The series of pager explosions that Israel allegedly orchestrated against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday represents an unprecedented attack tactic. Israel has not yet claimed responsibility, but reports indicate that nine people were killed and over 2,800 were injured. This type of warfare raises concerns about security worldwide.
Hezbollah accused Israel of being fully responsible for the attack. To avoid being tracked by Israel, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah had warned his fighters not to use cell phones in warzones. That led them to resort to pagers as an alternative.
Who’s behind this, and what’s the strategy?
There are technical differences between how mobile phones and pagers operate. This is why mobile phones can’t be weaponized as easily as pagers. Pagers use radio frequencies and are small communication devices, often just fitting in the palm of your hand. They are used to send and receive short messages and alerts. They function via radio frequencies from a base station, and a small display on the pager shows the incoming messages. The pager also has a nickname, “beeper,” likely due to the sound or vibration it makes when receiving a message.
Before the advent of mobile phones, pagers were widely used in Kerala. The BPL company first introduced them. While mobile phones could be carried in hand, pagers were often clipped to a belt with a special pouch.
There are two types of pagers: numeric and alphanumeric. As the name suggests, numeric pagers display only numbers, like phone numbers. This is the most basic form of the pager. Alphanumeric pagers, on the other hand, can display both numbers and letters. They allow for the sending and receiving of more detailed messages.
To carry out a widespread attack using pagers, Israel would need the support of multiple countries, institutions, or organizations, according to military expert Elijah Magnier, as reported in the media.
If Israel was behind the attack, their intelligence agency, Mossad, must have been involved in the production and distribution phases of the pagers. Pagers don’t just explode by themselves. While they don’t compare to mobile phones, pagers still have some advantages over early mobile phones, such as wider coverage. Pagers can function even in areas where mobile phone signals are unavailable.
Unlike modern mobile phones, pagers don’t have advanced features like voice messaging, text messaging, internet access, or video calling.
However, compared to mobile phones, pagers are harder to trace, which adds to their secrecy. This is one reason pagers are still used today, even in the smartphone era. They are easy to use and have long battery life, making them valuable in emergency services. Once charged, a pager can last for days. Their continued relevance, especially in areas with no mobile coverage, makes them important.
How then do pagers become explosive devices?
Hezbollah is a Lebanese armed group supported by Iran. It’s reported that Iran supplies Hezbollah with weapons and advanced devices through Syria and Iraq. Were these pagers supplied by Iran? Israel must have tampered with them.
Highly explosive materials may have been packed in small amounts inside the pagers, potentially up to 1 to 3 grams in each device.
Planting explosives in thousands of pagers would require significant human resources and time. From the outside, the pagers would seem normal. At the same time, the pagers must remain functional. Israel likely used a large team for this. It’s believed they might have used radio frequencies as triggers for the explosions. However, under normal radio frequencies, such explosions shouldn’t occur. There’s also speculation that explosive chemicals might have been mixed with the batteries. However, the fact that the batteries waited to explode all at once weakens this theory.
If it was a cyber attack, only pagers from the same company would have malfunctioned simultaneously. Nonetheless, the coordinated explosion of thousands of pagers across southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, Beirut, and Damascus points to a meticulously planned sabotage.
How was the explosion planned?
It’s possible that a chip was imported and installed in all the pagers used by Hezbollah members. The Israeli military, stationed in various parts of Lebanon, could have activated this chip through radio waves sent via drones. These waves may have heated the battery, causing the explosion.
It has been confirmed that the communication devices that exploded were the “latest models” Hezbollah imported in recent months. The American newspaper Wall Street Journal also reported, citing sources close to Hezbollah, that these were recently imported devices.
