Hezbollah terrorists were reportedly close to uncovering Israel’s modifications to the terror group’s pagers, forcing Israel to preemptively use the mass attack.
By David Rosenberg, World Israel News
Israel’s attack on thousands of Hezbollah terrorists across Lebanon and Syria Tuesday had originally been planned to take place only in the event of a full-scale war on the Israel-Lebanon border, three U.S. officials claim, and was only carried out amid concerns the terror group was close to revealing Israel’s modifications to the electronic beepers used in the attack.
On Tuesday, thousands of pager devices issued to Hezbollah operatives and associates detonated en masse, killing eleven and injuring roughly 4,000.
The devices reportedly exploded as part of a large-scale attack conducted by Israel’s Mossad, which is claimed to have implanted miniature explosive devices in the Hezbollah pagers five months ago, prior to their delivery to Lebanon.
However, according to three U.S. officials cited in a report by Axios Wednesday, the pager attack had been held in reserve by Israel, and was slated for use only if a full-scale war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah.
Recently, however, Israeli intel officials came to believe that the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group was close to discovering the modifications to the pagers, forcing Israel to either activate the devices immediately, or lose its capability.
“It was a use it or lose it moment,” one U.S. official explained, saying that Israel had informed the U.S. of its reasoning for the timing of Tuesday’s attack.
According to a former Israeli official cited by Axios, the operation had been planned as an opening salvo in a potential full-scale war with Hezbollah, crippling the terror group’s leadership and sowing chaos in its ranks at the outset of the war.
A separate report by Al-Monitor claimed that two Hezbollah terrorists had recently raised concerns regarding the group’s pagers over the past few days, sparking fears in Israel’s intelligence community the explosive devices were on the verge of discovery.