Message Received
Operation Grim Beeper
After a series of precision strikes eliminated key members of leadership, panic began to spread amongst Hezbollah operatives over insecure communications.
“I don’t have a cellphone, but for those who do, I am explaining for the 100th time — particularly to our people in southern Lebanon — give them up! ” leader Hassan Nasrallah exhorted his followers in a February 2024 speech.
He feared, rightly so, Israel's demonstrated ability to hack smartphones and implement backdoors into security protocols.
Any military formation must do three basic things in order to deliver effective violence to an enemy: maneuver, use their weapons, and communicate with each other. Each of these endeavors supports the others, like a soldier on rotation guarding a communications post.
In response to Israel's overwhelming technological advantage, Hezbollah opted for a low-tech communication alternative: thousands of old-fashioned numeric pagers (beepers) were distributed to its operatives across various units – from frontline fighters to medics and support staff.
Every time there's an assassination or infiltration into the organization, they tell us to look for the agents. Israel doesn’t need agents and collaborators because every cellular phone is a particularly lethal agent. It gives Israel all the information, even locations at home or on the street or in a car and whether you’re sitting in the front seat or the back…I tell you that the phone in your hands, in your wife's hands, and in your children's hands is the agent. Bury it. Put it in an iron box and lock it.
— Hassan Nasrallah
On September 17th, 2024, at approximately 3:30 PM local time, those pagers suddenly exploded in unison. The next day, September 18th, a second wave of blasts struck hundreds of Hezbollah's two-way radios (walkie-talkies) as well.
These devices, dubbed “suicide pagers,” were a modern day Trojan horse. They had become pocket bombs that detonated on command, overwhelming Lebanon's healthcare system as designed.
The synchronized detonations left security officials around the world stunned by the operation's audacity and mystified over the elaborate front companies that Israel set up to supply the booby-trapped devices.
They must have wondered, are own communication systems similarly vulnerable to interception? And would they ever greenlight a comparable operation — given that the pager attack killed 37 people, including at least four civilians, two of them children, and injured about 3,000?
Call waiting
Unbeknownst to Hezbollah, their need to evade Israeli signal intercepts and location-tracking presented a unique vulnerability: the need to import large quantities of simple communications devices. Israeli intelligence recognized this supply chain dependence and turned it into an opportunity.
Concerned that their usual methods of real-time tracking and targeting would be less effective, Israel sought a way not only to monitor these new communication devices, but to weaponize them.
For as long as 15 years, Israeli intelligence (primarily Mossad, or foreign intelligence) had used a Hungary-based front company, BAC Consulting, to sell pagers and walkie-talkie radios with batteries permeated in PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate), a powerful explosive.
When Hezbollah tried to harden its operational security by using pagers, they contacted trusted members in their network to procure the equipment from a reputable manufacturer. The stage was set for an unprecedented covert operation to cripple Hezbollah from within its own communications network.
In essence, Hezbollah paid for and imported the very devices that would later blow up its operatives.
Creating a “Suicide Pager”
The technical ingenuity of Operation “Grim Beeper” was remarkable. Experts noted it required at least four complex sub-operations:
- Mapping Hezbollah's supply networks
- Developing a miniaturized remote-detonated explosive
- Surreptitiously inserting those into thousands of devices
- Coordinating their near-simultaneous activation across a wide geography
If any element had failed – for example, if Hezbollah had discovered even one booby-trapped pager beforehand – the whole plan would have been compromised. The successful execution demonstrated an extraordinary level of covert reach and precision by Israeli intelligence.
According to Reuters and multiple intelligence sources, the agents who built the pagers designed a battery that concealed a small but potent charge of plastic explosive and a novel detonator that was invisible even to X-ray scans.
An elaborate backstory was developed to give this special battery, labelled LI-BT783, a plausible backstory and market history, complete with fake customer reviews and a YouTube marketing video.
