How and why did Israel blow up Hezbollah’s pagers? | The Daily T Podcast

[Music] that Cal is the extraordinary sound of these coordinated attacks on Hezbollah Fighters their Pages literally exploding on their bodies in what seems to be this very strange and worrying twist in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East well more than a dozen people were killed in that attack 3,000 people injured it's just the latest in this ongoing escalating conflict between Israel and its enemies in the Middle East we're going to be speaking to Roland olifant who's the telegraph's senior foreign correspondent to ask whether this may be a provocation too far welcome to the daily

tea with me camil tomany and me Kamal Ahmed Kamal it is like something out of a spy Thriller these videos I mean one particular video has been playing on the telegraph website can perhaps discuss whether that's appropriate or not because usually like to shy away from really Grim footage but that's a Hezbollah fighter at a supermarket basically his pager is exploding on his body how has this happened I mean we're suspecting it's the Israelis we're thinking it's mosad what have they actually done how have they got to these Pages allegedly the assumption is that Israel

is the only uh State able to manage this type of attack on one of its enemies obviously Hezbollah backed by Iran um in the Middle East what appears to have happened and what is being reported is that Hezbollah have been warned by their leadership not to use mobile phones because they are easily traced and that could make them uh easier targets for um Israeli attacks and so they use rather old-fashioned Pages which don't use the GPS system uh and these Pages the latest shipment to Hezbollah of these uh Pages seems to have been intercepted by

intelligence agencies which everyone assumes working for Israel so that would be mosad and then internally shinb internal security forces got hold of these uh Pages inserted uh High explosives into the pages which were then detonated like a booby trap uh when a certain numeric message was sent to the pages so a message was sent out apparently according to the reports that we're doing today um they bleeped for quite a long time they got hotter some people realized something was happening as this pag started to heat up and then this small amount of explosives 10 to

20 grams exploded and that has caused this death toll but also the civilian uh casualties as well alongside as you say 3,000 injured in a war of attrition between two absolutely opposing States Israel and Iran it is part of this gorilla style war between the two and the big question now is is Iran's retaliation going to up the stakes again and going to mean that an actual Regional war in the Middle East a full War because obviously there is a proxy war going on already is that now going to become more likely we're going to

bring Roland olant into the daily tea to discuss the sort of wise and what happens next of this he's a telegraph senior foreign correspondent but let's just recap exactly what happened so the blast began in lebanon's capital Beirut and several other areas of the country at about 3:45 p p.m. local time on Tuesday Witnesses reported seeing smoke coming from people's pockets before seeing small explosions that sounded like fireworks and gunshots in one of those clips a CCTV footage appears to show an explosion in a man's trouser pocket as he stood at a shop till and

then soon after scores of people began arriving at hospitals in uh Lebanon and Witnesses reported scenes of mass confusion Kamal that decision to move from mobile phones to Pages follows the assassination of quite a few top operatives in Hezbollah something quite contradictory isn't there about the kind of Lite nature of a pager and yet the sophisticated nature of this extraordinary Act of cyber warfare and quite how this was carried out this operation that then explodes these devices seemingly simultaneously uh they think that this shipment of pages has been intercepted at some point by Mossad um

and as we discussed the explosiv placed in every device um Israel hasn't commented on this we've had us officials speaking off the Record to American news websites including axio saying that it was a use it or lose it moment as Israeli leaders had become concerned that Hezbollah might discover the plot with several operatives apparently raising suspicions about the pages in recent days so that seems to suggest that they had plans to explode the devices perhaps a bit later on in the week but because they thought they were going to be Rumble they just did it

on Tuesday and there's this suggestion that this could have been um an exercise as part of a bigger plan for Israel something apparently backed by the Minister of Defense yov Gallant to invade Southern Lebanon and create a buffer zone because what has been happening ever since the horrific events of October the 7th and the hostage taking um uh last year and then of course the horrific events of the war in Gaza that has uh followed is that many people have had to be evacuated from northern Israel and the Lebanon border because of the constant barrage

of missile attacks by uh Hezbollah operating out of Southern Lebanon so could Israel again reinvade Southern Lebanon that has got them stuck in Quagmire in the past and that this could have been a warm-up exercise before an invasion on on to um Lebanese soil for Israel but according to that piece that Paul Nuki our Global Security editor has written there's some confusion about whether Netanyahu is in favor of a ground Invasion or not and whether Galant is so it had been said that Galant was the more hawkish one and Netanyahu was more dovish but now

