Israel Taiwan's 'Pager Bomb' Cell Phone Weapon 8200 Unit Hezbollah 'Ground War'
Israel's 8200 Unit, which used a Hungarian front company to infiltrate 'pager bombs' from Taiwan into Lebanon, tracked the details with drones for a long time, and completely penetrated the cell phone, killing a Hezbollah leader, and Israel's credit rating downgrade is expected to suffer a larger ground operation, the New York Times reported on the 28th.
Israel's signals intelligence agency, 8200 Unit, has built cutting-edge cyber tools to better intercept Hezbollah's cell phones and other communications, and has created a new team within the combat unit to ensure that the information it gathers can be quickly relayed to soldiers and the Air Force, which has dropped more than 80 3,000-pound bombs from fighter jets.
Mark Kelly, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee, confirmed the use of the US's Joint Direct Attack Munitions in an NBC interview on the 29th, saying, "They used the 2,000-pound Mark 84 series bomb that was used to kill Nasrallah," and "We're seeing more use of guided missiles (JDAMs), and we're continuing to provide these weapons."
In the decades since the 34-day war with Lebanon in 2006, when Israel failed to secure a decisive victory, and a UN-brokered ceasefire, the Israeli military and intelligence agencies have stepped up what was already considered one of the world’s best intelligence-gathering operations, deploying cutting-edge cyber tools to better intercept cellphones and other communications from the Mossad and Israel’s military intelligence agency, Unit 8200, and flying more drones and advanced satellites over Lebanon to continuously photograph Hezbollah strongholds, many of which the Israeli air force struck last week.
The Times reported that Unit 8200 and the National Security Agency have forged stronger ties, expanding Israel’s intelligence on mutual enemies such as Iran and Hezbollah, and that Israel has taken advantage of Lebanon’s proximity (Jerusalem is 150 miles from the Lebanese border) to deploy covert commandos deep inside the country to conduct sensitive intelligence missions.
Israel had so thoroughly penetrated Hezbollah’s cell phones that Hezbollah decided to switch to pagers and portable radios for communication, but Israel responded by setting up a front company in Budapest, Hungary, that manufactured the pagers under license from a Taiwanese company, the Times reported.
Before the Taiwanese-made pagers arrived in Lebanon, Israeli agents planted explosives in them and scaled up the operation to produce thousands of the devices, requiring sophisticated manufacturing.
The Israeli detonation of the pagers in Lebanon earlier this month came after Israeli officials quickly detonated them when they discovered that Hezbollah had also damaged portable radios, killing civilians, including children, and sending Lebanon into panic. Israel has been sending more drones and advanced satellites over Lebanon, constantly photographing Hezbollah’s strongholds, even the smallest changes in buildings that could reveal weapons caches.
In another article, the Times cited expert assessments of Israel’s offensive, warning that “pushing Hezbollah too quickly could be a mistake,” and that “in Gaza, Israel has fought for 11 months to dismantle its less sophisticated enemy, Hamas, but has failed to achieve decisive victories and has suffered enormous casualties.”
Hamas’ extensive network of tunnels has harassed Israeli forces, while Hezbollah has its own network that is even more sophisticated.
U.S. officials said Hamas learned what it knew about the tunnels from Hezbollah, and Hamas called Hezbollah its “big brother.”
U.S. officials told the Times that Israel bombarded Hezbollah’s tunnels with artillery fire but caused little damage.
“A bigger effort would require heavier, more destructive bombs, followed by ground operations to clear out fighter jets and weapons launch sites,” said Dana Stroll, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East affairs and now a research director at the Center for Near East Policy. “Lebanon is a very different place. It’s mountainous, so it’s easier to hide stuff. They were drilling into the rock,” he said in the New York Times interview.
Major General Yaacov Aish, a former Israeli military operations chief, said Israel had previously discovered tunnels 65 yards deep near the border.
“Hezbollah has not yet used even 10 percent of its capabilities,” said Yossi Yehoshua, a military affairs correspondent for Israel’s largest daily newspaper, Yediot Ahronot. “The apparent euphoria among decision-makers and some in the public needs to be put back in the attic. The situation is still complex and combustible.”
“This is a huge blow to Hezbollah and an intelligence failure,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a Hezbollah expert at the Swedish National Defense College. “They (Israeli intelligence) knew he was meeting, he was meeting with other commanders, and they just went looking for him,” he told Reuters on Monday. The Israeli military has killed eight of Hezbollah’s nine senior military commanders this year, including its top leader Nasrallah, who led units ranging from the rocket division to the elite Radwan unit.
About 1,500 Hezbollah fighters were crippled by explosive pagers and radios on September 17 and 18, Reuters said.
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told a briefing on Monday that the Israeli military had “real-time” intelligence that Nasrallah and other leaders were gathering.
Brigadier General Amichai Levin, commander of Israel’s Hatzerim air base, told reporters on Tuesday that dozens of rounds hit their targets within seconds, adding that “this was a complex operation and had been planned for a long time.”
On the 27th, credit rating agency Moody's lowered Israel's sovereign credit rating from A2 to Baa1 due to the Hezbollah incident.
In February, Moody's lowered Israel's sovereign credit rating by one notch due to the prolonged Hamas war.
On August 12, credit rating agency Fitch downgraded Israel's sovereign credit rating from 'A+' to 'A', stating the outlook for the rating as 'negative' and indicating the possibility of further downgrades.
The Fitch report stated that "public finances have been hit by the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, heightened geopolitical risks, and military operations on multiple fronts, and the fiscal deficit in 2024 is 7.8% of GDP," indicating a 'deterioration in finances.
The Washington Post reported on the 26th that “tens of thousands of businesses have closed in Israel, and workers have been called up to the reserves, reducing the labor force,” and that “since the Hamas war on October 7 last year, about 287,000 people have been drafted in Israel, a country with a population of 10 million, and many of the draftees are workers, struggling to balance their career goals with frontline work.”