A region fearing all-out war may have been taken to the brink by a legion of pagers and walkie-talkies.
Waves of explosions in supermarkets and streets across Lebanon in successive attacks over two days reverberated from Beirut to the south in a targeted effort, largely attributed to Israel, to hobble the militant and political group Hezbollah.
At least 12 people were killed, including an 11-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl, and more than 2,700 people injured in the coordinated explosions of pagers that belonged to Hezbollah members. A day later, walkie-talkies were hit with a similar attack that killed 25 people and injured hundreds of others.
Israel has not directly claimed responsibility for the operation, but Hezbollah laid the blame squarely on its adversary, and two U.S. officials told NBC News that Israel was behind the attack.
From Russia to Jordan, countries warned that this was a dangerous escalation after months of simmering conflict in the Middle East. On Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called the attacks an act of of war against Lebanon. Israel flew fighter jets over Beirut during his speech, rocking the capital with sonic booms, as the Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah exchanged fire over the border.
NBC News looks at what the operation, which has killed or wounded so many, might have been aiming to achieve and what could come next.
Why now?
Israel announced a new war objective late Monday — the safe return of residents displaced from their homes by months of fighting with Hezbollah across the northern border with Lebanon. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also warned the U.S. that the only way to achieve that goal was “via military action.”
The growing fear and expectation was that some form of escalation was likely imminent. Then the pagers exploded.
It was initially unclear why Israel carried out Tuesday’s pager attack when it did and whether it was an opportunistic operation or something more strategic, two U.S. officials and a Western official told NBC News on Wednesday.
And despite the second wave of walkie-talkie attacks and the airstrikes that followed, a former senior Israeli security official told NBC News said the attacks were opportunistic and not part of a wider strategic offensive.
“The timing was not a strategic decision, but of necessity, because it became a kind of use-it-or-lose-it situation,” the former official said. “Israel got a tactical success, which is substantial, but it’s still tactical.”
It was unclear if Israel would use this tactical advantage to wage a larger offensive against Hezbollah or if Hezbollah would stage a major campaign against Israel.
“We’re not going to war with Lebanon as of now,” the former official said.
There was even the possibility that the pager attack could be used to defuse tensions and start a dialogue, persuading Hezbollah to de-escalate or else risk more crippling blows. But that scenario appeared unlikely, the official said.
The offensive follows months of tensions between Hezbollah and Israel that began soon after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack and Israel’s monthslong military assault on the Gaza Strip. Hamas and Hezbollah are both backed by Iran.
Indeed, the gains from the device operations would be most effective as an opening salvo in a broader war, Michael Horowitz, the head of intelligence at Le Beck International, a security and risk management consultancy, told NBC News, by incapacitating key operatives and disrupting communications while sowing internal distrust.
What is to be gained from such an operation?
Israel could benefit on several different levels from such a massive and shocking operation, Horowitz said.
The first is the physical damage caused to Hezbollah militants — Lebanon’s health minister said that the flood of patients inundating hospitals across the country, including civilians, had injuries largely to their hands and faces. But disabling so many pagers is likely to significantly disrupt the group’s ability to communicate and could take a large number of Hezbollah commanders out of the field.
“Those devices, which may have been used for emergency communication, particularly in case of full-scale war with Israel, would also have been distributed among key commanders from the low-ranking field officer to the higher echelon of the group,” Horowitz said. “We can expect that a lot of them will no longer be able to carry out their military duties.”
While the exact details of the operation remain unclear, the attacks could signal that Israel knew the ins and outs of Hezbollah’s supply chain and managed to infiltrate it, he said.
“As a security breach, it can’t get much worse,” Horowitz added.
The attacks are a “huge blow” to Hezbollah, said Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director for research at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. A security breach of this scale could seriously damage the group’s morale, he said.
This was “simply an unprecedented opportunity to hurt the organization and traumatize its membership,” Hage Ali said.
Hezbollah will now need to review its internal security, chase down potential collaborators and gauge how its supply chains may have been compromised, Horowitz said. “That takes a lot of time,” he added.
What’s next?
In an already volatile region, the pager and walkie-talkie attacks have added a long-feared incendiary in a surprising form.
Jordan’s foreign minister Wednesday accused Israel of “pushing the entire region into the abyss of a regional war.” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian called the attack “a sign of the decline of humanity and the dominance of barbarity and criminality.” The Kremlin warned that the region was in an “explosive state,” while its foreign ministry called the pager attacks an “act of hybrid warfare” aimed at provoking a major war.
In a statement Wednesday, Hezbollah promised a “difficult reckoning” for what it called a “massacre,” as it vowed to continue fighting in support of Gaza’s “people and resistance.”
Leader Nasrallah described the attacks as an « act of war, » vowing retaliation, though he did not specify when or how the counterattack would be carried out.
But first, the group will have to review its internal security and take defensive measures, Horowitz said. “You don’t take unnecessary risks when taken off guard, as Hezbollah just did,” he added. “The group is poised to respond, but a response may take time.”
Hage Ali said that “if Israel was interested in a wide military operation, an attack in the immediate aftermath of this operation would have made sense. As time passes, the organization could readjust after this shock.”
An Israeli army commander in the north said Wednesday that troops were “at peak readiness.”
“The mission is clear — we are determined to change the security reality as soon as possible,” said the IDF’s northern command chief, Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin.
The IDF announced the strikes across the Israel-Lebanon border Thursday as Hezbollah began striking in northern Israel as well. Two soldiers were killed in northern Israel, the IDF said.
The U.S. and others have pushed both sides to avoid any significant escalation.
Washington said it was not aware of the “incident” in advance, but Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser under President Barack Obama, told the BBC on Wednesday that the “fairly indiscriminate use of violence” in the pager attacks was not something the U.S. would have wanted.
“This probably puts Israel in a position that the U.S. doesn’t want them to be, in terms of militarizing and potentially escalating the conflict in Lebanon,” Rhodes said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged de-escalation during remarks in Paris, where he was meeting with the French foreign minister Thursday. Blinken told reporters that both the U.S. and France « don’t want to see any escalatory actions by any party that make that even more difficult. »
« France and the United States are united in calling for restraint and urging de-escalation when it comes to the Middle East in general, » Blinken said. « And when it comes to Lebanon in particular, we continue to work to get a cease-fire for Gaza over the finish line. »
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