Hezbollah Pager Attack Looks Like a Decapitation Strike
Sabotage hits Hezbollah’s top command as speculation is rife that Netanyahu may expand the Gaza war to Lebanon.
Lebanese army soldiers stand guard at the entrance of a hospital in Beirut on September 17, 2024.
Photographer: ANWAR AMRO/AFPIn what must count as one of the more extraordinary acts of sabotage of all time, as many as 2,800 people, including hundreds of Hezbollah officials, were injured and several killed across Lebanon on Tuesday, according to the country’s health ministry, when the pagers they use to communicate exploded. Somebody transformed the devices into bombs before their distribution, and the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon was among those wounded.
It isn’t as if another smoking gun was needed to establish Iran’s deep integration with members of the so-called arc of resistance it has built around Israel — from Hezbollah to Hamas to the Houthis of Yemen and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria. Even so, assuming that Iran’s state-run Mehr news agency is properly informed, there it was: a smoking pager, given to the ambassador as well as to Hezbollah.