Hezbollah's longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah believed he was safe from being killed in the IDF up until the moment his life ended in an IAF airstrike in Beirut in September, according to a report published by the New York Times today (Sunday) on Israel's intelligence infiltration of the Lebanese terrorist organization.
The terror leader reportedly brushed off concerns from his aides and requests that he go to a safer location than the underground bunker in which his life ended on September 27. Nasrallah believed that Israel was uninterested in full-scale war with Hezbollah, even after it detonated thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by the terrorist organization's operatives just two weeks earlier.
The investigation revealed new details about how Israel's intelligence apparatus was able to deeply infiltrate and compromise Hezbollah. American and European officials told the Times that Israel had recruited agents who planted bugs in Hezbollah's bunkers that allowed the Israelis to listen in on meetings of Hezbollah's leadership and track its leaders.
Israel spent two decades gathering intelligence on Hezbollah to prepare for what was seen as an inevitable war. It received an intelligence windfall when Unit 8200 seized many documents containing details on Hezbollah's rocket arsenal and the hide-outs of many of its leaders.
These infiltrations eventually led to Israel tricking Hezbollah into purchasing the booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies. A Hezbollah operative reportedly first became suspicious of the walkie-talkies in late 2023. According to the Times report, Israeli intelligence officials began urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to detonate the pagers and walkie-talkies in September 2024 due to concerns that Hezbollah would soon uncover the explosives hidden within,
The pager bombs were detonated on September 17, killing dozens of Hezbollah operatives and wounding thousands more. The walkie-talkies were detonated the next day, causing further damage to Hezbollah and its personnel. The explosions severely disrupted Hezbollah's communications network and left the organization off balance as Israel launched Operation Northern Arrows, which destroyed the majority of its weapons and rocket and missile arsenals, decimated its elite Radwan Force, and eliminated much of its leadership and middle management, including Nasrallah.
The pager operation and subsequent military operation in southern Lebanon were undertaken after Hezbollah had launched thousands of rockets and drones at northern Israel for nearly a year in support of Hamas beginning the day after the October 7 massacre. Dozens of Israelis were killed in the attacks, including 12 Druze children in a strike on Majdal Shams in July, and tens of thousands of Israelis were forced to flee their homes and communities for over a year due to the constant Hezbollah attacks.