In September 2023, webpages and images featuring the Apollo Gold AR-924 pager and its battery were added to apollosystemshk.com, a website that claimed it had a license to distribute Gold Apollo products, as well as the rugged pager and its bulky power source.
The websites and reviews have been scrubbed from the web since the pager bombs wreaked havoc in Lebanon, but archived and cached copies are still viewable.
At the chosen time, Israeli operators broadcast a coded signal and the pager's hidden detonator activated the explosive. Lebanese investigators later learned that many victims heard a “special beep”, indicating an incoming message, just before their pager blew up when they clicked to read it. In other cases, the pagers apparently exploded outright when the code was received.
Targets and Strategic Intent
The operation targeted Hezbollah's personnel and communications infrastructure. The victims of the pager and radio explosions were overwhelmingly Hezbollah members or affiliates who had been issued the devices. Hezbollah itself stated that the pagers belonged “to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions” – in other words, a broad swath of the organization's rank-and-file.
By relying on Hezbollah to distribute the devices among themselves, the Israelis in effect let Hezbollah select the targets: anyone trusted enough to be given one of the new pagers or radios became marked for death or injury when the time came.
Notably, Hezbollah's top leadership was not hit. Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah later claimed that the senior leaders shrewdly avoided using the new pagers, sticking with older devices, and so they survived unscathed.
The explosive was tiny, but the less-than-lethal mutilation was intentional. A news report from Channel 12 in Israel said, “it was regarded as ‘preferable’ that the large number of Hezbollah fighters whose devices exploded be badly injured rather than killed, in part because of the immense strain this placed on health services in Lebanon, and by extension the raised domestic pressure on Hezbollah.”
Israel's strategic intent behind Operation Grim Beeper can be analyzed on multiple levels:
Immediate harm: The primary goal was to instantly neutralize a large number of Hezbollah operatives and disrupt their communications. In a single stroke, the operation incapacitated thousands of Hezbollah members – killing some, blinding or wounding many, and sowing chaos in their ranks.
Communication breakdown: Although no top leader was killed, the synchronous blasts caused havoc throughout Hezbollah's chain of command. Field units suddenly couldn't reach their commanders, and many commanders found their men maimed or incapacitated.
Psychological warfare: The manner of the attack – turning Hezbollah's own trusted devices into bombs – had a chilling psychological effect far beyond the casualty numbers. Hezbollah operatives faced the terrifying realization that Israel's intelligence had penetrated them so deeply that nowhere was safe – not even a pager in one's pocket.
Deterrence and strategic signaling: Israeli strategists may also have intended Grim Beeper as a signal or deterrent to prevent a larger war. Some experts interpret the operation as “escalate to de-escalate” – delivering a shock so severe that Hezbollah would think twice about continuing hostilities. By demonstrating an ability to totally compromise Hezbollah's supply chain and security at all levels, Israel sent a message that any further escalation (like Hezbollah initiating a full-scale war) would be disastrous for Hezbollah.
In sum, Operation Grim Beeper's objectives ranged from the very tactical (kill and injure fighters, destroy their communications) to grander ambition (deter a regional war and weaken the Iran-led coalition). As a senior Mossad officer summed up, “We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are… They'll have to keep guessing what the next thing is”.
In essence, the operation functioned as a distributed decapitation strike against Hezbollah's network, without a single airstrike launched or troop crossing the border.
Ethical and Legal Controversies
The unprecedented nature of Operation Grim Beeper immediately sparked intense ethical and legal debate. While Israel and its supporters lauded the operation's precision and ingenuity, many observers – including human rights organizations and legal experts – condemned it as a potential war crime and a dangerous escalation that blurred the line between combatant and civilian.
Mai El-Sadany
@maitelsadany
There is no world in which the explosion of hundreds, if not thousands, of pagers is not an indiscriminate attack prohibited by international law.
When those pagers were set off, there was no way to know if they would be in shopping markets, homes, or streets with busy traffic.
