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

Poll: Republicans’ gas price problem is even worse than it seems

Published

3 hours ago

July 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Gas prices are high. Americans think they’re even higher.

Three in five Americans believe gas prices in their area have risen by more than they actually have, according to an analysis of new results from The Blue Light News Poll. It’s those perceptions that candidates will be running against this fall.

Voters’ anxieties about fuel prices could give Democrats a boost ahead of the midterms, further strengthening the Democratic voting base and putting strains on the MAGA coalition as the increasingly unpopular war in Iran drags on. A plurality of Americans — 46 percent — say the change in gas prices will impact how they plan to vote come November.

Most voters overestimated the change in gas prices in their area, according to the analysis of polling and granular pricing data provided by OPIS, a Dow Jones company that tracks gas prices. That includes majorities of voters who supported President Donald Trump and also those who supported former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Roughly one in four Americans say gas in their local area has risen by $3.00 or more. But no zip code has actually seen that degree of change on average in the year and a half since Trump took office, as of early July.

Frustrations over cost of living could be reinforcing existing negative views of the Trump administration: Harris voters are far more likely to overshoot the cost jumps than Trump voters, making it harder for Republicans to peel off Democratic voters.

And the analysis shows a fracture among Trump voters. Self-identified MAGA Republicans were more likely to underestimate cost increases than non-MAGA Republicans — another crack in the president’s winning coalition as Republicans scramble to hold it together for the midterms.

“It is a particularly tough dance that many Republican candidates will have to endure for the next three months,” said Arizona GOP strategist Barrett Marson. “How do you feel the pain of your voters without feeling the wrath of Donald Trump?”

What’s more, American’s perceptions do not quickly change even when prices do. The Blue Light News Poll asked about gas prices in both May, when they were near their peak, and July, when they had dipped.

The results were the same in both.

“President Trump and his energy team anticipated these temporary market disruptions, communicated them openly to the American people, and implemented an aggressive plan to mitigate any impacts,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers. “As the U.S. military degrades the terrorist Iranian regime’s ability to attack commercial vessels and disrupt the free flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz, oil and gas prices will plummet back to pre-conflict levels.”

Gas prices could swing votes

Americans’ frustrations with prices and the economy overall are changing how they say they will vote in the fall.

Of the 46 percent of Americans who said gas prices will have an impact on their vote, just under 40 percent said they are considering voting for a different party than they normally would, including 49 percent of MAGA Republicans and 57 percent of non-MAGA Republicans.

“Three quarters of the country is confronting higher gas prices and feeling it,” said longtime Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson. “That leaves them … very vulnerable to the economic pain and very vulnerable to the economic argument the Democrats are going to make.”

To better understand public perception of gas prices, The Blue Light News Poll asked Americans how the price of gas in their area had changed since Trump took office. Respondents could choose between buckets like “$1 to $2 higher per gallon,” “$1 to $2 lower per gallon,” or say prices had stayed roughly the same.

More than three-fourths said gas prices in their area have gone up.

Using OPIS data, Blue Light News compared each respondent’s answer against the actual average cost of regular gas in their zip code during the first week Trump was in office and the week prior to the July poll, which was conducted by the independent polling organization Public First from July 12 to July 15.

That comparison revealed the difference between the pain the American public is feeling and where actual gas prices stand — and, in particular, how that pain is expressed differently among Democrats and Republicans. Roughly 70 percent of Harris voters and 54 percent of Trump voters overestimated the increase in gas prices in their area, according to Blue Light News’s analysis.

“Democrats are highly motivated,” as a voting base, Marson said. “The longer the war goes on, probably the less motivated Republicans will be.”

The perception of higher gas prices is linked to how people see the economy — and who they blame for it.

Across the country, 57 percent of Americans say the cost of living is worse than they “can ever remember it being.” Those who overestimate gas price increases had more than twice the odds of agreeing with that statement, even after controlling for demographics and their 2024 vote.

Similarly, a plurality of Americans — 43 percent — blame Trump more than former President Joe Biden for the state of the economy overall. Those who overestimated their local increase in gas prices had nearly twice the odds of saying the same, compared with those who perceived the change in gas prices correctly or who underestimated the change.

It’s already affecting the battlegrounds

In the country’s most competitive races, Republicans will have to answer for the perceived cost pressures of rising gas prices more often than Democrats.

Thirteen of the most competitive districts have experienced gas price increases higher than the national average, according to Blue Light News’s analysis. Of those, nine are currently represented by Republicans.

In California’s 22nd District, where Republican incumbent Rep. David Valadao will face off against progressive political newcomer Randy Villegas, average prices across the district had gone up $1.17 by early July — the third highest increase of any district, according to Blue Light News’s analysis.

Villegas said in an interview that he thought frustration over gas prices would mobilize turnout in the fall, driven by how the cost of gas is “tied to every other thing.”

“It’s the cost of gas when you’re driving to the grocery store, when you’re driving to, you know, see a doctor,” he said. Or, the cost of gas when driving 7 to 8 hours away to “go get cheaper health care.”

Valadao did not respond to requests for comment.

In Colorado’s 8th District, where gas prices have risen by $0.73 on average since Trump took office, Republican incumbent Rep. Gabe Evans blamed local Democratic policies for increased costs more than the Iran war.

While “what’s happening halfway around the globe has some impact on global energy prices,” Evans said, high gas prices in the district are “a direct result of the local economic policies — the anti-energy policies — of the state Democrats who run the state of Colorado.”

But The Blue Light News Poll results from this month show voters don’t necessarily feel the same. Roughly 63 percent of Americans selected “the war with Iran” as the primary reason why gas prices have increased since Trump took office, including 59 percent of Trump voters and 70 percent of Harris voters.

By the middle of May, the average price of gas across the country reached its highest point of the Trump administration to date: $4.50 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In July, average prices dipped to $3.78 per gallon, the lowest average price since March.

Still, in both months, more than 75 percent of Americans said gas prices had gone up, Blue Light News’s polls show. And in both months, roughly 23 percent said prices had gone up by $3.00 or more.

This week, Trump said the upcoming midterms would not impact how he goes about fighting the war with Iran. “I can’t think about that having to do with this,” he said, referring to the elections. “I think people are very impressed.”

Politics

Capitol agenda: House GOP budget faces Senate reality check

Published

10 hours ago

July 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Capitol agenda: House GOP budget faces Senate reality check

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been frank about the rocky road the reconciliation effort faces and careful not to guarantee he’ll be successful…
Read More