Paging Hezbollah: How Israel will follow up exploding beepers

Israel just turned the screw tighter in Lebanon, as the IDF sent an urgent message to Hezbollah.In what initially appeared to be a cyber-triggered attack, dozens of Hezbollah operatives were wounded Tuesday afternoon when their encrypted pagers exploded at 3:30PM across Beirut.Videos of bloodied militiamen quickly spread on social media.Several of the videos captured outward explosions, suggesting that Israel was able to infiltrate Hezbollah’s communications supply chain and implant small explosives that were then detonated via a page or a cyber-based command.How it was done remains to be determined.One thing is abundantly clear: Israel resides in Hezbollah’s communications network, as well as in Iran’s air defense network, and has established dominance in the cyber domain — and now its supply chains.Why attack now is the bigger question.For Israel to reveal this level of penetration into Hezbollah’s command and control communications, something big is likely in the making.It could be one final warning from Jerusalem to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and to Iran to cease and desist rocket attacks in Northern Israel that have displaced more than 60,000 Israelis.Yet paging Nasrallah and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on this scale has the look and feel of an opening act.Early reports suggest hundreds of Hezbollah figures were targeted, with the Lebanese Health Ministry reporting upwards of 2,800 people injured, 200 critically, and 8 dead.

Notably, Mojtaba Amani, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, was also hurt in the attack.Hours earlier, Israel’s Security Cabinet announced that it had overnight “updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes.Israel will continue to act to implement this objective.”Given the urgency of an overnight meeting of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, we can’t overlook the possibility that the IDF detecte...