The Washington Post revealed in an investigation published on Sunday the secrets of the pager bombing operation, considering it an unparalleled act of espionage, and one of the most successful and creative enemy penetration operations by an intelligence agency in modern history.

But key details of the operation — including how it was planned and executed, and the controversy it sparked within Israel's security establishment and among allies — have only come to light now, the newspaper said.

“This account, including many new details about the operation, was compiled from interviews with Israeli, Arab and American security, political and diplomatic officials familiar with the events, as well as Lebanese officials and people close to Hezbollah, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. They describe a years-long plan that began at Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv and eventually involved a group of untargeted agents and accomplices in multiple countries,” the newspaper said.

The Washington Post's account reveals how the attack not only devastated Hezbollah's leadership ranks, but also encouraged Israel to target and kill Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, increasing the risk of a wider war in the Middle East.

It is noteworthy that Iran fired about 180 missiles at Israel on Tuesday, October 1, in response to Israeli attacks on Hezbollah leadership and warned of dire consequences if the conflict escalates.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said during Friday's sermon (10/4) in Tehran: "The resistance in the region will not retreat even with the killing of its leaders."

But in Israel, the strike has convinced the country’s political leaders that Hezbollah can be brought to the brink of collapse, subject to systematic dismantling using airstrikes and, eventually, a ground invasion. Yet while they express admiration and wonder that the plot worked as planned, some officials remain concerned about the broader implications of the strike, in a conflict that continues to spiral.

Designed by Mossad, assembled in Israel

According to the newspaper, according to Israeli, Middle Eastern and American officials familiar with the events, the idea for the pager operation originated in 2022. Parts of the plan began to emerge more than a year before the Hamas attack on October 7 that set the region on the path to war, at a time of relative calm on Israel’s northern border.

“Of the half-dozen Iranian-backed militias with weapons aimed at Israel, Hezbollah is by far the most powerful, and Israeli officials have watched with growing concern as the Lebanese group has added new weapons to an arsenal already capable of hitting Israeli cities with tens of thousands of precision-guided missiles.”

Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency responsible for countering foreign threats to the Jewish state, has worked for years to infiltrate the group through electronic surveillance and human informants. Over time, Hezbollah leaders have learned to worry about the group being exposed to Israeli surveillance and penetration, fearing that even ordinary cellphones could become eavesdropping and tracking devices controlled by Israel.

And so the idea of creating a kind of communications Trojan horse was born, the officials said. Hezbollah was looking for hack-resistant electronic networks to transmit messages, and the Mossad came up with a pair of tricks that would induce the militant group to buy equipment that seemed ideal for the job — equipment that the Mossad had designed and assembled in Israel.

According to the Washington Post, the first part of the plan, booby-trapped walkie-talkies, began being smuggled into Lebanon by the Mossad nearly a decade ago, in 2015. The portable two-way radios contain large battery packs, hidden explosives and a transmission system that gives Israel full access to Hezbollah’s communications.

For nine years, the officials said, the Israelis had contented themselves with eavesdropping on Hezbollah, keeping the option of turning the walkie-talkies into bombs in a future crisis. But then came a new opportunity and a shiny new product: a small walkie-talkie rigged with powerful explosives. In an irony that would only become clear months later, Hezbollah ended up paying the Israelis indirectly for the small bombs that killed or wounded many of its operatives.

Because Hezbollah leaders were aware of the potential sabotage, the pagers could not have come from Israel, the United States or any other Israeli ally. “So in 2023, the group began receiving orders for large quantities of pagers bearing the Taiwanese brand Apollo, a well-known brand and product line distributed worldwide with no apparent ties to Israeli or American interests (the Taiwanese company was unaware of the plan, officials said),” the paper reported.

The sales pitch came from a Hezbollah-trusted marketing executive with ties to Apollo. The marketing executive, a woman whose identity and nationality officials declined to disclose, was a former sales representative for the Taiwanese company in the Middle East who had founded her own company and obtained a license to sell a range of Apollo-branded pagers. Sometime in 2023, she offered Hezbollah a deal on one of the products her company sold: the AR924, a rugged and reliable pager.

“This woman was the one who was in contact with Hezbollah, and she explained to them why the larger pager with the bigger battery was better than the original model,” said an Israeli official familiar with the details of the operation. One of the main selling points of the AR924, the official said, was that “it could be charged with a cable. The batteries lasted longer.”

