Exploding pagers in Lebanon deals severe blow to Hezbollah.

 

A car that was damaged in the attack. AP. 

Exploding pagers in Lebanon have dealt a severe blow to Hezbollah. AP. At least nine people have died, including an 8 year old girl, and thousands have been injured after thousands of pagers exploded at the same time across Lebanon and Syria. The pagers had been sabotaged with explosives and were set off by a signal. Hezbollah had ordered their members to switch from cell phones to pagers to avoid intelligence gathering from Israel. The attack was extremely complicated and involved exploiting the supply chain. Though Israel has not taken credit for the attack, Hezbollah and Lebanon have blamed Israel for the attack. Hezbollah has vowed retaliation for the attack. Iran's ambassador to Lebanon was also injured in the attack. 

My Comment:

This was a very important and devastating attack in Lebanon and one that will probably draw blowback. Thousands of people were injured and it's amazing that more people weren't killed. Given how devastating this blow was I am guessing that Hezbollah will be forced to respond. 

The attack is honestly incredibly impressive. Israel saw an opportunity and took it. They had to get these pagers into the supply line and they sent them across both Lebanon and Syria. The attack didn't kill many people but it did injure thousands of people, many of them members of Hezbollah. This kind of thing is mostly unprecedented and we haven't really seen anything like this before. 

I do worry that many of the people killed in this attack had nothing to do with Hezbollah. The charges in these pagers were not super powerful but they were big enough that someone standing next someone with it could have been injured or even killed as well. The one video I saw (which I won't post here) had a guy shopping in a market and it looked like the guy next to him, which could have just been some random guy, got hurt too. And were these pagers sold to the general public? Hezbollah were the main targets but they aren't the only people that could be using pagers. I don't know what the culture is in Lebanon, but I know pagers are popular with doctors here in the USA, so perhaps something similar happened here?

The problem with this is  that there is absolutely going to be blow back. Hezbollah has been damaged but not defeated and I am guessing they might even start a war with Israel after this. They would almost have to, they lost a lot of face by falling for this attack. 

This does seem like the kind of thing that is only going to work once. People across the world now will be checking their electronics for explosives. I don't think Israel will be able to do this again and I don't really think anyone else will try. 

The side benefit for this attack is that Hezbollah (and other Israeli adversaries in the region) are not going to be able to trust their communications devices. I am sure they will find a workaround eventually, but that is probably going to be cell phones and those can be monitored. I don't think they can move back to pagers after this...