Israel's destruction of Hezbollah and the assassination of the terrorist group's leader reportedly followed years of planning and execution.
Hassan Nasrallah was killed Sept. 27 when Israeli F-15 jets bombed a bunker in Beirut, Lebanon. Nasrallah's body was found in an embrace with a top Iranian general. Both men died of suffocation, The New York Times reported Sunday.
Nasrallah's death culminated a two-week campaign, which combined military power with covert technological maneuvers, such as Israel on Sept. 17 remotely detonating explosives hidden in thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah terrorists.
Israel's success in dismantling Hezbollah dealt a blow to Iran's regional strategy of funding groups focused on Israel's destruction.
The Jewish state's actions also were the result of two decades of methodical intelligence work, the Times reported.
Although Nasrallah believed Israel had no interest in a full-scale war, Israelis prepared for a war that many people thought was inevitable.
The success against Nasrallah and Hezbollah came about 18 years after war between Israel and the Lebanese terrorist group was a bloody stalemate.
The Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, used spies to penetrate Hezbollah, recruit people to plant listening devices in the terrorists' bunkers, and gain almost constant visibility into the movements of the group’s leaders, the Times reported.
One key moment occurred in 2012, when Unit 8200, Israel's equivalent of the National Security Agency, stole a trove of information that included details of secret hideouts and the terrorists' arsenal of missiles and rockets.
Sources told the Times that Israel had "target portfolios" for just under 200 Hezbollah leaders, operatives, weapons caches, and missile locations when the 2006 war ended. That grew to the tens of thousands of portfolios by the time Israel launched its recent campaign in September.
Also, the Mossad spent nearly a decade tricking Hezbollah into buying military equipment and telecommunication devices from Israeli shell companies.
Officers from Unit 8200 used bots on social media to push Arabic-language news reports on Israel’s ability to hack into smartphones and convince Hezbollah leaders that pagers were safer to use.
Several times, it appeared Hezbollah might discover Israel’s clandestine operations. In late 2023, a Hezbollah technician got suspicious about the batteries in the walkie-talkies. In September, Unit 8200 found that Hezbollah operatives were sending some pagers to Iran for inspection.
That’s when top intelligence officials persuaded Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give the order to detonate the pagers and, a day later, walkie-talkies.
The years of planning to decimate Hezbollah indicated Israel’s leaders believed the Lebanese terrorist group posed the greatest imminent threat to Israel. However, it was Hamas who invaded Israel and massacred more than 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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