Last month, Israel astounded the world with a bold operation in which thousands of pagers (and then walkie talkies) belonging to Hezbollah operatives exploded.
Now, in new footage, survivors of the attack who were evacuated to Iran can be seen praying at the Imam's tomb in the city of Mashhad, with various types of injuries, bandages over their eyes, missing fingers, and more.
Earlier this week, a Washington Post investigation revealed that the pagers that exploded in the hands of Hezbollah operatives last month were designed by the Mossad and assembled in Israel.
According to sources who spoke to the Washington Post, the idea for the pager operation first came up in 2022. It was Israel's response to Hezbollah's strengthening and arming itself (or being armed) with new missiles.
Parts of the plan began to be implemented more than a year before Hamas's attack on October 7, 2023. Hezbollah leaders were wary of Israel's attempts to track them and feared that regular cell phones could turn into Israeli-controlled listening and tracking devices.
Thus, the idea to create a sort of Trojan horse was born. Hezbollah was searching for hack-proof electronic networks to send messages and the Mossad led them to purchase devices that seemed perfect for the job – equipment that the Mossad had designed and assembled in Israel.
It was an ingenious and complex operation and Hezbollah was completely taken by surprise three weeks ago (17 September) when thousands of pagers carried by their top operatives exploded. This was followed a day later by their walkie talkies exploding. Both of these attacks led to a lot of their senior fighters being taken out of commission, as they face serious injury including being blinded and maimed.
