Dahiye, Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut. Crying, chest-beating, chants of revenge and the omnipresent colour black (on the women’s abayas and the men’s T-shirts) dominate the funeral march to transport four of those killed by the remote detonation of thousands of pagers to the cemetery. Suddenly, a walkie talkieWhen the explosion explodes, the networks are filled with images of similar explosions in other parts of Lebanon and every electronic device – almost without exception – becomes suspicious, with more or less reason. “No iPhones, no iPhones!” shouts a security guard dozens of meters from the site of the explosion. “Why is it still lit!?” asks another young man from the party or the resistance (as everyone here calls Hezbollah) nervously before confiscating a mobile phone, without realizing that it was simply connected to a power bank. Laptops or mobile phone recordings in the hands of unknown people become a potential danger.
In the same suburb of Beirut, the nerves of that Wednesday were dwarfed on Friday. Two missiles had just killed 14 people, including – according to Israel – their target (Ibrahim Aqil, head of the elite Radwan forces and one of Hezbollah’s top military commanders) and everything was chaos, closed access and a generalized, understandable distrust. Searchers and walkie-talkieson fire, security camera images circulating first in Israeli Telegram groups than in Lebanese ones, fighter jets bombing the building of a top-secret meeting right after… These are three days of strikes that seem connected and show an infiltration and vulnerability that contrasts with the attempts of the supreme leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to convey confidence.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretzthe head of the elite forces Radwan had already been wounded in the raid with the busca on Wednesday and was discharged on Friday. Hours later, he was killed, along with other commanders, in an operation that requires very precise intelligence data.
Lebanese technology and data analytics expert Ralph Baydoun explains that the main goal of the attack was not, in fact, casualties, nor demoralization, but to “disrupt” communications and “expose Hezbollah operatives.” “Not only did they harm the militants, but they also exposed their identity and location, and now they are definitely in the Israeli system of artificial intelligence that kills.” […] “How do you now ensure, for example, that I cannot access the data of people who donate blood in the hospital?” said Baydoun, director of research and strategic communications at the company InflueAnswers, in an interview in Beirut.
The hacking and attacks have spread distrust beyond the Shiites, the denomination to which Hezbollah belongs and on whose neighborhoods and towns the Israeli air force focuses its bombings. The Civil Aviation Authority on Thursday banned “until further notice” the taking off or landing at Beirut airport with search and rescue aircraft. walkie-talkies. Even if they are in hand luggage or checked in, they will be in the hold. This Friday, following the airstrike in Dahiye, several airlines have cancelled flights, including Lufthansa, Emirates and Turkish Airlines.
Aware of Western spying capabilities and that any connection to a network poses a risk of exposure with no way back, Hezbollah had been using these types of devices that do not require an internet connection. They could be seen attached to the belts of some young people in their strongholds, and were used both to call fighters to the front and announce the sighting of a drone, as well as to mobilize their medical teams, just as doctors do in other countries.
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In 2008, in one of its biggest displays of force, the militia demonstrated the importance it attaches to communications and the risk that it could become its Trojan horse. Fuad Siniora’s government tried to deprive it of a parallel, underground communications network that it had just discovered. Nasrallah considered this a “declaration of war” and his armed men took over the road to the airport and areas of western Beirut.
Hezbollah had ordered thousands of search and rescue teams months ago. walkie-talkieswhich ended up exploding and he was still distributing them just a week ago, which suggests that he did not suspect their lethal content. He did so within his political, health, educational and espionage network, but also, of course, within his armed wing, which requires the most secrecy.
Out of action
The result: at least hundreds of his militants are now out of action, hospitalized (with wounds to their hands, eyes or sides) just as Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is suggesting that a ground invasion is imminent to create a “security strip” in southern Lebanon. Nasrallah reiterated his conditions on Thursday: he will not stop his attacks until Israel stops bombing Gaza, a possibility that has rarely seemed more remote in recent months.
For Baydoun, Hezbollah is paying the price these days for two phenomena. One, the unquestionable technological superiority of its enemy, motivated in part by the connection between the military and civilian spheres in the start-ups making it almost indistinguishable, and the support of the United States, its great ally and greatest weapons power in the world.
The other, the amateurism The US military is one of the most powerful militias in the world, but its members were happy to post videos on social media years ago boasting of weapons and money while fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian war. Their priority at the time was to project an image of strength, but this does not sit well today with the facial recognition capabilities, combined with the possibilities of artificial intelligence, that Israel and the United States have.
“It is almost as if Hezbollah is an open book to Israeli intelligence services,” says Israeli analyst and former intelligence officer Avi Melamed. “In just one week, Israel has decimated Hezbollah’s wireless command and control systems, incapacitated thousands of its fighters, including many from the elite Radwan force, and is now eliminating its leadership from the battlefield.”
Hezbollah acts as a state within a state and is believed to have tens of thousands of militants and up to 200,000 rockets, but the surveillance cameras whose images have now gone around the world (starting with Israel) are cheap models made in China, Baydoun recalls. “We know that the Israelis have entered the supply chain and that Lebanon imports almost everything. They have a huge opportunity to pirate almost anything,” he adds. All the more so when a large quantity of goods are smuggled across the border with Syria, without controls or delivery notes.
On Thursday, in his most important speech since Hezbollah opened on October 8 what it calls a “front” in solidarity with Gaza (already under the first bombardments after the surprise attack by Hamas), Nasrallah took pains to downplay the level of exposure and vulnerability. After admitting that the detonation of the search engines on Tuesday and, the following day, the walkie-talkiesThe attack was “a major security and military blow that is unprecedented in the history of the resistance and in the history of Lebanon,” he insisted, adding that it had not shaken the foundations of the organisation, as demonstrated by the fact that it continued to launch rockets, as it does on a daily basis. “I want to reassure those who ask us: we are very prepared. What has happened will not affect our power and preparation. It will only increase our determination.” On Friday, shortly before the assassination of Aqil, he wanted to underline his message with one of his biggest salvos against Israel: 140 projectiles.
