Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader for decades, reportedly underestimated the extent of Israel’s intelligence capabilities, believing himself safe in his underground bunker in Beirut until his death in an Israeli Air Force airstrike on September 27. According to a report by The New York Times, Nasrallah dismissed warnings from his aides and resisted moving to a more secure location, confident that Israel sought to avoid a direct war with Hezbollah.

The airstrike followed 20 years of deep intelligence penetration into Hezbollah by Israeli operatives. The report revealed that Israel recruited agents to plant listening devices in Hezbollah bunkers, enabling them to monitor leadership discussions and movements. Israeli Unit 8200 also intercepted critical documents outlining Hezbollah’s arsenal and the locations of its leaders, giving Israel unparalleled insight into the organization.

One of Israel’s boldest moves involved sabotaging Hezbollah’s communication network. Israeli intelligence tricked the group into purchasing pagers and walkie-talkies embedded with explosives. On September 17 and 18, these devices were detonated, killing dozens of operatives, wounding thousands, and crippling Hezbollah’s communications. The operation disrupted the group’s coordination as Israel launched Operation Northern Arrows, a decisive campaign that decimated Hezbollah’s weapon stockpiles, elite forces, and leadership hierarchy, including Nasrallah himself.

The escalation came after nearly a year of relentless Hezbollah rocket and drone attacks on northern Israel, which began in support of Hamas following the October 7 massacre. These attacks caused dozens of Israeli deaths, including 12 Druze children in Majdal Shams, and displaced tens of thousands of residents. By the time of Nasrallah’s death, Israel had been preparing for this conflict for decades, leveraging intelligence breakthroughs to deliver a significant blow to the terrorist organization.

SOME QUOTES FROM THE NY TIMES ARTICLE:

A New York Times investigation, based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Israeli, American and European officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified operations, reveals just how extensively Israeli spies had penetrated Hezbollah. They recruited people to plant listening devices in Hezbollah bunkers, tracked meetings between one top commander and his four mistresses, and had near constant visibility into the movements of the militia group’s leaders.

The contrast between Israel’s approaches to Hezbollah and to Hamas is also stark and devastating. The intense intelligence focus on Hezbollah shows that the country’s leaders believed that the Lebanese militia group posed the greatest imminent threat to Israel. And yet it was Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a group Israeli intelligence believed had neither the interest nor the abilities to attack Israel, that launched a surprise attack and caught the nation unprepared.

Specifically, the Mossad recruited people in Lebanon to help Hezbollah build secret facilities after the war. The Mossad sources fed the Israelis information about the locations of hide-outs and assisted in monitoring them, two officials said.

Over the next three years, Israel’s increasing ability to hack into cellphones left Hezbollah, Iran and their allies increasingly wary of using smartphones. Israeli officers from Unit 8200 helped fuel the fear, using bots on social media to push Arabic-language news reports on Israel’s ability to hack into phones, according to two officers in the agency.

Worried about smartphones being compromised, Hezbollah’s leadership decided to expand its use of pagers. Such devices allowed them to send out messages to fighters but did not reveal location data nor have cameras and microphones that could be hacked.

The Mossad presented the gadget, one without any hidden explosives, to Mr. Netanyahu during a meeting in March 2023, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. The prime minister was skeptical about their durability, and asked David Barnea, the Mossad chief, how easily they might break. Mr. Barnea assured him they were sturdy.

Not convinced, Mr. Netanyahu abruptly stood up and threw the device against the wall of his office. The wall cracked, but the pager did not.

The Mossad front company shipped the first batch of pagers to Hezbollah that fall.

Israeli intelligence analysts, who were constantly monitoring the use of the devices, discovered a potential problem with the operation. At least one Hezbollah technician began to suspect that the walkie-talkies might contain hidden explosives, according to three Israeli defense officials. Israel dealt with it swiftly this year, killing the technician with an airstrike.

On Sept. 11, intelligence showed that Hezbollah was sending some of the pagers to Iran for examination, and Israeli officials knew it was only a matter of time before the covert operation would be blown.

On Sept. 16, Mr. Netanyahu met with top security chiefs to weigh whether to detonate the pagers in a “use it or lose it” operation, according to four Israeli security officials. Some opposed it, saying it might prompt a full Hezbollah counterattack and possibly a strike by Iran.

Mr. Netanyahu ordered the operation. The following day, at 3:30 p.m. local time, the Mossad ordered an encrypted message to be sent to thousands of the pagers. Seconds later, the pagers detonated.

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