Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem has owned up to the failure of his organisation to protect itself from infiltration as it stepped up its campaign against Israel as part of the self-styled ‘Axis of Resistance.’ The violence was impeded by an alleged Israeli plot to use exploding communication devices.
Now reportedly living in Tehran, having fled Lebanon, the former deputy leader of the Islamist Iranian proxy group told an interviewer:
The explosives used in the pagers was something nonstandard, which our equipment could not detect. This could be either described as negligence or incapability. Our losses began here, as well as not realising our supply chain was penetrated.
The sophisticated attack involved a fake equipment wholesaler providing Hezbollah with hundreds of communication devices to be distributed across its terror network. At a prearranged time, the pagers were detonated using one signal sent to them all, killing or wounding many of the group’s cadre as they responded. While a Taiwanese firm and a Hungarian shell company took the initial blame, a similar secondary assault using altered walkie-talkies was initiated in the days afterwards. As Hezbollah lost momentum, Israeli security services appeared to be the most likely actor behind the explosions.