As it turned out, the actual devices were outsourced, and the marketing executive was unaware of the operation and was unaware that the pagers were actually assembled in Israel under Mossad supervision, the officials said. According to officials familiar with the plot, the Mossad pagers, each weighing less than three ounces, included a unique feature: a battery pack that concealed a small amount of powerful explosives.

In an engineering feat, the bomb component was so carefully concealed that it would be virtually undetectable, even if the device were dismantled, officials said. Israeli officials believe Hezbollah dismantled some of the pagers and may have X-rayed them.

Remote access to the devices was also invisible. An electronic signal from the intelligence service could cause thousands of devices to explode simultaneously. But to ensure maximum damage, the explosion could also be triggered by a special two-step procedure required to view the secure messages that had been encrypted.

“You had to press two buttons to read the message,” one official said. In practice, that meant using both hands.

In the ensuing explosion, the official said, users would almost certainly “cut their hands” and thus “be unable to fight.”

Most senior officials were not aware of this feature until Sept. 12. That was the day, Israeli officials said, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned his intelligence advisers to a meeting to discuss possible action against Hezbollah.

According to a summary of the meeting weeks later by officials familiar with the event, Mossad officials provided the first glimpse into what had been one of the agency’s most secretive operations. By then, the Israelis had placed booby-trapped communications devices in the hands and pockets of thousands of Hezbollah operatives. Intelligence officials also spoke of a long-standing concern: As the crisis in southern Lebanon escalated, there was a growing risk that the explosives would be discovered. Years of careful planning and deception could quickly come to nothing.

Across Israel’s security establishment, a heated debate erupted, officials said. Everyone, including Netanyahu, realized that thousands of explosive pagers could do untold damage to Hezbollah, but could also lead to a violent response, including a massive retaliatory missile strike by Hezbollah’s surviving leaders, with Iran possibly joining the fray.

“It was clear that there were some risks,” said an Israeli official. Some, including senior IDF officials, warned of the possibility of a full-scale escalation with Hezbollah, even as Israeli soldiers continued operations against Hamas in Gaza. But others, especially the Mossad, saw an opportunity to disrupt the status quo “with something more intense.”

US officials said the United States, Israel's closest ally, was not aware of the booby-trapped pagers or the internal debate over whether to activate them.

Ultimately, Netanyahu agreed to activate the devices while they could do maximum damage. Over the next week, Mossad began preparing to blow up the pagers and walkie-talkies that were already in circulation. In Tel Aviv, the discussion of the Hezbollah campaign widened to include another high-profile target: Nasrallah himself. The Mossad had known about the leader’s whereabouts in Lebanon for years and had been tracking his movements closely, the officials said. Still, the Israelis held off on firing, certain that an assassination would lead to an all-out war with the militant group, and perhaps with Iran as well. American diplomats were pressing Nasrallah to agree to a separate cease-fire with Israel, unrelated to the fighting in Gaza, in the hope of reaching a deal that would see Hezbollah fighters withdraw from southern Lebanese bases that were threatening Israeli citizens in communities near the border. Senior Israeli officials said they expressed support for the cease-fire proposal, but Nasrallah balked, insisting on a cease-fire in Gaza first, American and Middle Eastern officials said. But in Israel, some senior political and military officials remained largely unsure about targeting Nasrallah, fearing repercussions in the region.

On September 17, as Israel’s top national security circles debated whether to strike the Hezbollah leader, thousands of Apollo-branded pagers rang or vibrated simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria. A short sentence in Arabic appeared on the screen: “You have received a coded message.”

Hezbollah operatives followed instructions carefully to check the encrypted messages, pressing two buttons. In homes and shops, in cars and on sidewalks, the explosions tore off hands and severed fingers. Less than a minute later, thousands more pagers exploded, regardless of whether the user touched their device or not.

The next day, on September 18, hundreds of walkie-talkies exploded in the same manner, killing and injuring users and bystanders.

It was the first of a series of strikes aimed at the heart of one of Israel’s most ardent enemies. As Hezbollah reeled, Israel struck again, hitting the group’s headquarters, arsenals and logistics centers with 2,000-pound bombs.

The largest series of airstrikes took place on September 27, ten days after the pagers exploded. Netanyahu ordered the attack, which targeted a deeply buried command center in Beirut, as he traveled to New York for a speech at the United Nations in which he declared, speaking to Hezbollah, “Enough.”

The next day, September 28, Hezbollah confirmed the death of Hassan Nasrallah.