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Operation Grim Beeper has raised uncomfortable questions about the erosion of norms in asymmetrical conflict. If state actors adopt tactics that terrorize civilians under the banner of fighting terrorism, where is the line drawn? This ethical quandary remains a subject of heated discussion in the wake of the pager attacks.
Shockwaves
For the global intelligence community, Operation Grim Beeper was a double-edged sword. On one hand, it provided invaluable intelligence in the moment: by observing which individuals were affected, agencies could literally map Hezbollah's organizational structure and presence.
Every pager that blew up effectively pinpointed a Hezbollah operative, giving insight into the group's reach across Lebanon and Syria. It's reported that intelligence agencies around the world quietly took note of who showed up at hospitals or disappeared after the blasts, refining their databases on Hezbollah members.
On the other hand, the long-term effect is that Hezbollah and other militant groups will change their security protocols, making traditional surveillance harder. While Hezbollah losing its ability to communicate freely is a short-term win for Israel, it's also a loss for all global intelligence agencies that had been monitoring those communications.
If Hezbollah resorts to more encrypted, undercover, or analog methods, the West's ability to intercept their plans could diminish. Essentially, Israel “burned” a covert capability, closing that door for future spying or sabotage.
More importantly, the operation has set a precedent that other nations are surely studying. Operation Grim Beeper showcased the effectiveness of supply chain sabotage and covert tech interdiction in warfare. Countries might seek to emulate these tactics against their adversaries, such as by surreptitiously placing backdoors into computer chips.
The operation's long-term consequence may be an even more clandestine struggle between Israel and its foes – moving away from overt conflict to a shadow war of sabotage and counter-sabotage.
60 Minutes interview
60 Minutes confirmed many technical details when they interviewed Mossad agents directly involved with the operation: The explosive component was manufactured in Israel and integrated into the pager batteries at a clandestine facility. The trigger was a novel encrypted signal.
Lesley Stahl marveled that Hezbollah essentially bought 16,000 of these devices from a fake company Mossad set up, to which the agent "Michael" quipped, “They got a good price”.
One striking revelation was how Mossad ensured maximum impact: they designed the trigger signal such that users would instinctively hold the pager in both hands and close to their face, as if reading a message – thereby maximizing injuries when it blew up. Indeed, doctors noted many patients had missing fingers and facial injuries, consistent with holding the pager at eye level.
The Mossad agents portrayed the operation as a resounding success, claiming it “decimated” Hezbollah and even accelerated the collapse of Hezbollah's ally, the Syrian regime. They asserted that Hezbollah's will to fight was broken: “The wind was taken out of Hezbollah's fight after the pager operation,” the agent said, adding that Hezbollah fighters felt isolated and abandoned after seeing their comrades slain.
The 60 Minutes interview also showed footage of the bloody aftermath. Stahl pressed the Mossad agents on the ethics, noting children were killed. The agents, while expressing no joy in civilian casualties, defended the operation as targeting “terrorists who hide among civilians.” They also suggested Hezbollah's own conduct, such as embedding within civilian areas, was to blame for any collateral damage – a point hotly disputed by rights groups.
The public impact of the 60 Minutes piece was significant: it essentially confirmed Israel's responsibility in the eyes of the world and painted the operation as a landmark in spycraft. Israeli officials did not comment on the record in the program, maintaining official ambiguity, but off-record many acknowledged the interviews likely had at least tacit approval from the government as a form of psychological warfare and bragging rights.
The 60 Minutes report served as a form of validation (or vindication) for Israel's narrative by letting Mossad insiders frame the story. Meanwhile, Lebanese and international media kept alive the questions of legality and morality. The story of the “exploding pagers” thus became a case study in the power – and peril – of modern spycraft, capturing imaginations and raising alarms in equal measure.
The operation’s consequences have extended far beyond Hezbollah. The resulting instability accelerated the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and significantly weakened Iran’s influence in the region. For Israel, the operation restored its sense of security and sent a powerful message to its adversaries: "Don’t mess with us."