they've changed position and presumably emboldened by everything that's been happening we're coming up for the oneyear anniversary aren't we next month Kamal that maybe Netanyahu has been sanctioning more an offensive action on that Netanyahu Netanyahu has now said the security of that border and the ability for all the Israeli civilians who've had to be inac evacuated is now part of the war aims so his War aims have been expanded beyond the destruction and removal of Hamas from uh Gaza to security at the northern border so I don't I don't think many people would describe Netanyahu

as dovish it appears though does he want to take the risk of a ground Invasion given that that would mean that Israel is then stuck in two theaters of War at the same time given the controversy that the country is already facing because of what is happening in Gaza so journalists are now doing two things they're trying to work out exactly how if it was mosad that they managed to infiltrate these devices and then simultaneously load them with explosives to go off at the same time they're also trying to track down who made them so

we've got pictures of bits of blown up Pages leading uh inquiries to a Taiwanese company called gold Apollo their founder said no the devices were manufactured by a company called BAC Consulting and that is based in Budapest in Hungary which was licensed to use the Taiwanese brand now we tried to call BAC Consulting this morning and this is what happened so no answers yet from BAC Consulting it's not absolutely clear what type of company that is of course Hungary the Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban is a staunch supporter of not only Israel but Netanyahu himself

is there some link there the next stage to this will be what is America's response is that simply diplomatic simply keeping the conversation going Netanyahu is visiting America next week President Biden's going to need to make some form of decision about how do you reduce tension between these two opposed powers in this real Tinderbox situation US Secretary of State Anthony blinkin gave a joint press conference in Egypt earlier this is what he said in response to the attack so with regard to Lebanon uh the United States uh did not know about uh nor was it

involved in uh these incidents and we're still Gathering uh the information and Gathering the facts the the incredible length that both sides go to whether that's Hezbollah on one side Iran itself their other proxies in the region the houthis in Yemen and then the Israeli forces themselves to cause damage on either side without resorting to fullscale war it is interest interesting to see what the Americans response to this is because they're only using diplomatic channels America must in the end decide whether it feels obliged to force Israel to some form of negotiation or not and

the sense must be at the moment that it believes Israel has every right to act in the way it does given the risk it is under given the deaths that happened on October the 7th and the appalling treatment uh since then and the attacks on its territory since then to allow this low-scale Warfare to continue welcome back Roland olant joins us now Roland can you just give us some of the context and the background that has led us to this remarkable last 24 hours where we've seen Hezbollah Fighters being blown up in super markets and

shopping malls across the Middle East who are Hezbollah Hezbollah are um a Shiite militant group based in Lebanon who are also they run a militia they run an army they also run a political party they're in Parliament they're they're a huge huge organization in Lebanon um they emerged in 1979 um they are backed by Iran um The Story Goes that in fact it was the the irgc um who kind of set them up it's you those very turbulent years and late '70s early ' 80s in in in Lebanon when you have the Civil War the

Israeli Invasion so and so forth they meant to be originally um a kind of exported part of the Iranian Revolution so uh revolutionary Shiite um devoted to the destruction of Israel over the long term and also big religious kind of objectives um uh you know to bring the bring the Shiite Community into an OM and so on so forth but really a very a very powerful military and political force inside Lebanon as well um now since October 7th um when Hamas attacked Israel Israel retaliated by going into Gaza soon as that happened um the Hezbollah

um who along with Iran along with the houthis and Yemen um some groups in Iraq call themselves the axis of resistance so it's a kind of a group mostly LED from Teran that sees itself as combating isra um they kind of had to respond because suddenly there was a shooting war between the Israelis and the Palestinians um they obviously decided not to start a massive war um so what happened was Hezbollah started firing Rockets into these border areas in in in Northern Israel and it started off really really careful so this place called the Sheba

farms and the Sheba Farms up on the the Israeli Lebanese border um I don't want to kind of I don't want to be too flippant but it's kind of like good fight it's kind of it's always been disputed so if Hezbollah wanted to make a point they could fire a couple of rockets in there Israelis could fire a couple back and everyone understands well the Sheba Farms is where you do that so it started off there and then it began to expand and then eventually you had the Israelis evacuating 60,000 people from the border um

you had a lot of people on the Lebanese side of the Border going the same way and you got into this big ongoing tip fortat War uh between Hezbollah and the Israelis um which is directly linked to what's going on in Gaza hezb say until you get a SE fire we're going to carry on doing this um but throughout that there's so hold on so ever since October 7th because of that there's been this fear of another big war on the northern border and it hasn't quite got there yet um so as you say this

sudden very dramatic um series of explosions um in in in Lebanon comes within that context um we understand from some reporting um that's come out of various media um including our own that um this was originally planned the Israelis envisaged this thing as the precursor to an allout attack to a full scale Invasion um of Lebanon uh we had yo Gallant the Israeli uh defense minister um saying just the day before this happened that look it feels like um there is only going to be military solution to us getting our evacuees back into Northern Israel

