First pagers, now walkie-talkies: What's behind targeting of Hezbollah devices?

The Debate

A precision operation that’s part of a grander scheme or a one-off magic trick to score spy ops points against the enemy? Either way, what to make of a second day of exploding devices that has killed a dozen and wounded more than 3-thousand? Hezbollah's response awaited after a security breach that will go down in the history books: how did those recently-equipped pagers explode? Why the aftershock of exploding walkie-talkies in several regions. We will examine possible scenarios in this edition of The Debate.

We will see how Lebanon’s digesting its worst casualty toll since the August 2021 port of Beirut explosion, the options available to Hezbollah and its Iranian backers – Tehran's ambassador to Lebanon among the injured and how the timing impacts what’s already a conflict on two fronts.

For now, Israel is tight-lipped. It does not have to claim responsibility for the kind of derring-do operation that is normally the reserve of a John Le Carré novel or a James Bond movie, but does technical prowess imply political smarts? Time will tell.

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Rebecca Gnignati and Ilayda Habip.