Israel’s spy network infiltrated Hezbollah for decades, leading to Hassan Nasrallah’s assassination and the world-renowned explosive pager operation.
Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah’s former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was the culmination of extensive spy infiltration and intelligence gathering from the terror group that spanned decades, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
NYT noted that Unit 8200 scrambled to save their efforts in September when they collected intelligence that Hezbollah terrorists were concerned enough about the pagers that they were sending some of them to Iran for inspection.
This led top intelligence officials to persuade Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give the order to detonate the pagers, setting in motion the campaign that culminated in the assassination of Nasrallah due to concerns that the operation would be exposed, the report claimed.
Israel’s great success
The report further stated that the campaign against Hezbollah defanged one of Israel’s greatest adversaries and dealt a blow to Iran’s regional strategy of arming and funding groups bent on Israel’s destruction, with the weakening of the Iran-led Axis reshaping Middle East dynamics, contributing to the fall of Assad in Syria.
Right up until he was assassinated, Hassan Nasrallah did not believe that Israel would kill him, the report claimed. His aides reportedly urged him to leave his underground fortress to a safer location, which Nasrallah brushed off, given his perception that Israel had no interest in a full-scale war. However, he did not realize that Israeli spy agencies had been tracking his every movement for years, according to NYT.“
Hezbollah can’t continue to get support and funding from Iran without being in a war against Israel. That’s the raison d’être for Hezbollah,” said Brig. Gen. Shimon Shapira, a former military secretary for Mr. Netanyahu and the author of “Hezbollah: Between Iran and Lebanon. “They will rearm and rebuild,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time.”
Building a Network of Sources
Operations during the 2006 Lebanon War, based on Israeli intelligence gathering, formed the foundation for the country’s extensive infiltration into Hezbollah.
One operation planted tracking devices on Hezbollah’s Fajr missiles that gave Israel information about munitions hidden inside secret military bases, civilian storage facilities, and private homes, according to three former Israeli officials. In the 2006 war, the Israeli Air Force bombed the sites, destroying the missiles.
As Hezbollah rebuilt, the Mossad expanded a network of human sources inside the terror group, according to 10 current and former American and Israeli officials. Specifically, the Mossad recruited people in Lebanon to help Hezbollah build secret facilities after the war. The Mossad sources fed the Israelis information about the locations of hide-outs and assisted in monitoring them, two officials said. The Israelis generally shared Hezbollah intelligence with the United States and European allies, NYT added.
A significant breakthrough occurred in 2012, when Unit 8200 obtained information about the specific whereabouts of Hezbollah leaders, their hide-outs, and the group’s batteries of missiles and rockets, according to five current and former Israeli defense and European officials, adding that this raised confidence within Israeli intelligence agencies that the Israeli military could help neuter Hezbollah’s ability to retaliate to an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.
During the years that followed, Israeli spy agencies worked to refine the intelligence gathered from the earlier operation to produce information that could be used in the event of a war with Hezbollah.
According to two Israeli defense officials with knowledge of the intelligence, when the 2006 war ended, Israel had “target portfolios” for just under 200 Hezbollah leaders, operatives, weapons caches, and missile locations. By the time Israel launched its campaign in September, it was tens of thousands.
