The real way to de-escalate the conflict

Who uses a pager anymore? Some of us old enough certainly had them, back in the ‘90s. Why would one use such devices again now in 2024? If you are an actively aggressive terror army, it’s not hard to conceive. Pagers have no microphone, no connection to the internet, and are used as one way signal receiving devices, ostensibly safe from revealing the users’ info or location. That is, unless they explode, targeting each person directly involved with Hezbollah’s highest command. Thus those nearly 3,000 injured across Lebanon and reportedly also Syria, are overwhelmingly young men. And these devices were not sitting in drawers. They were clearly important, with even the Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon suffering serious eye injuries. That thing was close at hand, and he was eager to see what he was being paged. 

If Israel did simultaneously and remotely detonate thousands of secretive pagers in the pockets and hands of Hezbollah’s regional leadership, as Hezbollah is claiming, it is the most daring and successful operation in the vaunted history of Israeli spycraft and warfare. While Israel has made no official comment, I’m willing to take the leap that the Israeli Mossad was involved. 

While Hezbollah has fired more than 8,000 rockets, sophisticated missiles, and explosive drones into northern Israeli towns this year, with bombardments on a daily and nightly basis, Israel would certainly have an interest in dealing such a blow to the terror army for multiple reasons. Firstly, this simultaneous strike essentially cripples the country-wide leadership of Hezbollah. Those pagers aren’t saying “call me back,” they are for receiving orders, and taking action. Those who carried them were important, likely vital to Hezbollah’s ability to fight a wider war against Israel. 

The reports claim this sophisticated strike was intended to be utilized as an opening blow in a wider ground war to destroy Hezbollah’s menacing Sword of Damocles arsenal of deadly projectiles hanging over Israel. That arsenal, all aimed at the State of Israel, roughly the size of New Jersey, is reported to be larger and more advanced than all of Europe’s missile stockpiles combined. One can imagine how destabilizing this strike would have been in the early phase of an escalated ground conflict. If the reports are true, allegedly the Mossad hit the red button because it was concerned this embedded capability would be discovered, or decided the attack would better serve as a pre-emptive deterrent blow. 

With thousands of Hezbollah’s top operatives across Lebanon and Syria out of commission, the group’s strategic communication network literally blown up, and the hospitals bursting already with the wounded, how could they now embark on a wider war with Israel? There is nowhere to put the inevitable flood of freshly wounded fighters. Yesterday Hezbollah and Lebanese government officials even called for the general population to stay off the roads, as the ambulance traffic was so heavy they needed widespread priority. How could Hezbollah, in such a moment, actually widen its 11-month ongoing aggressive war against Israel?  

Starting on that horrific October day last year, the sharks encircling Israel smelled blood. This strike on Hezbollah therefore can be seen as a major step towards restoring a semblance of Israeli deterrence, so eroded since the invasion and massacre on the 7th. And while international pressure mounts for a vague “de-escalation,” this strike is a great example of how that actually works in the Middle East. This is an attempt by Israel to avoid a wider ground war with the deeply embedded, internationally-recognized terror army in Lebanon, which by Hezbollah’s precise design, would necessitate the killing of thousands of Lebanese people likely not directly engaged in the fighting. Israel doesn’t want to kill Lebanese people. Israel doesn’t want to kill anyone, unless of course that person is actively pursuing and plotting the killing of Israelis. It’s a red line. And now the Iranian axis from Hodeida, to Tehran, to Damascus, and down to Beirut and beyond must pause and ask themselves, what else does the Mossad have up their sleeves? 

It is about time for the world to wake up to the glaring fact that Lebanon, a once darling of the east and west alike, is gone. The power sharing agreements that brought an ostensible end to the bloody civil war there in 1989 are now just concepts on paper. And as the State of Lebanon has collapsed, the US nonetheless continues to financially and materially supply the inept Lebanese Armed Forces, and the UN spends tens of millions of dollars every year, deploying thousands of international “peacekeepers” along the raging war front of the Israel Lebanon border. It’s hard to say what they do there, except hide from the crossfire and literally complicate Israel’s ability to defend itself. But it gets worse yet, the state of Lebanon hasn’t just collapsed, with widespread power blackouts, trash buildups, unemployment, brain drain, and staggering inflation, but it has actually been taken over by the revolutionary regime in Iran, doing the same in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Ironically, and clearly sensing a moment to score domestic points with hostile-to-Israel local populations, Arab countries began to pledge “aid” to Lebanon in the wake of yesterday’s pager strike. Where have these dozens of regionally allied countries been while Lebanon fell into ruin and became a vassal of Tehran over the last 3 decades?

Hezbollah is an integral and core part of Southern Lebanon’s Shiite community along with a substantial portion of Beirut. Its terrorist army ranks are filled directly from the array of towns and villages sprawling the mostly Southern Lebanese hillsides. Day to day, they masquerade as average individuals, men, to be clear, outwardly indistinguishable from other local residents. So when this terror army has its chief field operatives and regional leaders so invisibly embedded across their society, how would one be able to target them, as precisely as possible, without causing widespread harm to the remaining population?  Fortunately, or decidedly unfortunately, this is a dilemma Israel faces on multiple fronts, with enemies exploiting the IDF’s moral character to their advantage, and this week it appears Israel conceived and implemented an incredibly imaginative response to the challenge. 

Time will tell what this unbelievably precisely targeted and widespread strike will deliver to the strategic battlefield, but clearly the move has the chance to restore deterrence, and at least for the near-term, sideline the prospect of a wider war with the many groups deeply committed to Israel’s destruction.