Amid Israel’s effort to return tens of thousands of its citizens to their homes in the north, the Jewish state reportedly launched an operation to knock out Hezbollah’s infrastructure in Lebanon.
The Jewish state’s James Bond-style alleged hack attack on Tuesday that caused explosions of handheld pagers carried by thousands of members of the U.S.-designated terrorist movement Hezbollah was a devastating setback for the Lebanon-based organization.
Fox News Digital spoke to leading U.S. and Israeli experts about the setback for the Iranian regime proxy.
According to a Reuters report, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, planted explosives inside of 5,000 pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations that killed nine people, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.
The Iranian regime-backed Hezbollah organization switched from mobile phones to pagers to prevent Israeli interception of their communications. Hezbollah joined Hamas’ war against Israel a day after the Gaza-based terrorist movement invaded the Jewish state on Oct. 7.
Walid Phares, a leading U.S. expert on Lebanon and Hezbollah, told Fox News Digital that the reported Israeli operation, “is certainly a strike against Hezbollah’s national security apparatus. We are talking about thousands and thousands of individuals who are at the heart of the security force of Hezbollah, who are, according to sources we know, in charge of manning many things. One is the missile force.”
Hezbollah is estimated to have over 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel. The de facto ruler of Lebanon, Hezbollah, has amassed new sophisticated missiles, rockets and drones since its 2006 war against Israel. Hezbollah has launched more than 7,500 missiles, rockets, and drones into Israel since Oct. 8.
One Hezbollah official said the detonation of the pagers was the group’s “biggest security breach” since the Gaza conflict began.
Phares added that the “Israeli electronic bomb” operation also degraded many Hezbollah special forces, commandos, electronic forces, and internal security and intelligence apparatus members. He warned, however, that Hezbollah would eventually recover.
Phares noted that Israel’s strike “weakened the image of Hezbollah within the Lebanese population.” He said the psychological benefits of the strike have showed that the Lebanese are now convinced that Hezbollah “can eventually be defeated” and its “grip on Lebanon” can be weakened.
