the message.

Matthew Levitt is a senior fellow in the Fromer-Wexler Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of “Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God.”