This is a staggering success for Mossad that opens a window for war

Detonation of Hezbollah walkie-talkies highlights strength and sophistication of Israeli intelligence

On Tuesday, thousands of Hezbollah’s pagers exploded. On Wednesday, it was the terrorist group’s walkie-talkies that were detonating in the hands of its fighters.
Iran’s largest and most prestigious terrorist proxy in the Middle East appears to have been well and truly compromised by the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service.
For those trying to predict what may happen next, there are two key questions: what are Israel’s intentions with these attacks and how might Hezbollah respond?
Israel has a long history of extrajudicial assassination dating back its deadly response to the Munich massacre of Olympic athletes in 1972 but it has never unleashed a campaign on this scale before.
Despite its code name, Operation Wrath of God, the response to Munich, was said to be less about revenge than deterrence through attack.
“We were not engaged in vengeance,” said Zvi Zamir, director of the Mossad at the time. “They definitely deserved to die. But we were not dealing with the past; we concentrated on the future.”
Some think Israel is pursuing a similar objective now, trying to get Hezbollah to back off through a surgical demonstration of strength, while others suspect there is more to it.
Unnamed US officials were quoted as saying on Wednesday that Mossad had originally only intended the devices be detonated in the event of full-scale war but that Hezbollah was on the brink of discovering that they had been compromised.
Israel then detonated the devices on a “use it or lose it” basis; a classic “mowing” of the terrorist lawn.
Others speculate that the explosions could yet herald an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, planned or opportunistic.
“The scale of these attacks [is] staggering, and the extent to which Israel has managed to penetrate and neutralise Hezbollah’s communications infrastructure and command and control is staggering,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
“In theory, there’s no better time for Israel to launch a full-blown war.”
Israel’s most senior general in the north is said to be agitating for a land invasion of southern Lebanon to push Hezbollah back beyond the Litani river. But what hawkish politicians and generals in Israel want is not necessarily what will transpire.
The US does not want an escalation and Israel remains reliant on it to defend against a major blitzkrieg of Hezbollah missiles or another direct attack from Iran.
Also, the window is tight. Hugh Lovatt, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that while Israel may currently have an “advantageous window to launch a ground offensive” it would quickly close.
“I don’t expect any significant qualitative change to Hezbollah’s military capability beyond a few days of disruption,” he said.
And war is no easy choice. After all, it was Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 that allowed Hezbollah to become dominant in the first place.
“Old Bibi would never do it. New Bibi is hard to tell,” said Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general and a fellow at The Washington Institute, referring to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“War is a bad option, but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible.” So much, then, for Israel’s intention.
But what of Hezbollah’s likely response? How is the terror group likely to respond to what Israeli military analysts are gleefully characterising as its “humiliation” and – in several cases – the literal “emasculation” of its fighters?
In Tehran, the group’s masters will almost certainly be demanding patience, or what the Ayatollah calls “heroic flexibility”.
Whisper it quietly, but it’s the same brand of political expediency Joe Biden advised Israel to adopt in the aftermath of Oct 7.
“You can’t look at what has happened here to your mothers, your fathers, your grandparents, sons, daughters, children – even babies – and not scream out for justice,” the US president told Mr Netanyahu in Tel Aviv in the wake of the massacre.
“But I caution this: while you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”
Israel ignored Mr Biden’s advice and has ended up in what most analysts regard as a strategic mess.
It is locked in a multifront war, a large part of its population remains displaced, its economy is tanking and in many parts of the world it has come to be regarded as a pariah state.
Hezbollah will no doubt now be tempted to lash out wildly just as Israel did in the wake of Oct 7. The pressure from its ranks will be immense.
But the message from Iran will almost certainly be to play it cool. Tehran needs Hezbollah in one piece and, from its perspective, Israel is already on the ropes.