uh which a lot of people felt like that sounded like he was you know flying the test balloon for a fullscale Israeli invasion of Lebanon um and yet this morning we we're yet to yet to see that happen isn't this almost War where both countries actually want to stay for the foreseeable future it's almost useful to have this proxy across the border incredibly NY but neither side actually wants to go for full armed conflict I mean there's there's there's a political and philosophical answer to that and I think if I can take the kind of

big philosophical answer I think I think yes often if if you have very long running conflicts and you've generated say a um a Defense Force or a posture or a militant group or something to respond to that threat and you've been doing that for years and years and years and suddenly that becomes how you live that's how you think that's how you how your entire State operates if you're if you're Israel basically almost you know with the the IDF the whole kind of you know the whole mechanism of it um or if you're hezard right

um and so yeah you do end up in a situation I think sometimes where where it does become kind of symbiotic um that's a very broad point but I I definitely think that's that's that's worth examining um in terms of no one wants the war look um these are very old adversaries right they've been fighting for literally decades right and they know each other very very well um no one wants to walk there are people on both sides who want a war all right I mean I I remember being in um I was summoned down

summoned I mean a few years ago actually um I was I got a call from the Israeli Embassy and they said listen we've got um we got one of our ministers in town do you want to come down for a briefing um and I think it was I think it was naftali Bennett who's quite a right-wing kind of radical kind of figure I think was education minister at that time um of course he didn't want to talk about education he want to talk about you know I'm a security guy and and all those things he

loves to talk about and so on and he he was making this really forceful case about the last time Israel went to war in Lebanon um and failed to thefe Hezbollah and who was like we weren't allowed to to do our job you know the politicians kind of got in the way let us go back um I'm I I know what to do this time all of this he was saying this to me um I mean it's not secret right it's the kind of thing certain people in Israel say for ages there's always been a

constituency who felt we can get back and we can we can deal with this threat once and because Israel went into Lebanon obviously has gone into Lebanon before got trapped in there and has not been Victorious and has had to withdraw yes and the last the LA the last big invasion was in in 2006 and it didn't go as well as as as was expected right and you know Hezbollah up against the IDF this big conventional Army um and the IDF basically failed to failed to root them out and it's been a bit of a

a bit of a sticking point with some people saying let's go back and and get it and and you have you know the the the Naes on the other side um who who really believe in in in this thing but in in in fighting the big fight and you have you know kind of mulas in Teran who believe they are waiting for the big moment to for the big conflagration um when they you finally you know the axis of resistance finally confronts Israel and wipes it off the map um I think when you when you

get underneath all that you get um you get you know many more people in Israel probably including in the security establishment um who would say well we didn't you know we didn't necessarily win last time why do we need it now M much more cautious much more kind of sober minded quite honestly you might think I'm being by I think that's more sober way of looking at it and I think it's true inan um I think a lot of the people you know close to decision- making in Iran um have other things to think about

you know they they don't necessarily want to fight a uh an era defining war that is is going to you know put the the the future of the Islamic regime at risk and put them at risk and and everything else um and and so you're in this kind of standoff and the other the other thing to get in there is is the kind of the deterrent aspect right so Iran does not have to the best of our knowledge yet a nuclear weapon what it does have is Hezbollah right so Hezbollah is said to have by

the Israelis something upwards of 100,000 rockets in all these Bankers along the border ready to fire um at Israel that's what makes it different to to Hamas it is it is by far um by a country mile enough to overwhelm the Iron Dome it would caused big problems if that button was ever fired right but that's basically in Le of aome is the security that Israel has built doome is Israel's really incredible kind of technical um uh Interceptor system and if you you can you can sit in Tel Aviv and you hear a bang and

um and it's it's just an interception you know happens almost all the time it's really good but it could be be overwhelmed if you fire too many Rockets hezb could do that but it's a deterrent right it's the same reason you never use your nuclear deterrent the deterrent is so someone doesn't go for you and the thinking is that Iran is holding hezbollah's rockets in reserve for the moment Israel hits Iran's nuclear facilities which is why Israel has never hit Iran's nuclear facilities so there are all these really really delicate delicate delicate delicate kind of

calculations going on behind the scene and then you've got to remember that actually these sides know each other much better than any of us really think so you think about this attack right this is this incredibly complicated supply side attack where Mossad had got access to their secure pages right that means they had infiltrated that group to just an incredible degree yes right so who knows who's what who do you trust what's going on is it worth us getting rid of these people because actually it helps us know what's what they're planning um so on

and so forth is an incredibly complex delicate um kind of dance being being played out there by both sides also that's what makes it difficult for the Western world looking on as these two take on each other what should we do well that whole thing about what is America is really the only force that properly matters to or sorry the only um Ally that really properly matters to Israel do you get any sense of what President Biden's reaction could be to this apart from the Diplomatic words of we want things to deescalate there should be

a process towards a ceasefire we haven't seen anything from the Americans that suggests a change of a change of stance um I was just watching Anthony blinken over down in The Newsroom he was just on TV before I came up um saying uh the Americans didn't know about this um in advance um I look Joe Biden is he's look he's very conservative with a small sea right you know I mean especially in foreign policy right and and one of the you know kind of what do you call it it's like it's like a commandment of

