The pager explosions in Lebanon, explained

The social media erupted yesterday with strange reports of pagers exploding all around Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, and wounding thousands of Hezbollah militants and Lebanese civilians. But what caused these explosions, were they deliberate sabotage, and who was behind the attack?

After weeks of rigid skirmishes between Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed military organization in Lebanon, and the Israel Defense Forces in Golan Heights, the latter appears to have gone on the offensive by carrying out an engineered attack inside Lebanese soil.

On Sept. 17, around 3 pm local time, thousands of pagers used by members of Hezbollah simultaneously exploded across Lebanon and Syria, resulting in 12 deaths (at the moment of writing this) and thousands of injuries. The IDF refused to comment on the incident when approached by the Associated Press, but according to reports by the NY Times and CNN, it was the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, in co-operation with the armed forces, that carried out the operation.

Details surrounding the seemingly booby-trapped pagers are still murky, so here’s everything we know about them so far.

What is a pager?

A pager, also called a bleeper, is a small telecommunications device that can receive text or voice messages in a one-way or two-way configuration. The design philosophy behind pagers is to give organizations a simplistic (and in the case of Hezbollah, a more secure) way of communicating with its members, and though the advent of smartphones has greatly cut back the prevalence of pagers, they are still used in certain fields like public rescue services.

As for why Hezbollah has had to deal with this disastrous security breach, it all has to do with Nasrallah’s mandate earlier this year in February. Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, told the organization’s supporters that their cellphones were worse than “Israeli spies,” which is why the militant group opted to exchange their members’ communication devices with pagers.

How does one make a pager explode?

While the numerous implications of yesterday’s attack remain to be discussed at length, one terrifying aspect of the whole ordeal was the fact that our communication devices could be sabotaged remotely at a whim. Yesterday’s warfare may have included ballistic missiles and drones and atomic warheads, but today brings about a 1984-esque, dystopian world where your phone could be tampered with to eliminate you if and when the overlords deem it appropriate…

… or at least that would’ve been the case in a nightmarish, apocalyptic scenario. For the time being, and in this particular case, the explanation might be simpler than to merit a widespread panic. The specifics are still vague, but according to the New York Times, Israel hid explosives inside a batch of these pagers that Hezbollah ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo, with a switch to denote remotely.

If anything, this shows how deeply compromised Hezbollah’s security apparatus is, and now the organization is vowing to punish Israel in yet another terrifying bout of escalations for the conflict currently raging on in the Middle East.

Who is Hezbollah?

Hezbollah, Arabic for “Party of God,” is a Shia paramilitary group operating out of Lebanon. It was founded in 1982 to combat the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, receiving direct funding and training from the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Revolutionary Guards. Hezbollah’s leaders were ideologically attuned to Khomeini, an anti-imperialist who served as the first Supreme Leader of Iran from 1979 to 1989, and so, across the years, the organization slowly morphed into a full-fledged proxy of Iran in the wider regional conflicts.

Since its foundation, Hezbollah has been engaged in a number of Middle Eastern clashes like the Syrian Civil War and the fight against ISIS in Iraq, but its most fervent enemy is the State of Israel, with whom it has locked horns on several occasions, namely the Southern Lebanon conflict in the late ’90s and the 2006 Lebanon War, also referred to as the “34-day war.”

Since the events of Oct. 7 last year, Hezbollah has been slowly dragged into the war between Israel and Hamas by targeting military bases in the Golan Heights, as well as assisting Iran during Operation True Promise. Israel recently targeted a top Hezbollah commander named Fuad Shukur, which compelled the organization to launch strikes of its own in retaliation, with over 300 rockets being loosed at Golan Heights and its surrounding regions.

Iran has vowed to retaliate against the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and in the event that happens, its proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis are also expected to participate in the confrontation.