Politics

How exploding pagers in Lebanon boost the risk of Israel fighting two full wars

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

How exploding pagers in Lebanon boost the risk of Israel fighting two full wars

To say that Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia in Lebanonhas gone through a rough couple of days would be a massive understatement. The group — which runs Southern Lebanon as its own personal fiefdom, boasts tens of thousands of hardened fighters and possesses as many as 150,000 rockets in its inventory — is confronting a degree of internal chaos that its leadership isn’t habituated to experiencing.

By Hezbollah’s own admission, the presumed Israeli operation was the ‘biggest security breach’ the group has ever witnessed.

On Sept. 17, thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah members across Lebanon exploded simultaneously in what is very likely an operation conducted by the MossadIsrael’s foreign intelligence agency. More than 2,700 people were injured, including Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, and at least 12 people were killed in the explosions. The next day, a second wave of attacks occurredthis time targeting the handheld radios Hezbollah uses in the field. The attacks caused panic in Lebanon; the country’s Ministry of Public Health told hospitals to remain on maximum alert status to cope with the injuries. U.N. personnel in Lebanon were advised to remove the batteries from their phones as a precautionary measure.

By Hezbollah’s own admission, the presumed Israeli operation was the “biggest security breach” the group has ever witnessed.

While information is still fluid, reports suggest Israeli intelligence agents intercepted a shipment of pagers to Hezbollah and tinkered with the devices(possibly by hiding explosive material into the pagers’ batteries) before allowing the shipment to continue on to Lebanon. When the pagers received a messagedisguised as coming from Hezbollah’s leadership, the phones exploded. It’s the kind of well-planned, highly orchestrated, technologically sophisticated covert action for which the Mossad is well known. And if anybody has any doubts, just ask the Iranians, who in 2020 watched as one of their top nuclear scientists, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated by a remote-controlled machine gunas he was traveling down a highway. The entire thing feels like an old episode of”24,”the action-packed show starring Kiefer Sutherland from the early “war on terror” of the 2000s.

There’s little doubt that Israel has scored a big tactical success. Hezbollah, one of Israel’s fiercest adversaries since the group was established in the early 1980s, will spend the next days, weeks and even months cracking down within its ranks, preoccupied with internal security and investigating how two similar, devastating strikes could happen within 24 hours of each other.

But as fascinating as the nuts-and-bolts of the operation are, there are deeper and more consequential questions at stake.

First, how will Hezbollah react?

The fact that Israel hasn’t officially claimed credit for the explosions doesn’t mean Hezbollah will hold off on attribution. Indeed, the group already blames Israel and is vowing to exact a price.

Presumably, Hezbollah means what it says; as one of the Middle East’s most powerful anti-Israel resistance movements, it can’t afford not to respond in some way, shape or form, even if it’s only through some kind of symbolic strike on Israeli military infrastructure near the Israel-Lebanon border.

Despite what some foreign policy heavyweights assert, tactical success doesn’t automatically equate to a strategic accomplishment.

Recall that last month, after Israel conducted preemptive airstrikes against thousands of Hezbollah rocket launchers, Hezbollah retaliated by sending its biggest fusilladeof rockets and missiles against targets in northern and central Israel — 320, to be exact. Fortunately, both sides chose to de-escalate after the daylong exchange of fire and return to the pre-August status quo, in which tit-for-tat fighting was largely confined to the Israeli-Lebanese border area. The latest Israeli attacks, however, risk unraveling that arrangement.

At the same time, Hezbollah isn’t a rash, illogical actor. Although Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah won’t admit it openly, he understands that Israel has escalation dominance in this nearly yearlong struggle and could bring Lebanon into the Stone Age if it so desires. Hezbollah is therefore in a very tricky position — refusing to retaliate makes the organization look weak, impotent and compromised, encouraging even more daring Israeli attacks; but going too far on retaliation is liable to give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the excuse he needs to conduct the full-scale military operation that many within his government are clamoring for.

This is the last thing Hezbollah wants, if only because such a war — which would likely include an Israeli ground invasion to carve out a buffer zone in Southern Lebanon — would produce an economic and humanitarian catastrophe that would make the monthlong Israel-Hezbollah conflict in 2006 look like child’s play. Another war doesn’t serve Hezbollah’s interests.

Second, what is Israel trying to accomplish with these operations, exactly? It’s difficult to know. Some accounts suggestthat the altered pagers and radios were meant to be used during a war with Hezbollah, but that the trigger had to be pulled early because Hezbollah became suspicious that something was wrong with the devices. Viewed in this way, the Israelis decided to speed up the plot’s execution, lest all the time and planning they put into the operation proved to be wasted.

Regardless of the explanation, one wonders what Israel’s end-goal is with these operations.

Despite what some foreign policy heavyweights asserttactical success doesn’t automatically equate to a strategic accomplishment. Hezbollah, for instance, will evolve its own tactics, policies and procedures by battening down the hatches and ensuring its communications infrastructure — or what’s left of it — is better prepared to withstand similar technological feats. As a consequence of being utterly embarrassed on the international stage, Hezbollah will now be far more careful with how it communicates and enforce more discipline within its ranks, limiting the amount of information that Israel’s intelligence services will pick up.

Finally, what does this entire episode tell us about the U.S.-Israel relationship today?

Bluntly put, this week’s covert action underscores that Israel is going to do what it’s going to do, notwithstanding U.S. reservations about a particular course of action or whether it undermines U.S. diplomatic initiatives in the process.

This is particularly the case if Washington continues to refuse any conditionality on the relationship. One day before pagers exploded in Beirut, U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein was in Israel, trying to maintain some degree of calm between Israel and Hezbollah and trying to convince Netanyahu’s government that a wider war in Lebanon — particularly when Israeli troops are still fighting in Gaza — wasn’t in anybody’s interest. Despite the low odds, Washington hopes to strike a diplomatic arrangement that would avert conflict and allow hundreds of thousands of people in both Northern Israel and Southern Lebanon to return to their homes. Needless to say, that already difficult job has gotten a lot more difficult this week. Netanyahu knows this but doesn’t care — ultimately, he has concluded that the U.S. will offer unconditional support regardless of what he does.

Which leads to one more question that should at the very least be debated: Is it time for the U.S. to disabuse Netanyahu of that notion?

Daniel R. DePetris

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

Politics

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

Published

20 hours ago

September 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

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Politics

Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.

Published

3 days ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.

In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.

Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.

Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.

“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.

Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.

“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.

He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”

Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.

“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”

The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.

In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.

“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.

He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”

The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.

“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.

Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.

“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.

He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”

While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.

“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”

Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.

Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.

“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.

He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”

Politics

Missouri Supreme Court pauses GOP gerrymander, likely netting Democrats 1 House seat

Published

3 days ago

September 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.

The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.

Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.