Hassan Nasrallah in 2003. (Credit: Ramzi Haidar/AFP)
The assassination of former Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah was the result of "two decades of methodical Israeli intelligence work in preparation for an all-out war," the New York Times (NYT) reported in an article published Sunday. Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted Hezbollah's underground headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sept. 27, four days after the escalation of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.
Citing intelligence collected by Israel and shared later with Western allies, the American newspaper reported that on the day of his assassination, Nasrallah's aides urged him to go to a safer location. However, he refused to listen as he believed that Israel had "no interest in a full-scale war."
According to NYT, the killing of Nasrallah was the result of "two decades of Israeli "methodical intelligence work in preparation for an all-out war."
Aside from Nasrallah, many Hezbollah military commanders were killed during the war. A NYT investigation, based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Israeli, American and European officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified operations, revealed just how extensively Israeli spies had penetrated Hezbollah.
In 2012, Israel’s Unit 8200 — Israel’s equivalent of the National Security Agency — stole a trove of information, including specifics of the leaders’ secret hide-outs and the group’s arsenal of missiles and rockets.
According to two Israeli defense officials with knowledge of the intelligence cited by NYT, 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.
NYT also provided details about the detonation of Hezbollah's pagers and walkie-talkies a few days before the escalation of the war.
The American newspaper reported that Mossad tricked Hezbollah into buying military equipment and telecommunication devices from Israeli shell companies for nearly a decade. In 2014, Israel seized an opportunity when the Japanese technology company iCOM stopped producing its popular IC-V82 walkie-talkies. The devices, originally assembled in Osaka, Japan, were so popular that replicas were already being made across Asia and sold in online forums and in black market deals.
The Israeli army's Unit 8200 discovered that Hezbollah was specifically searching for the same device to equip all of its frontline forces, according to seven Israeli and European officials. Israel began manufacturing its own replicas of the walkie-talkies with small modifications, including packing explosive material into their batteries, according to eight current and former Israeli and American officials. The first Israeli-made replicas arrived in Lebanon in 2015 — and more than 15,000 were eventually shipped, some of the officials said.
After the start of the conflict between Hamas and Israel in October 2023, at least one Hezbollah technician began to suspect that the walkie-talkies might contain hidden explosives, according to three Israeli defense officials. The technician was then killed in an Israeli airstrike.
On Sept. 11, Israeli intelligence showed that Hezbollah was sending some of the pagers to Iran for examination, and Israeli officials knew it was only "a matter of time before the covert operation would be blown."
On Sept. 16, Netanyahu met with top security chiefs to weigh whether to detonate the pagers in a “use it or lose it” operation, according to four Israeli security officials. Some opposed it, saying it might prompt a full Hezbollah counterattack and possibly a strike by Iran. Despite that, the Israeli Prime Minister ordered the operation which took place the following day.