At around 3.30 pm local time in southern Lebanon, the southern Beirut neighbourhood of Dahiyeh and eastern Bekaa Valley — Hezbollah strongholds — hundreds of low-tech pagers, a messaging device, began beeping. The unsuspecting users had no idea that their devices were rigged. And there was no time to figure it out. The beep came from a frequency dedicated to activating the explosive in the rigged devices. Nearly 3,000 devices exploded simultaneously.
Until last reports some 2,800 users were wounded, at least 200 critically. There were also nine deaths. Some devices also exploded in Syria. Those who sustained critical or severe injuries and burns were those who actually held the pagers after the beeps to check the message. The users who had the devices in their backpacks or hip pockets and couldn't reach them in the seconds the devices exploded, were the more lucky ones.
Information has already begun trickling out and the evidence points to Israel's Mossad agency. There's no official word from Israel since the country does not acknowledge covert, intelligence operations — covert being the operative word — but it has Mossad's signature all over it.
The United States-based news site, Axios, spoke with three unnamed US officials to report that "Israel decided to blow up the pager devices carried by Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday out of concern its secret operation might have been discovered by the group."
"It was a use it or lose it moment," one US official said describing the reasoning Israel gave the US for the timing of the attack.
Axios further reported: A former Israeli official with knowledge of the operation said Israeli intelligence services planned to use the booby-trapped pagers it managed to "plant" in Hezbollah's ranks as a surprise opening blow in an all-out war to try to cripple Hezbollah.
This indicates that Israel might have got some intel that Hezbollah's counterintelligence could discover the ploy and decided to bring forward the pager attack date, instead of using it to open the larger air-ground offensive against Hezbollah later.
Gold Apollo CEO says BAC is an agent with which they have cooperated for the past three years. This also appears to be a lie because the company was registered in mid-2020
Further evidence of Mossad's signature on the attack comes from the Israeli media, and more details are likely to come out in the coming days. Be that as it may, intelligence experts, including Hezbollah's own, are united in describing the successful attack as Hezbollah's biggest counterintelligence failure.
It is also clear that Mossad operatives had physical access to these devices, which is when they were rigged. That's where the statement by Hsu Ching-Kuang, the CEO of Gold Apollo, comes in. Speaking to the media in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei, Hsu said, "The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it."
This is where the story begins to get knotty. Hsu said that the beepers were made by a Europe-based company, though at that point he did not disclose where in Europe the company was based. The Star Times did report that he said, "The remittance was very strange," and "payments had come through the Middle East." Hsu did not elaborate further.
Later reports by newswires and other European publications identified the company as BAC Consulting KFT, based in Hungary. I did a Google check with BAC Consulting, and it took me to the website of a German company based in Munich. I changed the search parameters to add Hungary and KFT and it gave me barebones information, listing a tax and registration number, 1142 Budapest Szonyi ut 33/A as its address, 06/05/2022 as the date of establishment, 31/12, 2023 as the date of the latest financial report. It lists the owner as '1' and manager as '1'. It lists its main activity as: 7022 Business and other management consultancy activity.
Even to a financial neophyte like me, it's clear that this is sheer malarkey and this entity is a shell company. This forces us back to the Gold Apollo CEO, Hsu. Why would the company allow a shell company to use its brand. One doesn't have to be a business or financial maven to know what brand protection means and why companies guard it so jealously. A strong and positive brand reputation is a company's most valuable asset.
Besides, the Gold Apollo CEO says BAC is an agent with which they have cooperated for the past three years. This also appears to be a lie because the company was registered in mid-2020; plus, having an agent is different from allowing a company which can manufacture the devices to use the Gold Apollo brand.
Either Hsu is feeding everyone nonsense or he was taken for a ride. Let's assume the two possibilities one by one. Someone from BAC approaches Hsu and says they manufacture beepers and would like to use the Gold Apollo brand for their beepers. What due diligence would a company do? What kind of questions would Gold Apollo have for such a request in a series of meetings? How many man-hours Gold Apollo's lawyers and in-house technical experts would spend to investigate the bona-fides of BAC? Given that I am certain that any reader of this article will be better informed on these issues than me, I will leave it at this.
Vital, lesson for the Axis of Resistance is to develop high-grade capabilities to undertake, plan and execute intelligence-based operations a la Israel. The best deterrence against precise targeting is always through precise targeting
In which case, either someone approached Hsu and offered a lot of money for Gold Apollo to manufacture a particular lot which was then exported to some place where Mossad had physical possession of these devices before they were sent to Lebanon or Mossad made the BAC play and Hsu thought the money was good enough for Gold Apollo to allow a shell company to assemble its product and put the company's logo on it.
Gold Apollo obviously has to answer many questions, notwithstanding the indignation expressed by Hsu at the presser. It is complicit, either directly or indirectly, and dedicated law enforcement can get to the bottom of it.
For Hezbollah, the episode creates a host of problems, besides being humiliating. While the group has done well to engage Israel in support of Hamas, even if within a restricted battlespace, it has taken many losses. Israel's retaliatory policy has been intelligence-based. It picks up Hezbollah positions and the movement of its leaders and cadres and takes them out.
Israel uses intelligence-based operations for at least seven major reasons: one, such operations are precise and Israel has honed this capability and invested in it over decades; two, IBOs indicate penetration of the adversary's counterintelligence, sows suspicion and forces the adversary to cleanse its ranks; three, IBOs have a psychological effect on the adversary (in terms of comms protocols and their integrity as well as security of movement); four, the scalpel approach results in higher payoffs by neutralising high-value targets; five, it signals to the adversary that Israel can reach the intended target within the adversary's lair (Ismail Haniyeh's assassination in an IRGC-run guesthouse in Tehran is a case in point); six, clever wedding of human intelligence to technology demonstrates innovation; seven, it attempts to deter while promising more punishment if the adversary does not heed the signal.
Hezbollah's work is cut out for it. Hassan Nasrallah is scheduled to speak on Thursday and there might be some hints. Hezbollah has already stated that its attacks will continue and it will also exact revenge for the pager attack. It will be feverishly performing forensics on the pagers to determine how exactly they were rigged and how exactly a radio frequency was used to activate the explosion. Hezbollah will also be looking into where exactly these pagers came from (if they didn’t from Gold Apollo), who within the group were part of this process of acquisition, and whether the source of this import and its supply chain was monitored and vetted. Most importantly, whether these devices were checked before being distributed. A pager is a small device. Any additions to it should have been detected if the devices were checked. Clearly, somewhere and somehow this process got compromised. This counterintelligence exercise will be hectic and tedious but crucial.
Many other decisions will also be taken. Disruptive attacks like this one force the victim into reevaluating internal security and protocols.
But the most important, I would say, vital, lesson for the Axis of Resistance is to develop high-grade capabilities to undertake, plan and execute intelligence-based operations a la Israel. The best deterrence against precise targeting is always through precise targeting. If Iran could neutralise a high-value target in Jerusalem after Haniyeh's assassination, that would signal a capability to Israel, forcing it to rethink the utility of assassinations because of reprisals from the adversary.
It will take time, but there's no avoiding it.