American foreign policy is the alliance with Israel he's very loyal to it he comes from that generation where you didn't really question it where it was a a fundamental part of um of of of how you look at America's place in the world and America's relationships with its allies um and he's actually he I mean he burned he burned a lot of demestic political Capital with with younger kind of democratic activists who are pretty appalled by Israel's behavior in Gaza and weren't going to you know didn't feel that that argument really stood up anymore I

can't really see um a massive shift in American support for Israel after this um I think there are obvious tensions between um between Biden and and Netanyahu I think the Americans are clearly frustrated um at what they think and I I think it's fair to read between the lines of what they're saying there is a feeling that it's it's both Netanyahu and the mass leadership who are now um frustrating efforts to get a ceasefire in Gaza um but I can't see at this point the Americans applying more kind of tangible pressure um to Israel um

except to say listen we don't want a massive massive war um with Iran right now no no thank you just one so just one final thing um so the next stage of this is obviously going to be what does America do possibly but also what do Hezbollah do they'll have to do something even if it's to sort of save face is a slightly ridiculous phrase but they will do something presumably to retaliate and one assumes that that at this point may not be an escalation but they will do something yeah and that that that's what

we're waiting for right I mean if they fire the 100,000 Rockets or whatever I mean that that that that's it um that's the that's the balloon going up um it it's been it's been such a funny dance these um you know this this nearly year um we've had the Israelis doing really daring stuff right you know they they're blowing up um you know senior officials in in in in Beirut um killing hamas's political Chief in Teran um all of this and then and then you know the Iranians Hezbollah whoever um responding but in quite a

calibrated way I mean um you know if you one one of the waves is retaliation was was you know Iran launched just a few months ago its first ever direct strike on Israel Iran fired ballistic missiles at Israel it was a big thing it was a big historic thing and about one missile got through and hardly anyone was hurt and it was kind of felt that you know there are rules here it was telegraphed in advance it was it sent the message they saved face they sent this message we could do this on a bigger

scale if necessary but they didn't actually hurt anyone it's that kind of strange um kind of sense that there are Unwritten rules right um and We Know by the way if you look um really interesting just a couple of weeks ago um uh Richard Moore the head of MI6 and Bill Burns head of CIA were were giving a very very rare public appearance a joint public appearance kind of burnishing the um the special relationship and all of that and they both made and they say they they they wrote a a joint top Ed in the

um in the financial times as well and they they made this very interesting point they said our agents are deeply involved in trying to security fire um which isn't a surprise to anyone who follows this because one of the jobs of intelligence Services is this kind of Backstage diplomacy right spies talk to each other because politicians can't right you know a politian doesn't want to get up in the House of Commons and have to you know and be asked have you been speaking to heras well you can't say that can you that would be embarrassing

um but you know secret Services of various countries talk to each other behind the scenes partly to kind of hammer out these the these guard rils to stop us falling into World War III and I I'll bet my bottom dollar um that a lot of them are working very very hard um on on trying to get both the you know the Iranians Hezbollah sorry the Iranians Hezbollah the Israelis um just to step away from that brink of a really really serious um conflagration fascinating stuff Roland thank you very much indeed for joining us in the

daily te Studio we'll let you get back to your reporting you're very welcome what I love about people like Roland Kamal is they they lift and breathe this for months if not years and I think for the general public if you don't have that much of a knowledge frankly of your history when it comes to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the 7eventh century to the first world war and then the Bal declar and then the Bal for declaration this conflict in the Middle East literally goes back centuries it's so difficult to get your

head around so to just have somebody like Roland explaining at least the context of what has happened between Israel and Iran since October the 7th I just find highly informative and really useful because I think this is something that people struggle to get their head around and hopefully we've helped to explain it a bit that's why Roland and journalists like him at the telegraph and lots and lots of media organizations really really matter because it is that context that really if there is ever going to be a solution it's going to need expertise and knowledge

of History to get us there thank you for listening to this special edition we'll be back with more journalism tomorrow 5:00 p.m. [Music]