Exclusive: Hezbollah suspicions forced Israel to expedite Lebanon pager attack
It was not Israel’s preferred course of action to detonate the pagers ahead of a full-scale war with Hezbollah, but security officials made an 11th-hour decision after at least two Hezbollah members suspected something was amiss with the devices.
Israel carried out its pager attack against Hezbollah on Tuesday following intelligence it gathered that two members of the Iran-backed group caught wind that the pagers had been compromised.
High-level regional intelligence sources told Al-Monitor that the decision to carry out the operation was “forced” on Israel.
Hezbollah vowed on Tuesday to retaliate for the attack, in which the detonations killed at least 11 and injured 4,000, according to Lebanese health authorities.
The intelligence sources described an intense debate within the Israeli security apparatus before the last-minute decision to execute the attack, which occurred on Tuesday at around 3:30 p.m. Beirut time. The sources revealed that thousands of pagers Hezbollah acquired for its members were booby-trapped by Israel before they were delivered recently to the organization.
